Sweet dreams are always we hope for especially for our young toddlers. But not every night will be a sweet dream sleeps. Sometimes, our young toddlers will be disturbed with night terrors or nightmares. From my findings, night terrors is different from nightmares. Toddlers will remember nightmares but not night terrors. A toddler will appear awake in a night terrors but the fact is asleep. I enjoy watching Maximus sleeps. Most of the time it will be a sweet, peaceful sleep. I will not stop kissing him gently on his cheek whilst he is sleeping. In an occasion when he had sweet dream, he giggles and mumbled in his sleep. It sounded so cute... Since I am a light sleeper, I will be awake over such little noise he made and watch him.
However, during a night terrors (I will describe it as night terrors as it's not awaken dream) he will scream, hit and cried. At the end of it he sobbed in his sleep. It's really pitiful to see him but what I can do is just to hug him and gently rub his back to assure him it's safe and fine. By hugging him, I can give him the warm and comfort and soon the night terrors stopped. Sometimes, I will nurse him too.
A not so drastic night terrors will be consider as talking in the sleep or playing in the sleep. Maximus has this experience too. It is always related to over-exhaustion or too much of fun and stimulation to the brain during the day activity. Hence the brain is still active during the night. One of the fun night terrors was when Maximus appeared to be awaken and said "bus" whilst pointing to "it". I thought he was awake and wanted to play, but it was in the middle of the night! But then it was just a fun night terrors and he went back to sleep.
It's such a mystical way seeing toddlers having night terrors. Sometimes they even open their eyes but the fact is that they are not awake! So from experience the best method is a HUG to calm them.
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