if you find your child suddenly behaving in a disoriented manner losing focus for a few minutes and then feeling tired after that dont brush it off lightly it could be a mild epileptic attack also known as absence seizuresabsence seizures which last for a few seconds affect mainly children and can progress to general epileptic seizureswhen renu noticed her 12yearold son begin at times to suddenly look distracted and then stare uncomprehendingly at his surroundings she thought it was one of his pranksher son aditya had a learning and behavioural disability and had also been detected with asthma and she did not dream it could be a neurological problembut the minor absence seizures continued especially when aditya would return home from schoolwe all thought aditya was going blank because he was tired after his day in school once i did think of consulting a doctor but as he would be fine after a twohour nap i let it be said renu a housewifeafter about a month the child got an epileptic attack which left his parents shocked as they did not know the reason behind his sudden moaning and shaking while in sleepwhen they approached their paediatrician he recognised the signs immediately and recommended an eeg electroencephalography a test which records the brains electrical activity the test did not show up anything much to the parents reliefa second epileptic attack took place within a fortnight and this time there was no mistaking the rolling upwards of the eyes and shaking of the bodyaditya was unaware of what was going on during his attack when he awoke he was aware of a numbing headache and feeling dull and very tiredaccording to sisir paul senior consultant institute of paediatrics at max super speciality hospital saket delhi epilepsy among children is quite common and he gets around twothree new cases every month in his private clinic in chittaranjan parkhe explained that an epileptic attack was different from a seizure disorder which could be due to tapeworm eggs getting lodged in the brain also known as neurocysticercosisin a true epilepsy there is no focus in the case of tape worm eggs it shows up in the mri scan or ct scan they are not true epilepsy paul told iansother reasons to trigger epilepsy could also be due to a brain tumour or scarring in the brain from a head injury he saidaccording to rajashekar reddi senior consultant neurology at the max institute of neuro sciences at saket adequate sleep for an epilepsy patient is a must sleep deprivation can act as a potential trigger for an epilepsy attack and some common antibiotics can also trigger epilepsyhowever there are very good medicines to treat epilepsy nowadaysreddi who gets about 15 new cases every month said that the medication should not be stopped arbitrarily by the patientappropriate dosage of medication and for adequate or sufficient duration should be administered and when a patient has not had an event epilepsy attack for around three years then