night terrors are not nightmares

Just in case you were wondering, when kids turn two, they start developing fears. These fears manifest at night time - most of us probably remember how scary it was to go to sleep at night all alone. I still remember.

Anyway, Addison has had trouble sleeping for a few weeks now, mostly just waking up at 2 or 3 AM and coming into our room where she promptly falls back asleep. In the last few nights, she's started waking up, sobbing uncontrollably. Last night was the worst. She'd been asleep for two hours when she abruptly woke up. She was coughing, choking, screaming, fighting us to put her down. She ran to the front door insisting that we go home - "Addy want to go home!!!", like she had no idea that we were home. She didn't want to be held, talked to, given water, left alone, stand up, sit down, nothing was right. She went on like that for almost 30 minutes. It was horribly scary for Robert & me. She calmed down only after we put on her Tinkerbell DVD. She stayed up for about an hour after that, & didn't wake up again until 5 AM, when she did the typical come into our bed routine.

Today I did some research and found out that there are these things called "night terrors" as well as nightmares. The easiest way (according to the article I read) to tell the difference between the two is if the kid is more upset in the morning it was a nightmare; if the parents are more upset, it was a night terror. Addison had no recollection of watching Tinkerbell or her 30 minute outburst, but we sure did. Night terrors happen when the child is still technically asleep, but they are having a lucid dream, often walking, talking, crying, screaming, whatever, but not perceiving a parent's presence correctly, so us talking to her & picking her up likely made the situation worse. We know now, but hopefully it doesn't happen again. It was quite frightening to be unable to calm her for such a long time. Wish us luck tonight!