by Maggi Thomas

Created on: July 28, 2009

Sleeping disorders generally arise between the age group of two and twelve years. However the age is not distinct for such terrifying dreams. It could occur to a person as old as thirty or as young as three years. Night mares and Night terrors are upsetting events for a child as well as for his family too. Sleeping disorder is typified by regular incidents of a frightening or unpleasant dream that disrupt child sleep. Consequently this would disrupt parent's sleep as well. After an unpleasant dream, child is woken up and is aware of his ambiance but the break in sleep causes irritation and disturbs everyday functioning too.

Nightmare and Night terrors are two sleeping disorders we will explain here. Sleep is generally divided into two parts. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) takes place at third stage of sleep (dream sleep) and non Rapid Eye Movement (Non REM) takes place at fourth stage of sleep (deep sleep). Most of the dreaming takes place at REM sleep. Nightmare generally happens after sleeping for a couple of hours (dream sleep) whereas Night Terror happens at fourth stage during deep hours of the sleep.

Normally nightmares are not remembered and are washed away by day light but the stress in the head can be felt through out the day. It has been noticed that at times children do remember their nightmares when they wake up next day. They remain fearful and shrink away from sleeping. This further results in disrupt and loosing sleep. At that stage parents need to be comforting their child enabling them to fall asleep nicely.

Parents can actually do a lot more for their children since it is basically a psychological or an emotional problem. For example a child is paranoid about something in his routine life and that fear reoccurs during his sleep leaving him uneasy and without sleep. A good loving conversation with your child before making him ready to go to bed can also be helpful. Narrating good stories, indulging him in good thoughts are good options. Equally important is to ensure that your child is restricted from watching any violent or horror picture before he sleeps.

The other kind of sleeping disorder is Night terrors which takes place at Non REM sleep. Night terrors are principally caused by psychological reasons. In this format of sleeping disorder, a child or a person has an active body movement and a sleeping brain. With a nightmare, a child is able to recall his unpleasant dream whereas with night terror, the opposite would be true. The child would not be able to recall his terrifying dream.

Stressful events of the day, less sleep, watching a horror movie, engaged in some strong physical activity, reading frightening books, being under some medication, heavy dinner before lying down on the bed are considered to cause this sleeping disorder. The symptoms of person experiencing night terror are weird behavior, becoming unresponsive, screaming or crying and having no impact of soothing or consoling words.

As frightful as these seem, they can still not be called harmful. These sleeping disorders can be remedial if all necessary precautions are taken. However after a certain stage if disrupt sleep still persists, a psychological counseling or a therapy can be considered.

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