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Kids & Nightmares + Night Terrors {Episode 251}
275 Plays1 year ago
Do your children have kid nightmares? Have you had to deal with toddler night terrors? Are you wondering what causes night terrors in children? In this episode we discuss nightmares vs night terrors, foods that cause night terrors, and what solutions you can use to deal with kid nightmares. We share possible causes, and personal experiences. Be sure to listen to this episode if your kid has nightmares. Or share it with some one who had a child experiences night terrors.
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode 110: Screen Time for Kids
About Outnumbered the Podcast:
Two moms, parenting a combined total of 19 kids and finding joy in the chaos.
Join Audrey and Bonnie as they share real parenting tips for real people through humor, advice and compassion.
Whether it's tackling how to teach kids to work or discussing where to turn when you're all out of patience, these two experienced moms are here to offer authentic tips for raising children joyfully.
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Transcript
Introduction to Nightmares and Night Terrors
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 251, just in time for Halloween. We are talking about nightmares. But seriously, we want to talk about the difference between nightmares and night terrors. Talk about what to do when your kid is having one, when to see a doctor, causes, what's causing these, and solutions, and then our own personal experience with all our many kids and all their many nightmares. So let's dive in.
Meet the Hosts: Audrey and Bonnie
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
00:00:56
Speaker
Hey,
Halloween Connection to Nightmares
00:00:57
Speaker
everybody, we are talking to you about a really fun, scary topic. We're talking about nightmares today in this episode. And I think almost every kid has nightmares. And so it's something that we get asked questions about, and we have a lot of experience with. So bring on the nightmares. Audrey, you realize we're publishing this on Halloween, right? We're publishing this on Halloween? Yes. That is so awesome. Happy Halloween, everyone.
00:01:24
Speaker
How appropriate. Welcome to the nightmare episode. We didn't even plan it. We didn't, that was just lucky. You don't need, it's not, no ear bud warning, like this isn't a scary episode. No, that wasn't scary. Unless you're the one having a nightmare, then it's scary. Right.
Bonnie's Childhood Experiences
00:01:40
Speaker
guys, I have to tell you a funny story of when I was a kid. I don't recall a lot of nightmares. I only remember one and I'm not going to tell you about it because it was terrifying and it would happen over and over and over and I hated it. It was terrible. But I was a sleepwalker and my parents tell a funny story of when I was sleepwalking one night and my dad had a hard time believing that I wasn't fully lucid because I'm walking around doing stuff, but I would never remember it. And so one night my dad and my mom were
00:02:02
Speaker
watching tv in the basement eating some ice cream and i came down and they said hey what are you doing and i just didn't say anything was looking around confused and my mom said here watch this hey bonnie take our bowls upstairs and put them in the sink in the kitchen and so i did and i went back to bed no recollection of it at all the next morning so that i'm like you know they're doing slave labor on me and then in the night time i have no clue what's happening
00:02:25
Speaker
Oh my goodness. That reminds me, I have, um, we'll, we'll get into this later, but walking in your sleep and talking in your sleep are signs of different things. So anyway, we'll get into that in a little bit, but I was apparently a talker in my sleep when I was a kid. And what's funny is I have one kid who talks in their sleep, but my husband, when he was first married, apparently sometimes I still talked in my sleep. Usually kids outgrow it, but, um, he, he would like try to ask me questions and get me to answer. But of course that would always wake me up because it wasn't like,
00:02:55
Speaker
part of the dream. Your brain is not talking to him. But out buddy, I'm having a conversation by myself over here. Okay, so first of all, we're going to talk about
Understanding Nightmares
00:03:06
Speaker
nightmares in kids. So nightmares, it's just basically an unpleasant or frightening dream that disturbs the kids sleep. And like I said, most kids outgrow nightmares by age nine or kind of around the onset of puberty, they get a lot less frequent.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, which is good because they are scary. And I feel like in my experience, because I did have a lot of nightmares as a kid, they seem to get scarier as I got older. Maybe because my brain matured, like as a little kid, you're having a nightmare of a spider or something. But as a teenager or a young adult, I'm not a young adult, a prepubescent kid, I would have nightmares of my family members getting hurt or something much more serious. And so thankfully for most kids, they grow out of them around that age, around age nine.
00:03:50
Speaker
Um, nightmares occur during REM sleep. So that's the final stage of normal sleep. And it tends to be the deepest, which means that they usually occur like right in the middle of the night or early, early morning is usually when you're going through that, that phase of sleep. Okay. So usually when a kid is having a nightmare, they're mostly non-responsive. They're not yelling. They're not moving. Um, they like, it's just all in the brain and the child can wake up.
00:04:14
Speaker
and feel very helpless or anxious because of this nightmare that they've been having. But their body is not doing anything.
00:04:23
Speaker
Right, right. The subject of nightmares, like we said, can be a myriad of things, but they tend to be different for each child. Like each child kind of has their weakness, right? And as we all know, they include scary elements. That's why nightmares are so disturbing. They'll wake up scared, right? So often monsters or ghouls or aggressive animals or something that threatens them or their loved ones, a bully, something like that.
00:04:48
Speaker
It's so cute, kind of, when your toddler or your little kid has their first nightmare. I mean, they kind of wake up and they're upset and they're real. I mean, you can tell when they've had their first nightmare. It's kind of heartbreakingly sweet, cute, right? Like it's about like a spider. You said, or like a wolf or something that's just kind of cute and not scary.
00:05:10
Speaker
Infant and toddler nightmares really are rare. That's why you can kind of tell when their kid has had their first nightmare. They're a little bit older and they can kind of explain or tell you about it. And then also interestingly, girls might have an uptick in bad dreams at the beginning and throughout puberty. Some of the hormone changes stuff can cause some nightmares.
00:05:31
Speaker
I was going to say something inappropriate about puberty for girls, but man, there's a lot of nightmarish things going on, okay? Sheesh. We go through a lot, let me tell you. Totally. I know. The whole thing is a nightmare, like four years long, right? Or six, or however long.
00:05:46
Speaker
Sheesh, our future children should be so grateful to us. Okay, so now we're going to shift to talking about night terrors a little bit. You've
Nightmares vs Night Terrors
00:05:55
Speaker
probably heard that this is a different thing, that there is a distinction there. And in doing a little bit of research, we learned that they really are very different. And night terrors tend to be these episodes of something really terrifying and panic inducing that occurs during the sleep. And it can last up to an hour and a half, which sounds awful.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's something different going on in the kid's brain because it actually occurs during non-REM sleep. So nightmares are during that REM sleep, like you said, but these night terrors, they're actually during non-REM sleep. So it's like a totally different function or part of the brain or something going on. And they are quite distinctly different.
00:06:34
Speaker
I know, I wish I knew enough about the brain to understand why they do these things and why it looks so different, right? Why is it during one phase of sleep for a nightmare versus a night terror? So night terrors, if your child has had a night terror, you probably know because they
00:06:49
Speaker
generally include some sort of response. There's a vocalization, there's screaming, there's a rapid heart rate, they're breathing really fast and very often you'll hear them cry out and you go check on your kid and it looks like they are panicking but they're still asleep and that's very scary to watch and of course go through I'm sure for the little one. Very often there's sleepwalking involved as well and they can be acting out against the dream so thrashing or kicking or yelling at something that they are experiencing within this night terror.
00:07:18
Speaker
Okay. So night terrors are common like in ages three to seven or nine, you know, they kind of taper off about the same time as nightmares around 10, nine, 10 onset of puberty, but only about 30% of kids have these night terror things. So just kind of some differences. We wanted to start with the difference between nightmares and night terrors to point them out to you guys to, to differentiate for you. What, like, what is the difference?
00:07:46
Speaker
Yes. And interestingly enough, you or your child may have higher risk if there is a family history of it. So if you knew you or your siblings had night terrors, then it's likely that your children will as well. So also so strange what's going on in that brain, right? That transfers from one generation to another and makes them at risk. So interesting.
00:08:06
Speaker
Okay.
Reassuring Children and Seeking Help
00:08:07
Speaker
So even though there's a lot of differences between nightmares and night terrors, um, what you do for them, we're going to move into, you know, what to do and what the causes are and what the solutions are.
00:08:17
Speaker
They're all really the same thing, whether it's a nightmare or a night terror. So that's kind of nice that no matter what they're having, you treat it, so on, quote, unquote, treat it the same way. So what do you do when your kid is having a nightmare? So usually what you do comes afterward after a nightmare, like they're telling you about it in the morning. But a night terror, some of these things that you're going to be doing are happening like right in the middle of the night because they're awake and they're screaming or they're walking or, you know, whatever is going on. So what do you do? Well, you just reassure the child.
00:08:47
Speaker
One thing that I commonly say I do have a child currently having night terrors and I say It's just a dream. It's not real and I just say that over and over and over again as I'm rubbing their back To let them to bring them out of it like wake them up and I just keep saying this mantra over and over again It's not real. It's just a dream. It's not real It's just a dream over and over again until I come out of it and then they're almost like
00:09:10
Speaker
Oh, mom, what are you doing here? But that has brought them out of it. And then during the day, you can educate them on why they have nightmares or night terrors. We're going to be talking about some of the causes and solutions here in a little bit. But comfort them that they'll most likely outgrow these. It is very rare for a kid beyond the onset of puberty to still be having nightmares or night terrors.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yes, I agree with all those. We've used all those to help a child just calm down in the middle of the night or not be so afraid to go to sleep. Sometimes they get really anxious about going to sleep if they start having consistent nightmares. If you do have a child that has frequent nightmares or night terrors, you might be concerned. In our research, we learned that a rough estimate of when to seek a doctor's advice would be if your child is having two or more per week for about six months, which frankly, I think I would look for help.
00:10:01
Speaker
a lot sooner than that after six months of being woken up multiple times during the night and seeing your little one suffer. But that could have some other cause to it and you might want to seek medical counsel if it lasts that long.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. That is just putting that out there to just kind of give you reassurance that every kid has nightmares now and then, or night terrors now and then. But if it's a really consistent thing for a consistent amount of time, then maybe there's something else going on that you need help with. Okay.
Causes of Nightmares
00:10:31
Speaker
What are the causes of nightmares? Nightmares are very commonly a side effect of a medication. If a kid is on a medication, a nightmare is a very common side effect.
00:10:40
Speaker
Um, hard or bad experiences that is like that your brain is processing at night. What happened during the day? That's what sleep and rest are for is for processing. And so, um, this, if they had a harder, bad experience, they're going to, they're going to process that even processing thoughts that they've had during the day. Ooh, what if this happened? Or, Ooh, what if I, I especially have one kid who can kind of think themselves into a panic during the day. And so I imagine.
00:11:08
Speaker
That's what's going on at night too. Sickness or a fever. A lot of kids will have a nightmare when they have a fever. Just again, kind of a different working of the brain. And then here's a really big one that almost always causes a nightmare in my kids is sugar before bedtime.
00:11:28
Speaker
If only it did the same thing to me, then maybe I'd stop eating a cookie before bed. That would be a good, probably a good thing for me. A few other causes. Now, here's a big one that is not the cause of most nightmares, but obviously if your child undergoes some sort of assault or abuse, especially sexual assault, some sort of traumatic event, that can cause a nightmare or a night terror.
00:11:50
Speaker
Obviously, let's not jump to conclusions, right? But that might be something to look into if you already have concerns about that, is wondering if that is intruding on your child's sleep as well. But any kind of stress can cause nightmares, right? If you move to a new home or a new neighborhood, new school, that can cause stress that will manifest themselves in nightmares, night terrors.
00:12:09
Speaker
A new sibling, right? We talked about this in our new sibling episode. It throws the other kids sometimes in a stressful situation and they're trying to make sense of it or any sort of family dynamics change. Maybe dad is working more or maybe there's a divorce or somebody passes away in the family. Any of that can cause the stress that manifests itself in nightmares. I cut that off just a little bit too short. Sounds like someone's having a nightmare right now. She's gonna in a minute.
00:12:40
Speaker
Uh, okay. So what do you do? Like, are there solutions? Um, not in the midst of the nightmare, helping your kid, but like some solutions outside of, um, just comforting them afterwards. So here's a big one. Limit sugar before bedtime. That's pretty easy. Like I found out pretty quick that if my kids have ice cream, then they're going to have a nightmare, right? So, um, a calming bedtime routine.
00:13:05
Speaker
is something that obviously if it's chaotic at bedtime that you can see how that would carry over into their sleep and disrupt their sleep. Um, here's one that we've talked about is less screen time. In fact, we have a whole episode about kids in screen time, but my kids, if they have a screen during the day, they absolutely do not have it after 8 PM. That's one of our rules, um, for our use of screens.
00:13:31
Speaker
And that is because it takes three hours for your brain to stop processing blue light after they've seen the light. And that is what comes from our screens. So one of our rules there. Um, having a nightlight in the room will sometimes help some kids, um, feel better and ward off those, you know, scary what's under the bedroom because there's a light in there. Um, and then essential oils. Uh, there are some essential oils that can be diffused that can just calm the brain. I'm not an excellent, um, an essential oil expert, but what I do know is that if you find
00:14:02
Speaker
So I have found with our use of essential oils that it's pretty specific to the kid that's using it. So if they like the smell, if it's comforting to them, then that would be comforting to help through a nightmare and that kind of thing.
00:14:16
Speaker
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00:14:43
Speaker
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00:15:01
Speaker
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Solutions and Coping Strategies
00:15:25
Speaker
Okay, a few other solutions to try are consistent bedtime. What did we just talk about this recently too is that if you want your kid to sleep better, you've got to get them to bed consistently and I get it. It's a challenge, but that is a great, fairly simple place to start to help eliminate those nightmares. And then scary movies or scary inputs, even books, especially around this time of year when there's lots of spooky things, you go walking around the neighborhood and
00:15:48
Speaker
Um, see all kinds of scary decorations that can come out in a nightmare, obviously. Um, or at least try to limit them before bed, right? If you're going to watch some scary, watch it during daytime and allow the child time to process it together. You guys talk about it together, not in the dark right before he goes to bed and has no time to decompress other than in the middle of a nightmare.
00:16:07
Speaker
Okay, there is a huge list of foods that can cause nightmares. In fact, I think it's probably more accurate than listing foods that can cause nightmares. It's probably more accurate to say that if you have a food allergy or a food your body is having a hard time digesting, it's probably causing nightmares at night too. That is one sign of like a food allergy.
00:16:27
Speaker
for your kids, keep a food journal. Okay, they had a bunch of corn or corn chips or whatever they stay and they had a nightmare. Okay, is that consistent? Does that happen again? Like you don't want to experiment and force feed them a bunch of corn to see if they have another nightmare. But still, it's keep a food journal. Oh, I noticed when they always have dairy, they have a nightmare or tomatoes or whatever. There's so many foods. Lots of foods have been linked to nightmares. Okay, here's something you can do with little kids because remember,
00:16:54
Speaker
Remember that nightmares are mostly happening in little kids when they're susceptible to ideas and scary things, right? So use your own magic to ward off these nightmares. Get an empty aerosol can and spray it around the room and say, this is my monster spray. This is killing all the monsters in the room and there are no more monsters. I just sprayed them. Because if their brains are believing in monsters, their brains can believe in monster spray, right?
00:17:19
Speaker
Or you can get a good dream wand and say with this wand I hereby bring in all the good dreams or whatever you want to make it like Their imaginations are most likely causing their nightmares. So right before bed set their imagination on something that can Bring in a good dream or ward off the bad dreams And then lastly something that I really find effective for my kids is prayer before they go to bed Like that's the last thing get off your knees and into bed, right? So then they end
00:17:50
Speaker
they end their day, the last thing in a peaceful situation. And that really does help as well.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah, and bonus, it strengthens their own faith in knowing that when they ask God for something, they get it, right? Yes, and like we mentioned before, kids who regularly have nightmares resist bedtime. They don't want to go to bed. It's scary. They close their eyes and they see freaky stuff, right? So if you start seeing your child have anxiety, even if you haven't been woken up from a nightmare or they haven't identified it later, that could be playing into the resistance at bedtime.
00:18:21
Speaker
So, one idea is to solve this is to talk about good dream ideas. Like sometimes I'll sit with my kids and just say, what would you like to dream about today? If you could dream about anything, what would be a fun thing? Well, I want to dream that I'm flying over the mountains. I want to dream that I have a wand that turns everything to chocolate. Well, I want to just these fun fantastical imaginative things that their brain can go to work on before bed to ward off maybe the scary things.
00:18:45
Speaker
And then another activity you can do not at bedtime because you don't want to bring up the fears at bedtime, but another time during the day when they're feeling safe is you can talk about what they've experienced in the past and validate those fears. Say, wow, that does sound scary. Isn't it interesting that it's not half as scary right now? Why? And you can explain how the brain works, right? Well, it's light outside. I'm here. You know you're safe. And when we think about those dreams, usually it's something, like I said, fantastical that they know is not real.
00:19:13
Speaker
and only becomes scary when they're in their subconscious and they can't tell reality from fiction. So allowing them to process that, like you see how that's not real and your brain just kind of tricked you, can help them kind of have the tools to deal with that a little bit better. I don't know if they can do that subconsciously. I think they can. I don't know how the brain works, but at least when they wake up, they have those tools like, oh, that was fake. That was fake. Okay. Now I'm back safe. Everything's okay.
00:19:35
Speaker
Okay,
Personal Experiences and Advice
00:19:36
Speaker
so now we're going to share some of our experiences with our own kids having nightmares and stuff. So like I mentioned, I currently have a kid that is having night terrors and he's right getting close to that upper age limit. So I'm not sure that I have worked very hard to find out the cause or a solution because I know he's pretty close to outgrowing it.
00:19:57
Speaker
And so, but he will have these night terrors and he'll sit up and he'll be like shrieking and yelling and, you know, speaking back to this dream. And I'll go in and I'll do that, like I said, that back rub thing and say, it's not real, it's just a dream. And he has no clue. Like when he finally comes out of it, he's like, what are you doing here? Like, why are you disrupting my sleep? This kid has a really vivid imagination, very artistic and very big imagination.
00:20:22
Speaker
Um, I just think it's all part of that, like his brain processing things. It's just kind of interesting. I had another kid that had night terrors as well. And, um, this kid also had something called road benign Ronin.
00:20:40
Speaker
benign rolandic epilepsy, and I think they were, the night terrors were pretty closely related to that and in concert with that. And when we treated the, when we were working for solutions for the benign rolandic epilepsy and got that under control, then the night terrors completely went away too. Just an interesting side note there. I'm not sure, I just mentioned it in case somebody else listening has something like that going on.
00:21:04
Speaker
And then, of course, all my kids have had nightmares. And what's funny is, I don't know, I have this weird thing, I don't like to listen to my kids' dreams or nightmares. To me, it feels like a pointless endeavor for just to sit there and waste about 20 minutes for them to tell me all about this dream they had that isn't reality and has nothing to do with it. I honestly am not very good at listening to people's long drawn out
00:21:31
Speaker
dreams and nightmares like I'll listen to a little bit so that I can discuss them with them later, you know, like validate their fears or say that sounds scary or say, you know, actually, you know, monsters or unicorns or whatever is not real, that kind of thing to help them out with that a little bit. But I think I'm probably a terrible parent in the dream slash nightmare division. It just feels like an agonizingly slow waste of time. Oh, good. I'm not alone.
00:22:01
Speaker
If my kid is really disturbed by it, I will take the time to listen because I know that getting it off their chest can feel relieving. I think about this nightmare that I had over and over and over as a child. The first time I told it was a terrifying experience because it still felt real. But once it came out of my mouth, I was like, that sounds so dumb.
00:22:18
Speaker
You know? Like it lost some of its magic, some of its hold on me, right? Yeah, power. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, for sure. Especially when you have as many kids as we do, like, well, let's sit here for two hours and hear everyone's dream. Anybody else want to share? That's funny. Because you can never explain a dream as if it was a dream or a bad dream. You can never explain it as vivid as it was in your imagination. And so I think that's how listening to a nightmare kind of takes away some of the power or the pungency of it is because it's just not like you can't explain it. It does sound dumb when they explain it.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yes, exactly, exactly. We haven't had a ton of experience with night terrors, thankfully, but I did have a couple of kids that, one in particular, that had a habit of doing that. And my husband and I would roll over at each other and go, your turn this time. She'd just be shrieking and you have to run in there quick so she doesn't wake everybody else up.
00:23:03
Speaker
Um, and that is very, very scary for them and exhausting for you as well. Um, but what I have noticed is that my little ones, I forget, right? As, as, you know, Audrey can probably attest, you kind of have two families when you have a large one is like, well, we already talked about nightmares with all the kids. Like, oh no, these actually younger ones haven't, all of a sudden my three year old is starting there. My four year old is starting to get some and, and to explain that, um,
00:23:27
Speaker
It honestly is a really, I think, sweet experience to bond with your child and go, yes, isn't that so interesting? Your brain is just exploring what's possible. Is it possible for a monster to come chase you? No, they're not real, right? Your brain is just making up stories. Isn't it interesting? Sometimes those stories are scary because your brain doesn't know what's real, right? So just to kind of, it can be a
00:23:47
Speaker
a neat way to bond with your child and to remind them that they do have a certain amount of control over their life. I want to say that that's why it probably starts around age three and age four. They start experimenting, right? They get a really great imagination. They start experimenting with what's possible. They just don't have enough control over reality to figure out what's real and what's not. So you get to be that
00:24:10
Speaker
that kind of sense of reality for them, which is neat. But if terrors can be quite the pain if they're interrupting everyone's sleep. So try some of the solutions if you're dealing with those, our hearts go out to you.
00:24:21
Speaker
Okay. So we hope something that we said about the, this was helpful or educational to you guys. Are your kids having nightmares or night terrors? Like, do you know the difference? And if you have any other solutions or, um, causes that you know of, let us know too. We've, we've still got kids having nightmares. So reach out to us and let us know. You can reach us by email out number, the podcast at gmail.com, or you can, um, DM us on Instagram comments on what our videos on YouTube.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yes. And best of luck tonight after kids eat buckets of sugar and see all the scary things. We hope you all get sleep, but we probably won't. I know. I think it's why on November 1st, all the schools, all the school teachers just like put in a video and it's just like, you know, calming video day because the kids have had night. They've had tons of sugar. They have nightmares. They've watched scary movies and it's just like let down day. Not a good educational day for sure. So best of luck tonight.
00:25:16
Speaker
OK, guys, that's it for this episode. Happy Halloween, I guess. And good luck with those nightmares. I'm Audrey. I'm Bonnie, and we're outnumbered. Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
00:25:43
Speaker
that their essential oils are, what's my word? Not systematic, not problematic. Specific. The other day I was trying to think of the word label and I said spongal or something really weird. I was like, what on earth is my brain coming? Okay.