A 2-year-old boy jolts upright in bed, panicked. Eyes wide, mouth circled in a scream, the terror brings his mother running, only to find she can’t reach her son.

He is trapped betwixt and between – caught within two layers of his own body’s functioning. His mind is asleep, his body awake. He doesn’t respond to his mother’s touch; he struggles to free himself of her grasp. She can do nothing but watch and wait. It will end, she tells herself.

But for this Drifton, Penn., mother, it will soon begin again. Each night, Bobbi Dempsey waits for her son’s screams to pierce the dullness of sleep. Dempsey’s son has a sleeping disorder that plagues more than 200,000 kids: night terrors.

For parents, night terrors can be frightening to witness. For children – who typically have no recollection of the event – night terrors are little more than an inconvenience, say experts.

"Every night, my son was screaming and terrified. I thought he had somehow gotten hurt. Sometimes he thought someone was after him. It was a horrible thing to watch him go through," says Dempsey, who resorted to sleeping on the living room couch with her son so she could be near him – and so his screams could be as far as possible from his two brothers.

When Sleep Turns Scary
Night terrors strike more than one-third of children in the United States, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Sleep Foundation. The disorder is particularly common in boys and usually occurs between the ages of 3 and 7, says Dr. John Tedeschi, chairman of Virtua Health West Jersey’s pediatric department.

For most children – and worried parents – the episodes are mercifully short-lived, beginning and ending within a few weeks of each other. For others, like Dempsey’s son, night terrors can haunt children for years, hanging on well into the preteen years.

Night terrors happen most often when children sleep deeply. Parents who have ever carried a limp child from the car to their bed without waking, understand what it means to have a child in deep sleep. The normal sounds that would arouse a sleeping adult – a slamming car door, rattling house keys, stumbling over hidden toys – don’t awaken these children.

Yet, it is during this same deep sleep that a child’s body can jolt into action; when the slumbering body responds to some kind of stimuli, yet the mind stays asleep, night terrors occur – leaving children in a sort of sleep limbo.

These sudden, partial awakenings occur most often during the first two hours of sleep and typically begin with a high-pitched scream – which brings panicked parents running – only to find a child appearing awake, pupils dilated, sweat forming and heart racing, says Dr. Stephen Sheldon, director of the Sleep Medicine Center at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, one of five children’s hospitals in the nation accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

“The child may be screaming or yelling something unintelligible which only gets worse when parents try to intervene," Dr. Sheldon says. "When parents start asking questions or touching the child, he becomes even more agitated. Later, he won’t even remember it ever happened.”

When Brette McWhorter Sember’s toddler daughter woke up screaming, the Clarence, N.Y., mother found her sitting up in bed, terrified and seemingly unaware of her surroundings.

"She woke up screaming but could not hear us. It was as if she was asleep with her eyes open," Sember says.

Night Terrors or Nightmare?
Night terrors – which have a physiological cause – are very different from nightmares or other night awakenings caused by previous psychological trauma.

A few months after Shelia Jordan’s granddaughter was born, the infant survived a car wreck that killed her mother. Today, at 3 years old, Jordan’s granddaughter is haunted by nightmares triggered after she hears loud noises reminiscent of the car crash, Jordan believes.

Unlike night terrors, which are largely caused by a physical reaction, nightmares can be caused by the subconscious recollection of a traumatic incident, says Dr. Paul Saskin, clinical director of Sunrise Hospital’s Regional Center for Sleep Disorders in Las Vegas, Nev.

The difference between night terrors and nightmares is simple, Dr. Saskin says. With night terrors, the child has an active body and sleeping brain. With nightmares, the opposite is true, enabling the child to recount a nightmare and welcome reassurance from parents.

Toddler Terrors, Infant Anxiety?
Although little research has been done on the subject, some sleep experts believe not only toddlers – but infants – are affected by night terrors.

For Indianapolis, Ind., stay-at-home mom, Krista J. Monson, her 5-month-old daughter’s sudden screaming fits occurring in the middle of a deep sleep have become commonplace.

The screaming fits, which started when the baby was just 4 months old, were a bit frightening at first, Monson admits. Now, she and her husband simply try to awaken and comfort their daughter when the night terrors begin.

"I hold her, tell her it is ‘OK‚’ and that we are there," Monson says. "We’ve been told that’s all we can do. The biggest thing is to remain totally calm."

Sheldon agrees. Often, his medical advice takes a common sense route, encouraging parents to calm and reassure themselves as well as their children.

“If parents are frightened, that can be transmitted to the child, which can make night terrors more frequent and more intense," Dr. Sheldon says. "It’s a vicious cycle of fright.”

What Parents Can Do
Because night terrors eventually subside and leave no trace of neurological damage, for many parents and experts treating the disorder becomes a waiting game.

Often, the most effective way to prevent night terrors is to limit a child’s stressors. Pediatricians may recommend chronicling nighttime events in a sleep diary and linking night terrors with troublesome daily events.

Children who have nightly occurrences for one month or more or who have multiple episodes a night should be evaluated by both a pediatrician and a sleep disorder clinic, says Dr. Tedeschi.

“Multi-nightly occurrences of sleep terrors are not of the norm,” says Dr. Sheldon. "If a child has consistent, frequent sleep terrors or there is something unusual about the spells, then the child needs to be evaluated."

Other remedies to prevent night terrors can include changing bath time from evening to morning – because it reduces the amount of bedtime stimulation – and gently stroking a child’s skin with a soft brush to relax and comfort before bed. Using a few drops of an essential oil like lavender on a cotton ball near the child’s bed also has been known to bring calmer sleep, Dr. Sheldon says.

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