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My son had night terrors starting at about 18 months until around 3 years old. They did not happen every night. They were more frequent when he was younger and by the time he turned 3 it was maybe once a month until they just stopped. He would scream and stiffen up, there was no waking him up during that time. He would either wake up on his own or just fall back asleep.

Our pediatrician said there was nothing we could do, that he would eventually outgrow it.

DD had night terrors at two. I was going to her in the dark, and she was "talking" (except she was saying the same thing over and over) so it took me three days to realize she's not awake and that instead of trying to get her to stop screaming, I should be trying to wake her up. Maybe the fact that she'd wake up every morning and announce "mommy, I didn't cry tonight!" should have tipped me off. In my defense, horrible behavior at night was so normal for her I just assumed she's pitching a fit again about being made to sleep in bed. But I still feel like an awful mom.

Turned out she had bronchitis. There weren't really any symptoms, other than this and a poor appetite. She started sleeping again two days after she went on antibiotics.

My daughter went through about a week of night terrors when she was 3, immediately following an illness. I would turn on a low light, and just sit near her to make sure she didn't hurt herself (she would thrash all over her bed). Eventually she would either lay back down, or wake up and have a drink, and go right back to sleep. She never remembered anything about them.

I think my son had them for a couple weeks when he was 14 months old, immediately following a surgery (apparently thats a thing). He would shriek and scream and just shake. We just held him in the dark until he calmed down and would lay down again.

@Sams Mom: Yes it is possible. My friends son had them from 2-3 and it was so awful and stressful. They ended up having to wake him multiple times overnight on a schedule to disrupt the night terror pattern. Then one day he grew out of it altogether.

My son has been having night terrors since 8-9 months. It took me forever to figure out what was going on because he had struggled with sleep for most of his life, so I figured it was just another wake up. It happened at the same time every night and rather than wanting to nurse and then calming right down, it was like he didn't recognize me and he would just throw his little body around while he screamed. For him, he didn't respond to my voice, or to light or touch. It had to be a really loud noise. Sometimes taking him into the bathroom and turning on the shower would snap him awake, sometimes the garage door opening, but others, nothing could quite pull him out of it and it would just take a good 45 minutes or so of screaming and crying before h'ed snap out of it on his own. It would always be the strangest thing - he'd be crying, and then all of a sudden he'd look around really confused and be his happy self.

I talked to our Ped about it, he said it's not uncommon and they usually outgrow it between 5 and 12 years of age. The best advice we received was 1) if it is happening at a consistent time every time, go in 15 minutes ahead of time and gently wake them. It re-sets their sleep so they don't get caught in that cycle (he said it's classified as a type of night time seizure activity). 2) try and figure out what causes it. Our son eventually outgrew the nearly every-night terrors, and we have identified that any time his nap-nighttime sleep schedule gets thrown off, either by daily events or an illness, he has night terrors about an hour after he falls asleep at night (he's now 19 months).

They can be tough to deal with - good luck! Just know you'r not alone.