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Toddler Terrors
By Pamela White
You wake in the middle of the night, heart pounding, the echo of a cry fading away. The cry starts up again and your groggy, sleep-deprived brain understands that a toddler's bad dreams are a nightmare for parents, too.
Just as adults need to dream in order to work through their fears and hopes, toddlers between the ages of one and three need to discharge anxieties and experience pleasures in the same way. The good news is the development of dreams is an outcome of an improved memory and a growing imagination. The bad news is it can make for some disrupted sleep for the whole family.
Janie's 2-year-old daughter, Beth, wove a tale about a fire raging through her bedroom. "My hand got burned last night when my room was on fire." Her hand was in perfect condition; her room, while messy, was without fire damage. A casual "It was just a dream" from Janie comforted Beth.
Megan, now 13, still remembers her epic nightmare adventure in the big dark house with monster spiders. Her need, as a 2-year-old, to talk extensively about this bad dream over the following week, and periodically over the next two years was a healthy response to a full-blown night fright. The talk defused the terror.
Why would such innocents dream such dark things? Consider the changes and stress in a toddler's life, most of it linked to growing independence. During these early years, he will move from crawling to walking, giving him ample opportunity to explore his world -- both the soft, loving part and the hard, scary part. Weaning -- from breast, bottle or pacifier -- childcare changes and even potty training can be disruptive to a child's happy nights. Add in separation anxiety and conflict or grieving in the family, and it's easy to see why nighttime so often becomes fright time for toddlers.
Different from nightmares, though no less scary, are night terrors, when a child screams in the night, eyes open, body rigid. Night terrors peak between ages 3 and 6, according to Dr. Jodi Mindell, Pediatric Director at the Center for Sleep Disorders in Philadelphia and the author of Sleeping Through the Night: How Infants, Toddlers and Their Parents Can Get a Good Night's Sleep