What is the difference between night terrors and nightmares?
Nightmares (especially very traumatic ones) are sometimes confused with night terrors. While they are in fact very similar, they do have distinct differences. Nightmares occur during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep (also known as dream sleep) which is more common towards the later part of the night or early hours of the morning. This differs from night terrors which occur during slow wave sleep or deep sleep. This deep sleep state tends to take place about 90 minutes into sleep and so night terrors generally occur in the early hours of the night. Another difference is that a child having a nightmare will often wake up and have a memory of the bad dream.
