For the last three nights, the boy had been having night terrors. Initially, I thought he was just having a bad dream but his reaction really alarmed me as it was the first time I'd witnessed it. The first night, I was awoken by his loud scream and when I dashed into his room, he was trashing around the bed, kicking his legs about and rolling about non-stop. He had a look of intense fear on his face and his tongue was lolling about. I really panicked when I saw him behaving like that and when my reassurance and hugs couldn't calm him down at all, I really felt so helpless. It was only after about 20 minutes or so that he finally calmed down and fell asleep. The day after, he had totally no memory of what had happened. I only realised that he was suffering from this sleep terror disorder after I googled about it when it happened the second night in a row.

Night terrors are a common sleep problem among children. By some estimates, about 15% of younger children have occasional night terrors.Although most common in children between the ages of 2 and 6 years,they can occur at almost any age.

Although usually considered to be normal or benign, they are often very scary and distressing to parents who often overreact, especially during a child's first night terror.

Symptoms
When you hear how most experts describe night terrors, it is easy to see why parents find them distressing. Children who have night terrors are usually described as 'bolting upright' with their eyes wide open,with a look of fear and panic, and letting out a 'blood curdlingscream'. These kids will usually also be sweating, breathing fast andhave a rapid heart rate (autonomic signs). And although it will seem like they are awake, during a night terror, children will appearconfused, will not be consolable and won't recognize you.Typical night terrors last about 5 to 30 minutes and afterwards,children usually return to a regular sleep. If you are able to wake your child up during a night terror, he is likely to become scared and agitated, mostly because of your own reaction to the night terror,especially if you were shaking or yelling at him to wake up. Instead oftrying to wake up a child having a night terror, it is usually betterto just make sure he is safe, comfort him if you can, and help him return to sleep once it is over.
Info from here : http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/sleep/a/night_terrors.htm

Realised that I'd made the mistake of trying to wake him up which may have agitated him more. Also, I'd thought initially that he was having kind of seizure because he was convulsing quite badly during the episodes but based on the info on the net, it does seem like night terrors do appear similar to epileptic seizures. Am somewhat relieved after reading all this info because I was really quite affected after seeing him like that for 3 nights in a row. The cause of this could be due to fatigue, stress or illness...my guess is that he'd been really on the 'high' after all the CNY visiting and various activities I'd involved him in.. Made a conscious effort to wind him down when I put him into bed earlier on..Hopefully, there won't be any occurrence tonight.

Any of you or your kids suffered from this before?

He's started his golf lesson in ACSJ already..I'm also retaking golf lessons again so that hopefully, we can play together in the future. Went to the Executive Golf Course at Mandai on Sunday to swing at the balls abit and let him have a go at it. He may look as if he knows what he's doing but he was playing golf hockey most of the time :)