@Lydia Bartlett Hi Lydia - thank you so much for your helpful response from your own and a parental perspective. I think one of the difficulties the parents have is that the child is adopted and therefore they are linking the night terrors with previous childhood trauma, and so find it incredibly difficult to hear what he is communicating during his night terrors. I think it is reassuring to hear that you don't remember them, and you raised a really important point around how important it is for the parents to find their own supports and stay grounded. It's making me think that a sensory spider and ladder might be helpful for parents to support their own regulation and sleep. The child also has a TET-3 diagnosis, and have been told that sleep difficulties and night terrors are often associated with this condition, so I think that this could be quite a long term challenge within the family. They are seeing a geneticist soon to try to access more support around sleep.

Thank you @Lydia Bartlett and @Katie Crowfoot for you very thoughtful responses and sorry for my very slow response, as I only just saw them in my gmail account :-)

One I made with a little boy last year who loved 'How to train your dragon'.