I am worried, please help. My 3 yr old has fitful rages while asleep and won't wake up

[xqwis8]

I have a 3yr old daughter she goes to sleep fine, and sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and wimpers. I can usually just go pat her and tell her go back to night night and she will be fine, but there have been 4 episodes in the past 3-4 months where she has started crying in the middle of the night and then she goes into these fitful rages where she bangs her own legs and ankles on the sides of her bed and If I try to comfort her she just kicks and hits me. She cries (LOUD WAILING, like I am in pain cries) the whole time she is doing this.  If you try to do to comfort her, she screams NO, I don't want (whatever it is) It takes me about 15- 30minutes to wake her up and finally get her to stop screaming and crying every time. I can yell her name at the top of my lungs, put a hot or cold rag on her, sing, or talk to her, it does not matter she will not wake up.
First off what do I do to wake her up? Secondly Is this normal behavior for a 3yr old.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Such night terrors are not uncommon at this age and, though they are distressing to a parent, they atually do not usually represent anything to worry about. The best thing is not to wake the child up; just soothe her through it and she will fall back to sleep and never recall that anything occurred. Such confusional arousals can be exacerbated by anxiety or stress, but generally they do not require professional intervention or treatment of any sort. The episodes occur during a cycle of sleep called non-REM sleep and represent a sort of immature sleep cycle development which corrects itself over time.