Confusional Arousal

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A confusional arousal begins with the child moaning and moving about. It progresses quickly to the child crying out and thrashing wildly. The eyes may be open or closed, and perspiration is common. The child will look confused, upset, or even "possessed" (a description volunteered by many parents). Even if the child does call out her parents' names, she will not recognize them. She will appear to look right through them, unable to see them. Parental attempts to comfort the child by holding or cuddling tend to prolong the situation. Typically, a confusional arousal will last for about ten minutes, although it may be as short as one minute, and it is not unusual for the episode to last for a seemingly eternal forty minutes. I have sat with my children through confusional arousals, and know how powerfully these episodes tug at a parent's heart. Just understanding what they are (normal childhood sleep phenomena that children outgrow -- not a sign of maladjustment or the result of bad parenting) helps tremendously.

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Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-09-30 05:50.

Confusional arousal

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I am very impressed with your web site. We have a 4 year old little girl. She has been waking up after she has been asleep for about an hour to an hour and a half. She starts crying and by the time we get to her she is staggering out of her bed. We pick her up and tell her everything is ok, she desperately wants down, and after we put her down she starts running in circles stomping her feet and shaking her hands. We get down to her level and talk to her and when she looks at us her eyes are dilated and she won't look at us. We have tried everything we can think of. The only thing that seems to help is taking her to the bathroom and sitting her on the toilet. She potties and we take her back to bed. She seems to fall asleep fast. The longest episode we have seen has been 30 min, and the shortest we have seen has been 10 min. We have a regular bedtime schedule due to school. She is getting around 11 hours of sleep every night. So we don't feel that she is sleep deprived. I was ready to take her to the doctor but was afraid of all the tests they would have to do, so I decided to research at home first. I was comforted by your website and to know that this is normal and she will out grow it. This has been very scary for us as parents, the not know what to do and not being able to comfort her is very hard, but we will get through this stage with her. Again, thank you for all the information.