My three year old had a very high fever yesterday and last night and woke up screaming. Of course I went into her room and she was shaking, I asked what was wrong and I couldn't even understand what she was talking about. So I decided to bring her into bed with me, this was around midnight. She would not go back to sleep right away. Finally we both drifted off and she wakes up again screaming and shaking. This time she tells me that something is trying to eat her. She is so scared she won't let herself fall back asleep. Since she had a fever I let her lay down in my room for her nap and watch Baby Einstein dvd's. So now at bedtime she starts crying when I said it was time for bed. She became very fearful and asked if she could sleep with her sister. I said okay and told her if she had bad dreams again to call out for the magic carpet from the Aladin story (she has never seen the movie) and have it bring her where ever she wants to go, she chose Target. Is there any other way to deal with this? She has never had a problem with going to bed and I have no idea where this fear of being eaten has come from. How have the rest of you dealt with this? Please tell me it will pass quickly.
Thanks for the support. Yes I did speak to the doctor yesterday and I mentioned the nightmares, she didn't really think much of it. And I am 99.9 % positive there weren't any seizures, at least not when she was with me. My instinct is that is was a hallucination. She fully remembered the dream and later told me it was a spider trying to eat her. My daughter was coherent and able to talk to me, even though I couldn't understand her b/c she was so upset. No nightmares last night, so hopefully it was a one time thing. And to reply to the poster about believing in God, yes we do, but when my daughter was so terrified even having me next to her she wouldn't sleep. I wanted her to have some control over her dreams so I suggested the magic carpet to get her away from what ever was trying to eat her. I always reinforce God's presence & love, but when you are only three and terrified its hard to remember that. Thanks for responses!
Tricia, it sounds like to me that it is a little bit more then just a bad dream. Possibly night terrors. I'm no psychologist, but currently in psychology class and learned about these events. The best thing to do is call your doctor and discuss the situations. He can better direct you in care for her. I hope that she will be able to sleep soon!
Sorry Tricia, I don't have any advice as to how to handle it but I think I know where the 'eat her' thing came from. When children have very high temperatures they can have hallucinations and if the temp is high enough they can have seizures so please take her to the doctor. Good luck!!
My son used to have really bad nightmares, too. We used to go into his room and tell him that he accidently left his pillow on the "bad dream" side. We'd flip it over and he went back to sleep. Pretty soon he would do it on his own. Good luck!
I see that you've already received some responses but I just went through the same thing with my 3 year old son last week and I thought I'd add my 2 cents worth. We had the same scenario, he woke up screaming in the middle of the night, was trembling and had a bad dream. His temperature was just under 105. He was talking jibberish and I couldn't understand much of what he was saying. I knew his temp needed to come down quickly so I gave him Motrin and instead of dumping him into an ice cold bath (which hurts extremely bad) I put him in a warm bath and ran the cold water so he didn't even notice that the water was slowly getting colder. It took about 20 minutes in the middle of the night but it was better than listening to him scream in a cold bath! I was hoping you or someone else might find this useful in the future. I'm glad to hear that your daughter is doing better and I hope the bad dream was because of the fever not night terrors!
One of my sons had a high fever once and then started hallucinating. We put cool wash cloths on him to cool him down immediately and gave him tylenol, then called the doctor in the middle of the night. The doctor was fine for us to keep him at home as long as the tylenol brought his fever down. My other son had febrile seizures (fever related seizures) when he was young so of course we were very concerned. Also, not so sure about the Magic Carpet Ride idea. Don't know if you believe in God but I always tell my children that God is watching over them and then say a prayer. Through these hard times with our children, I have to believe that there is someone upstairs seeing us through, I don't think we're meant to do it own our own.
Dream Analysis, Understanding your Daughter's Nightmare
I'm a total dream buff because I've had nightmares since I was born and they haven't gone away, and in college I had night terrors from which I'd awaken with a bloody lip from biting my lips in my sleep!
I've learned ways to calm myself from these dreams and one of the ways is learning to understand the dreams.
When you dream about a bug like a spider it means that something is "bugging you" and when something is eating you in a dream that means that something is "eating away at you" in your waking life. If it's a re-occurring dream it means that there is something in your 3-year-old's life that's eating away at her in her waking hours. If you can find out what that is and solve that problem, the nightmares about it will go away.
But if you can't, which is entirely possible since she's 3 and 3-year-olds have difficult thought processes to crack, you can try the following strategies.
1. Before going to bed, have your child recount all the best things she did that day.
2. Pray; there is something about the monotony of prayers and bible verses etc. that is therapeudic.
3. Stay with her until she is in REM sleep.
4. Check on her frequently while she sleeps and gently stroke her hair and touch her in any way you can think of that's calming.
In the morning, always ask her what she dreampt about, good or bad. If you are a journal-keeper, write down her experiences each day and her dreams, and you may find a connection and learn to understand what's going on in her head. Hope this helps!
My nephew had a nightmare about being eaten by a white dog for a solid week. It came out of nowhere (we don't even know anyone with a white dog!) and after that week, he's not had it again. During the time that he was having it, my sister or her husband would take him around his room (the whole house if necessary) and show him that there was nothing there. They told him that mommy and daddy wouldn't let a doggy come into the house, let alone get into the house and eat him. Its simple, but it worked for him. I wish you luck!
My daughter had a high fever once, and had 2 different hallucinations - while she seemed fully awake and was talking (actually screaming) to me. One was an airplane was crashing into her room, and the other was a dinosaur chasing her. Sounds like that to me. Do whatever you need to do to get her sleeping again - extra lights on, soft music playing etc, and slowly taper her back out of it over the next few days.
