thank you everyone for responding. i'm hoping it will be helpful to my friend to read the various responses. i know if i were in her shoes i'd have to take a deep breath and drum up strength and courage to start testing not knowing what the outcome will be. please if you have some extra's in you, send her some vibes.

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. - Chinese Proverb

My sister and I both get this sort of sleep paralysis thing. Your body keeps you from moving when you sleep, and if you wake up while this is still going on, it can result in shaking, as well as fear because you are still seeing visions in the dreams. I had two of these last week. It's terrifying, and when it happens, it's usually occurs with a lucid dream, where I wake up in reality, but it's not reality, and I wake up again in reality, and it's not, etc...so that when I finally wake up, I think that I am still "stuck" in the dream.

Ways to keep this sort of thing from happening -- not eat close to bedtime. Go to sleep as early as possible, so, for a kid that age, getting him to bed between 6 and 7 would be ideal. Reduce the sugar in his diet, if there is any, and if he's eating a lot of sour foods (citrus, vinegar, etc...) reduce that.

I tend to keep a good bedtime, but the stress from school/parenting certainly contributes to mine, and I often eat dinner close to bedtime which is very related to this stuff happening. In Chinese medicine, the liver stores one of the spirits (the hun) which is what wanders at night and is responsible for dreaming. When this sort of thing happens, it's because the liver becoming stagnated, so the best way to clear that up during the springtime is to offer healthy "sweet" food (like berries, meat, brown rice, whole grain bread, oatmeal, etc...) and eat sauteed sprouts and other young green vegetables.

"Fundamentally the markswoman aims at herself"DT Suzuki

needs to see another doc.
I am a sleep walker and have done some pretty wild stuff in my life. Could be seizures though as well.

My brother used to have 'waking dreams' when he was little and I remember it really freaking me out. He could see me and would talk to me but would also see things around me telling me to look out and such. I think she should see a few dr's until she is satisfied with a diagnosis.

I don't think it's night terrors. My older one has/had night terrors - so did my brother, and neither of them would respond when you tried to talk to them. It was like they were still asleep, and trapped in a terrible dream.

I'm going to have to second the vote for seizures on this one. I'd suggest she get another opinion from another doc.

"Too weird to live. Too rare to die." - Hunter S. Thompson

Well, I have a seizure disorder. It was discovered when I was pregnant with Baby E. One night, I blacked out, and I awoke to the sounds of people calling my name. Apparently, I shook and convulsed during this episode. This episode was later diagnosed as a TIA that manifested itself as a stroke.

Here's some more commonly known seizures:

The Grand Mal Seizure : This is the most common form of seizure in small animals. The entire body is involved in stiffness and possibly stiffness/contraction cycles (tonic/clonic action). The animal loses consciousness and may urinate or defecate.

Partial Seizures: This form of seizure originates from some specific area in the brain and thus involves the activity of a specific region of the body. Partial seizures may "generalize" to involve the whole body.

Generalized: This type of seizure is predominantly behavioral with the animal involuntarily howling, snapping, circling, etc. The abnormal behavior may be followed by a generalized seizure.

Hope it helps. I wouldn't dismiss it as night terrors either, because I got that diagnoses from my mother's doc, when it turned out I was truly having seizures. Go with your gut Mama.
"I will not allow my fears to destroy my ability to love; I will not allow my past to influence my tomorrow; I believe in the best; I will continue to be an idealist, even if it sometimes seems foolish. I will not allow fear to destroy love..."