4 year old....

tiamai_d

I completely forgot about night terrors, even though I mentioned them.

In the end what works for the night terrors (rather than nightmares) is waking him up 3 hours after he goes to sleep. It disrupts his sleeping pattern so he doesn't get to the stage where nigh terrors happen.

I read about it online somewhere (google brings it up), but basically you wake the child at some point 2-4 hours after they fall asleep. For us it works out that his night terrors usually happen at around 1am, he goes to sleep at 8pm (bed at 7, sleeping for 8). Not enough to fully wake them, just enough for them to murmer and change position.

So if he has a night terror, which are now pretty rare anyway, the next few nights I will wake him and taht seems to help break the habit.

But that only works on night terrors not nightmares and bad dreams.