night terrors

Trauma Tuesday: Insomnia

Submitted by FaithA on Tue, 05/18/2010 - 06:54

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) Julie C

Many traumatized foster or adopted children struggle with insomnia. When you sleep, your subconscious processes your life experiences. When your life experiences have been filled with terror, this frequently results in nightmares and night terrors. I have been in another phase of insomnia for several weeks. It really wears you out when your body screams for sleep but then is unable to sleep during the night.

For some, the issue is having trouble falling asleep. For others, the issue is staying asleep. And then there are those like me, who struggle with both. It is awful to awaken with a jolt at 4:00 a.m. and know that falling back to sleep is a hopeless cause. Here are some tips you can try to help your foster or adopted child who is struggling with insomnia:

Create a Safe Environment

Makes sure everything in the child’s room helps him to feel safe. A weighted blanket will help the child feel more secure as he sleeps. The scent of vanilla and/or lavender (such as through a scented candle or spray) will help to calm the child. White noise, such as with a fan or humidifier, will help calm the child’s hypervigilance. Remove anything from the room that causes the child to feel stressed. 

Does Your Child Have Night Terrors?

Submitted by LisaS on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 16:25

You put your child to bed about an hour ago and suddenly he wakes up screaming. You run into his bedroom heart pounding  and he doesn’t even respond to you being there. His eyes are open but he doesn’t recognize you. He continues to cry and flail his arms around. If you try to hug him he gets even more upset. Then as suddenly as it started, the screaming stops and your child lies down and goes back to sleep.

If you’ve experienced this situation, your child is probably having night terrors also called pavor nocturnus. Night terrors usually occur within the first hours after going to sleep during very deep non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. A night terror can last anywhere from five to twenty minutes. The child is not awake even though his eyes are open. The typical age for night terrors is three to five years old, but they can occur anywhere from infancy to 100 years old. My daughter started having them when she was nine months old. They stopped after a few months but have reappeared recently and she is almost four years old. Children rarely remember having a night terror and generally outgrow them.

When Your Adopted Child Suffers From Night Terrors

Submitted by LisaS on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 08:45

After our daughter had been home a little over two months, she began waking up suddenly and crying loudly, often hysterically after she had been asleep for just a short time – usually less than an hour. Regardless of what we would try to do to soothe her, nothing would help. All we could do was hold and rock her until she stopped. She would cry with her eyes closed, seemingly unaware of where she was or who was holding her. Sometimes the crying would ensue up to twenty minutes; other times the night terror would last just a few minutes. I always felt helpless; I could not soothe my baby when she was in distress

This was our introduction to night terrors, a phenomenon we had not encountered with our three older sons. Some people insist that babies cannot have night terrors, but our daughter was a mere nine months old when they first appeared, and after researching the subject we were reassured that she was definitely not the first infant to have night terrors. Fortunately, they stopped after a couple months.

Abused Adopted Child And Nightmares Of Abusing Others

Submitted by FaithA on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 07:10

One of the most distressing types of nightmares that the adopted abused child might experience is dreams of abusing others. Your adopted child might be afraid to talk to you about these dreams because then you might think that he is going to become a child abuser himself. As long as your abused adopted child is distressed by these dreams, you need not fear that this is an indication of a propensity to abuse. It is actually just the opposite.

The subconscious uses dreams to work through things that are bothering the abused adopted child. A dream about abusing another child is really the child's way of trying to make sense of what he has experienced.

I was horrified the first time I had one of these dreams.

Traumatized Adopted Child And Recurring Nightmares

Submitted by FaithA on Tue, 04/22/2008 - 07:57

Adopted children who have been traumatized frequently experience both nightmares and night terrors. I have always suffered from nightmares. I pretty much expected to have one every night throughout my life. It was only after healing that I starting having dreams that were not nightmares on a regular basis.

A friend of mine (who was also abused as a child) and I took a quiz about nightmares and were shocked to learn that the average person only has one nightmare a month. I did not know that my experience was abnormal until reading that.

The nightmare that a traumatized child experiences is very different from a run-of-the-mill nightmare.