Anyone dealt with these? (Either had them or had a child/dependent/family member experience them?)
My son (age 5) has been having them rather frequently lately. He's had them on and off for about the last year, but has one every few nights as of the last 2-3 weeks.
He wakes up screaming and yelling for me, but doesn't seem to notice that I'm there. Just now I went into his room in response to one, and he bolted out toward the back door yelling "DADA!" even after I picked him up and looked him in the eye to ask what was wrong.
It's a bit freaky--he usually claws at his face, stomach and/or mouth, and he'll respond to some questions but not others. He seems to be trying to come up with an answer to questions like "what's wrong?" but his responses trail off and/or are interrupted by more screaming before he can finish them.
However, this time I tried a different question--"are you scared?"--and he responded "yes." Then I asked what he was afraid of and he said "the water." However, when I asked "what water?" he didn't or couldn't articulate a response. He then wandered back to bed and fell back asleep.
Several other times, he's had a tendency to cover his ears with his hands, and scream as if in pain when I say anything, even at a very low volume. (Like the sound is painfully loud, even if I'm basically whispering.)
I'm not overly familiar with the phenomenon--it's not something that's ever happened to me. I gather that it's an intermediate sleeping/waking state, given how he's clearly only partially conscious. (Aware of some parts of his environment but not others.) Sometimes I try to remove any clothing he's wearing in case something actually is irritating his skin, but this doesn't seem to do anything.
Yes, I've googled it, but thought I'd throw it out as a discussion topic. Is this likely to be more physiological or psychological in origin? He has been through quite a bit of shit involving his mother (a long story I've told elsewhere on the forums before), which I imagine could be quite traumatic for a very young child. Then again, he's always been a very restless sleeper--rolls around all over his bed, usually ending up in a completely different position from where he fell asleep by the time he wakes up in the mornings. I get the impression from my reading on it that this isn't all that uncommon a thing for young children to experience--I've been putting him to bed earlier, since the articles mention not getting enough sleep as a possible cause.
Anybody know of any good ways to interrupt one or calm someone who is having one? I'm pretty stymied there--so far nothing seems to have any effect, so I just have to hold him or follow him around until it dissipates and he goes back to sleep on his own.
I'm not overly worried, but it is disconcerting. I'm kind of hypervigilant about looking for signs of mental illness, given the environmental factors of witnessing his mother's behavior early in life along with whatever genetic factors might be present. (She seems to have developed some form of psychosis, although I don't know anything more than that because she refuses to be assessed or treated by a psychiatrist--all I know is it's the "I'm fine, or I would be if all these doctors would stop trying to kill me" sort of psychosis, among other symptoms.)
I've brought a child psychologist to the house to speak with him. She's supposed to get back to me tomorrow with thoughts on her first session with him. (He's been having some temper/aggression issues on and off, too--maybe normal kid stuff, but sometimes intense enough to concern me because his mother had adult versions of something similar rather often in the last year or so that we lived together.)
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