Night Terrors Make Sleeping Kids Scream

Oct. 30 -- A vibrant, happy kid by day, 8-year-old Cody Gross is often haunted late at night.

Several times a week, Cody experiences what is called a night terror. While still asleep, he sits up, and sometimes runs around, screaming fearfully.

His parents have been wrestling with his frightening sleep disorder for the last four years.

"He usually wakes up screaming," Cindy Gross said. "He'll come running down the hallway."

His father has attempted to wake him up.

"I'll grab him and hold him, and sometimes he feels that I'm part of the attack on him, and he's struggled and kicked to get away from me," Bob Gross said.

Using a night-scope camera, Good Morning America visited the Grosses' home in Wayne, N.J., to monitor Cody's sleep for 18 days. The tapes show the boy abruptly sitting up in bed, eyes wide open, breathing rapidly, screaming or mumbling and clearly distressed. But the next day, he remembers nothing.

He does understand what a night terror is.

"It's when you get scared," Cody said. "Night terrors is when you walk around the whole entire house" without knowing it.

More Than Just Nightmares

Night terrors are a type of sleep disorder that usually affect children between the ages of 3 and 8. Dr. Tracy Carbone, director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders and Apnea Center at the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J., has treated Cody for the past four months.

"Night terrors are the most dramatic of all arousal disorders in children," Carbone said. "In medieval times, people thought that the devil was actually sitting on the chest of the person experiencing the terror."

Doctors do not know why children have them.

"Many parents fear that there may be some underlying psychopathology behind the terror, but we know in general this is absolutely not the case," Carbone said.

There is, however, a large genetic component to the disorder.