So Scarlette is having night terrors. And I have no idea what to do about them.
I’ve gotten such wonderful advice from y’all in the past on things like “How In The Heckfire Do I Get Rid Of My Child’s Cradle Cap?!” and such amazing support on things like “That One Time I Cut Off The Tip Of My Baby’s Thumb With Safety Clippers” that naturally, I am turning to you on this one.
In fact, I realized that I have a ton of questions on child-rearing issues on account of how this is my first time at this whole motherhood thing. And since I subscribe to the whole “it takes a village” approach to parenting, I’m sincerely interested to see how other parents tackle certain issues. Like potty training. Y’all. I don’t even want to talk about it.
Scarlette is two and a half years old and she is waking up screaming like a banshee in the middle of the night. Well, I say waking up but she doesn’t actually seem completely awake. It’s sort of like I gave birth to a really cute, screaming zombie child. Only it’s a frantic, sobbing scream accompanied by sweats that soak her pajamas so thoroughly that I have to change them. She clutches on to me, shaking and heaving and crying.
I’ve tried rocking her or giving her warm milk or laying in bed with her or even laying her in bed with me. If she does calm down enough to start to fall asleep, she will jolt back up, whimpering like she is afraid to go to sleep. We are very, very strict about the screen time in our house so the scariest thing she’s ever seen is me without makeup on in the morning or when Super Why doesn’t pick the right word on the first time. So she’s just crying until she’s so exhausted she finally falls asleep, even if that is while she is laying on my chest.
But because she doesn’t have great language skills yet due to her speech issues (I know some of y’all have asked for an update on this and I will post soon), she can’t articulate anything well enough to tell me if she is scared or even completely understand me when I try to soothe her.
So that’s the problem: I don’t know how to soothe her.
Is this breaking your heart yet because IT IS BREAKING MINE.
Anyhow, I wanted to pose the question: How do you help your child cope with night terrors?
I would love any advice and you’re welcome to link back to your site in the comments if you’ve ever written a post about this sort of thing.
(Also, how do YOU cope with night terrors? Because I finished off an entire bottle of Moscato this week, y’all. While crying SO MANY TEARS. I think this night terror thing might be more traumatic for me than her.)
