12 year old night terrors

[Anonymous]

Please help. My 12, almost 13 year old son is dealing with what I think is night terrors. He falls asleep fine most nights but wakes up completely disoriented a few hours later. He’s loud and somewhat disruptive to the household and eventually falls back asleep.
I have two older daughters and they didn’t have experiences such as this so I’m at a loss.

[Anonymous]

Talk to his pediatrician and school counselor.

[Anonymous]

Check for Lyme, screen for mental health issues, ask about bullying directly

[Anonymous]

I did a lot of sleepwalking at that age. Terrified my parents especially as they saw me trying to open the front door one night. I don't know if it was a developmental stage. I grew out of it.

But you can check with your doctor to make sure.

[Anonymous]

Is he on an allergy medicine? My niece got night terrors on Zyrtec

[Anonymous]

It could be a combination of stress, not getting enough sleep and hormonal changes. Is he about to hit puberty?

[Anonymous]

Want to bet he has a phone and completely unsupervised internet access?

[Anonymous]

I get night terrors from Vitamin D. Any chance you just started them on Vitamin D?

[Anonymous]

My son has had night terrors on and off his whole life. It has something to do with an incomplete transition from one sleep cycle to another (I'm paraphrasing). It often seems to happen during a developmental leap of some kind. (He also has ADHD.) It seemed to happen predictably from first sleep cycle to second early on in the night. They can be scary for sure (he would yell like he was being murdered), but it can be absolutely normal.

Check in with your pediatrician to put your mind at ease--they will do all the med checks and whatever to find if there is something external that could be causing this.

[Anonymous]

I am very sorry that your son is going through this. Call the school, maybe he is being bullied by his friends. who are on drugs. If you need help, you can also talk With a psychologist. We should make a group to help them and stop these kids who are out of control with such irresponsible behavior. Keep us informed and good luck.

[Anonymous]

My 10yr old son has had night terrors since he was a toddler. We have found that his night terrors are usually triggered by him being overly tired. If we don't stick to a pretty regimented bedtime routine/sleep schedule he has a night terror approximately 60-90 minutes after he falls asleep. His Pediatrician didn't seem too concerned by them.

[Anonymous]

A lot of alarmist responses here but just want to share my child has always had night terrors on and off and also sleep walks. It can be normal, tends to run in families, and kids outgrow it. Triggers can be stress or being over tired. We had one period of time with my daughter where it was clearly linked to stress and another time that really wasn't. If we are having a spell of this happening, we really tighten up nighttime routines. A walk and a shower/bath before bed and off screens at least an hour prior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of alarmist responses here but just want to share my child has always had night terrors on and off and also sleep walks. It can be normal, tends to run in families, and kids outgrow it. Triggers can be stress or being over tired. We had one period of time with my daughter where it was clearly linked to stress and another time that really wasn't. If we are having a spell of this happening, we really tighten up nighttime routines. A walk and a shower/bath before bed and off screens at least an hour prior.

And also when this first started we went to our ped, who was unconcerned. The main thing is keeping them safe when it's happening. It's very upsetting when it's going on though. So sympathy.

[Anonymous]

Ugh. Super stressful for you, but typical/normal for this age, according to our pediatrician.

We asked her because our 12 yo DS has had some of these, as well, this year. His "freaked out wake-ups," as we call them, tend to happen very early in his sleep cycle - within the first hour of him falling asleep. We've learned not to try to waking him up fully - we just keep affirming/soothing him back to sleep, and then he's been fine the rest of the night. (I get that this is easier for us given that it's early - before we've gone to bed ourselves.)

Our pediatrician said that tweens typically outgrow this. One thing to consider, however, is whether your DS has had strep throat lately. Sometimes these type of night terrors can be lingering effects of strep, which means that your pediatrician may be able to steer you to another round of antibiotics to knock it out.

No clue about the PPs' thoughts about bullying, ADHD, Vitamin D, or anything like that. It's certainly possible, but it never even crossed our mind or our pediatrician's. But I guess it can't hurt to gently ask your DS and/or your pediatrician. Good luck!!

[Anonymous]

People are uneducated about what this is. The person has zero idea the next day it even happened. It's a sleep disruption/disorder, not a bad dream because someone was mean to you at school that day. Stress can trigger, but not necessarily and my experience with this is it's more generalized stress and not X bad thing happened to me today and now I'm having a bad dream about it and it's waking me up.