3 yr olds and Nightmares, Night Terrors and plain old bad dreams…
By 
dad2twins on May 12, 2008 in All is not right with the world, Did I ask for your advice?, Farty Pants Twins, Featured, Huh? You must be kidding?, Random thoughts..., Warnings, What was I thinking?
We are going through a spell. Not the Witchy kind, though it might seem appropriate since we are talking about nightmares. Both the girls are waking up in the middle of the night and telling us they are having bad dreams. To be fair, they are also having good dreams. I know, because when I lay down next to them and they fall back asleep, they sometimes giggle too.
My question for you, have your kids gone through this? At what age? What was your solution? We have thought it might be related to all of the action going on around here. We have my Mother in Law in town from Germany for a few weeks and I have just recently been back home after spending weekdays away for the better part of two months. Then there was their birthday party last weekend and Lake Tahoe this past weekend. We have a lot going on.
For some reason they just started up though. The nightmares that is. It has only been the past couple of nights that the girls have awoken screaming or crying for Mommy or Daddy. When we go in to check on them, they are in a half groggy state and mumbling something about something as only toddlers can mumble. We have never been able to figure out the story and in the morning they don’t remember a thing. With the exception of this, they remember if we did NOT stay and sleep in bed with them. Now this is not a habit I want to start getting into.
Our sleep quality around here is in pretty poor shape as it is. We have never been good sleepers and certainly not deep sleepers. I joke that I wake up when a mosquito farts two blocks away. You can never sneak up on me. Unless I am medically put to sleep. Can I get a shout out for Ambian!
Anywho, I was just wondering what you might provide as a solution for this little hick-up in the household. A little magic for the girls. Let me know and I will reciprocate if your solution works. Either that or I send the girls to your house for a few nights so we can get some sleep around here.
| 2.9 |
If it’s sleep mom and dad need, I suggest Ambien. For the girls, I dunno. We have not encountered bad dreams yet as far as I know, but I will be interested to see what people say helps as I expect it to happen eventually.
Hannah and Jacob went through this around the girls’ age and even now have the occasional nightmare where they wake up screaming and crying. Bridget is just now starting to scream out in the middle of the night, which is horribly frightening considering she shares my bed! I believe it is completely normal and can be attributed to the stress of change. I think you hit the nail on the head with your assessment in that your family has been a little topsy turvy lately. I don’t know what your bedtime routine is with the girls, but I would suggest making their environment as calm as possible right before bedtime. Back rubs, soft music, night light, story, talk about the “good” dreams they will have. This all works for us. Eventually, it will pass . . .
I just have to laugh at the thought of you being medically ‘put to sleep’.
maybe I’m too morbid for my own good.
So, as twins, do they share dreams too? I find it fascinating that they both are experiencing nightmares at the same time. I’m a twin, but I don’t remember sharing dreams with my brother. But that may be because we were fraternal.
As I recall, all 4 of our kids went through the nightmare phase at just about the same time your twins are- 2 1/2 to 3 years of age. I believe our daughter had it the worst, though. At our wit’s end, we tried removing certain foods from her diet one at a time. I argued to cut out all food and then reintroduce things one at a time, but my wife won out, so we just withdrew one food group at a time. Took a while, but we finally made the connection to milk products.
We were able to fine-tune her diet so that she could have milk only until about 5:00pm. Nothing at all any later. I guess by bedtime all the nightmare nasties were digested.
I don’t know if our experience is typical but it is sure worth a look.
Great blog, BTW.
Double Blessings!
Wow - Kevin may have hit it on the head with the milk thing… especially since YOU are their father. I’d opt for Tylenol PM - just one helps me sleep GREAT. Plus, their nightmares aren’t so intrusive when you take Tylenol PM! LOL! Good luck with them. I’d try the no milk after 5pm thing. ;o)