Alaska Sleep Education Center

Night Terrors Vs Nightmares: How to Deal with Your Terrified Child

Posted by Jennifer Hines on Mar 31, 2019 1:00:00 PM

When it comes to parenting, there are few things as terrifying and heartbreaking as witnessing your child wake up screaming in fear in the middle of the night. What often makes things worse is that many parents are unsure of how they can help coax their child during this time. This uncertainty stems from being unaware of the difference between nightmares and night terrors as the two types of abrupt awakenings should be managed differently.

Here we hope to help dispel the confusion between the differences of night terrors vs nightmares and what you can do for your child in either event.

Topics: night terrors, nightmares, Pediatrics

Six Types of Parasomnia

Posted by Jennifer Hines on Nov 1, 2018 9:36:00 AM

Parasomnias are a group of sleep disorders in which something goes awry with a person’s sleep cycle.

If you break down the word “parasomnia,” you get “para,” which can mean abnormal or incorrect, “somnia,” which, of course, means sleep. Indeed, something is not normal or correct with the sleep of a parsomnia sufferer.

Parasomnias are oftened referred by those in the sleep medicine field as those things that go "Bump in the Night" since many are associated with some type of movement during sleep.

Outside of sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, and periodic limb movement disorder, many disruptive sleep disorders can be considered a parasomnia. And most of them can lead to sleep deprivation—after all, even if you get the ideal 7-9 hours of sleep, the quality of those hours can be diminished if your sleep cycle is interrupted. Here are six common parasomnias that afflict sleepers:

Topics: sleep apnea, sleep disorders, parasomnia, night terrors, nightmares