Nightmares

While nightmares occur most commonly in kids aged three to ten–10, even some adults have regular nightmares. When nightmares are frequent, cause distress, disrupt sleep, lead to insomnia, or cause daytime difficulties in functioning, they’re classified as a nightmare disorder. Regardless of the classification, though, it’s important to know what to do to provide relief and resolution.

“When my son wakes up screaming, we run into his room, but he’s either frozen in terror or kicking and flailing. He doesn’t even seem to know we’re there, and there’s nothing we can do to calm him down. Eventually he falls back asleep, and in the morning he doesn’t even remember that it happened!”

This parent is describing a “night terror” — a phenomenon that affects only two percent of adults but is common in children. In most cases, night terrors disappear as the child matures.

Like night terrors, nightmares also cause sleep interruption and panic attacks. The main difference between a nightmare and a night terror is that the former is usually a conscious experience, remembered both at the time one wakes up from it and also the following morning. Common themes of nightmares are being threatened, chased, humiliated, exposed or shamed, or facing a disastrous loss or failure — any scenario that poses an actual or existential threat to survival or well-being.