Night terrors and what to tell your co-parent

Module 01 · Sleep & bedtime · Article 12 · 4–7, 8–12

Eleven thirty at night. You hear screaming. You're already running by the time you're awake. Your six-year-old is sitting up in bed, eyes open, screaming. He doesn't see you. He doesn't hear you. You try to hold him and he pushes you away and screams louder. After maybe four minutes that feel like an hour, he goes quiet, lies back down, and sleeps.

In the morning he doesn't remember any of it.

What you've just witnessed is most likely a night terror. This article covers what they are, what to do in the moment, what they have to do with two-home life, and how to handle the conversation with your co-parent so the next one is better managed and the one after that less likely to happen at all.

What night terrors actually are

A night terror is not a nightmare. The two get confused, but they're different events.

A nightmare happens in REM sleep, in the second half of the night, often closer to morning. The child wakes from it. They remember it. They can describe it. They can be comforted. They may be frightened to go back to sleep.

A night terror happens in deep non-REM sleep, in the first third of the night, usually 60 to 120 minutes after the child fell asleep. The child appears awake but isn't. Their eyes may be open. They may sit up, scream, kick, sweat, breathe rapidly, and look terrified. They cannot be comforted because they cannot process that you're there. After 5 to 15 minutes (occasionally longer), the episode ends and the child drops back into deep sleep. In the morning they have no memory of it.

This is a parasomnia, a partial-arousal disorder. The brain has gotten stuck halfway between deep sleep and waking. The child's body is reacting as if to a threat that exists only in their stalled wake-up. They aren't in pain. They aren't dreaming. They aren't conscious in any meaningful sense.

Night terrors typically appear between ages 3 and 12, peak around 4 to 7, and most children grow out of them by puberty. They often run in families. A meaningful minority of children have at least one night terror at some point. A smaller percentage have them recurrently.

This is the most important thing to know: night terrors look much, much worse than they are. The child is not suffering in the way they appear to be suffering. They're not aware. They're not afraid in any way they'll remember. The trauma in the room belongs entirely to the parent watching.

What to do during one

The instinct is to wake the child, hold them, comfort them. All three of these typically make a night terror worse.

The protocol:

Don't try to wake them. Waking a child mid-night-terror often extends the episode and produces real fear (because they wake confused into a parent's panic). Let it run.
Keep them safe. If they're moving, sit on the bed near them. Move sharp objects out of the way. Block them from leaving the bed if they're at risk of falling. Don't restrain them unless safety requires it.
Don't try to talk them down. Soothing words don't reach them. They're not processing language. Speaking calmly to yourself is fine. Speaking to them is futile and may agitate them.
Wait. Most episodes end on their own within 15 minutes. Once the child quiets, they're back in deep sleep. Don't pick them up. Don't move them. Don't disturb them.
Don't fuss after. Don't smooth the covers. Don't take their temperature. Leave them to sleep.

Your job during a night terror is to be a steady presence in the room while the child's nervous system reboots itself. That's all.

The morning after

In the morning, don't bring it up. The child has no memory of the event. Naming it for them creates a memory of something that frightened you, not them. They'll absorb your fear, not the experience itself.

If the child mentions feeling tired, or says they slept badly, or asks why they're sweaty, give a neutral answer. You had a restless night. You're fine now. Don't elaborate.

What you should do that morning, privately, is note the episode. Time it started. How long it lasted. What the day before looked like (was sleep short, was the schedule disrupted, was there a fever coming on, was there a transition). This data matters for what comes next.

Why two-home life can make night terrors more frequent

Night terrors are reliably triggered by a small number of things. The big ones:

Sleep deprivation. A tired body is more likely to have a partial-arousal event.
Irregular sleep schedule. Bedtime that varies night to night disrupts the deep-sleep architecture where night terrors live.
A new sleeping environment. First nights in an unfamiliar bed shift sleep stages.
Stress, including unprocessed emotional stress the child can't yet name.
Fever, illness, certain medications, and sleep apnea.

Two-home life touches several of these.

If bedtimes differ between homes (Sleep 06), the child's sleep schedule is technically irregular. If transitions involve fatigue (long drives, late handovers, a hard handover-eve, Sleep 08), the child arrives at bedtime more dysregulated. If the child has not been at one of the homes for a stretch, that home is functionally a new sleeping environment for the first night back. If unprocessed feelings are accumulating around handovers, that's stress without a name.

This is not a reason to stop having two homes. Most children in two-home arrangements never have a night terror. Some children would have had them in any arrangement. But if your child is having recurrent night terrors, the two-home structure is one of the variables to look at, alongside all the others.

What to tell your co-parent

You should tell them. Both homes need to know, for three reasons.

First, the receiving parent needs the protocol. If they don't know what a night terror looks like, the first time they encounter one in their home they may try to wake the child, may panic, may take the child to A&E. Knowing what's happening prevents this.

Second, you both need to track patterns together. If episodes correlate with late bedtimes, with handover nights, with school stress, you'll only see the pattern across two homes if you share data.

Third, the child shouldn't feel different between homes about something they don't remember anyway. If one home treats night terrors as a known, calm thing and the other treats them as a crisis, the child will pick up the second home's distress in other ways.

How to have the conversation:

Tell them factually what happened. Time. Duration. What you did. The child has no memory.
Send them a paragraph about what night terrors are. The clinical distinction from nightmares matters and is non-obvious.
Agree the protocol you'll both use. Don't wake. Keep safe. Wait it out. Don't fuss after.
Agree to share episode notes when they happen at either home. A simple log, factual.
Discuss whether anything in the past 24 hours might have been a trigger. Late bedtime, missed nap, fever, hard day at school. Don't blame each other for the triggers. Just track them.

A line that helps: He had a night terror last night around 11:30. Lasted about four minutes. He's fine. Doesn't remember it. I wanted to share so you have the picture if it happens at yours. Here's what I read about what to do if it does.

What not to do: don't withhold the information because you're worried about how the receiving parent will react. Don't frame it as evidence of something wrong with the child or with one of the homes. Don't catastrophise.

What not to put on the child

Two things to actively not do.

Don't tell the child they had a night terror. They don't remember it. Telling them creates an image of themselves as someone who screams in the night, which can become its own anxiety, which can in turn raise the chance of further episodes. The episode happens to a part of their brain they don't have access to. They don't need to know about it.

Don't ask the child what frightened them. They weren't frightened of anything. The brain was stuck. There's no content. If you press a child for an explanation, they'll often provide one (children are obliging that way), and the made-up explanation can become a real fear they then carry into subsequent nights.

If a sibling or a grandparent saw the episode and wants to talk to the child about it, intervene. The conversation is for adults, not for the child.

When to talk to a doctor

Most night terrors don't need medical input. A few signs that say see a paediatrician.

Multiple episodes a week, sustained over more than a month
Episodes lasting longer than 30 minutes
Episodes continuing past puberty
Daytime sleepiness suggesting an underlying sleep disorder (sleep apnea is a known trigger)
The child injuring themselves or trying to leave the house mid-episode
Co-occurring with snoring, choking, or pauses in breathing during sleep
Co-occurring with new daytime symptoms (severe anxiety, behaviour change, regression)

A paediatrician can rule out underlying medical causes. If sleep apnea is suspected, a sleep study may be needed. For most children, no intervention is required and the episodes resolve on their own.

Closing

The first night terror is the worst. Not for the child. For the parent.

You watched something that looked like terror, you couldn't reach the child through it, and then they slept. In the morning they didn't remember. You did. The trauma lives with you.

The work now is steady. Hold the protocol. Tell your co-parent so the protocol holds at both homes. Track patterns. Reduce known triggers where you can (especially sleep schedule consistency, Sleep 03). Don't make the child carry it.

The next one will be easier. The one after that easier still. And in most families, after a stretch of months or a year or two, they stop coming.

You sleep through the next eleven thirty.