Recurring nightmare

Hi everyone!
I hope you don't mind me posting here, my twins are only 9 months but my DS2 will be 4 next week.

He has been having the same recurring nightmare/night terror for the past 2 months, where he will cry in his sleep, kick his feet, roll about, and then he wakes up and runs over to us looking absolutely terrified. He usually goes straight back to sleep in my arms and ends up sleeping in our bed for the night. he has talk to me about it, and says that there is a bold man hitting people. I am getting really worried as it is happening every night, sometimes multiple times (the times when we put him back in his bed). I cannot see anything that happened that would have triggered these, he watches very little TV, and only Playhouse Disney, but he does have a very vivid imagination. I am considering talking to the doctor about it, I am just at a loss and my heart breaks for him, he seems so terrified, have any of you had similar situations? What did you do to help your LO?

Thanks for any advice.

 

I am sorry that I don't have any advice to give you about this, but wanted to give you a big :hug:

I hope you find the answers that you need!

 

Lauren went through a bout of night terrors. Her pedi recommended we wake her about an hour after she fell asleep. It seemed to help in our situation. BIG :hug: It is so hard to watch them and not be able to do anything about it.

 

Thanks for that, I will try to wake him now, and maybe again before i go to bed. Great suggestion, i hadn't even thought of that!

 

It helped our son to talk about the nightmare and work out happy endings to make it less scary. It did seem to help him.

 

Similar to what pp person suggested. If it is happening at the same time every night wake him up about 20 minutes beforehand to break the cycle. Good luck that so stinks. Another thing to try is that while he is falling asleep teach him to think about something really great to him.. like for me I think about walking in the mountains. It really helps redirect my dreams to be pleasant... maybe it could work for him with whatever scenario he find makes him happy or soothes.

 

Thank you all for taking the time to reply
Well, we woke him up last night around an hour and half after he fell asleep, and again, just before we went to bed, and he didn't have any nightmares last night, and woke up really refreshed this morning!!!
So fingers crossed!!
Thank you all so much for the advice!! I really appreciate it!!

 

:clapping: It really made a difference at our house!!! :good:

 

This is what I was going to say. It really does work. Talk to him about how dreams are stories our brains/heads make up when we are asleep, and because it is his head making the story up he gets to decide what happens. Get him to explain what happens in the dream that is scary and then think of some ways to change the story so that it is not scary any more (you can make some suggestions, but try and have him come up with most of them). For example maybe the man has to go to time out for hitting people, then he has to say sorry and start being nice, or maybe change it entirely and instead of hitting the man hugs all the people or gives them ice cream. If he wants to he could draw the nice ending to the dream or you could role play it together. Before he goes to bed remind him that if the bad dream starts he can change it to the nice dream.
I also second the idea of getting him to focus on nice things just before/as he falls asleep.

Good luck, I'm glad that waking him a little helped to stop it last night.

 

Hey Charlie, how did this play out in the end? Sounds awful

 

Hi Lisa!

Well, it kinda of just stopped on its own after about 3 or 4 months, it gradually slowed down to a couple of times a night, to once a night, to every other day, then it just stopped.
It was horrendous though i have to say, very hard to watch helplessly your little boy absolutely terrified, but at least, he never seemed to ever remember a thing in the morning.
But it hasn't happened since, so fingers crossed it was just a phase, my pedi told me it is a pretty common thing to happen at this age.