IS YOUR CHILD A SLEEPWALKER?

Well don’t worry – your somnambulating little cherub is not alone!

Sleepwalking – which is thought to be hereditary - is fairly common in children between the ages of 5-12 – and there’s absolutely no evidence that it’s a sign of something being emotionally or psychologically wrong.

The good news is that as most children tend to sleepwalk within an hour or two of falling asleep (during stages 3 or 4 of their first sleep cycle), it’s more than likely that you’ll still be up and about and on hand to guide them back to bed.

You should, however, take precautions so that your sleepwalking child is less likely to come to harm. Even though their eyes are open, they don’t see the same way they do when they’re awake and they often think they’re in different rooms in the house or different places altogether. 

Top tips to keep your sleepwalker out of harms way:

• Try not to wake them up as this might be scary – gently guide him or her back to bed (sleepwalking occurs during deep sleep anyway, so you might struggle to wake them up at all)
• Lock doors and windows so they cannot wander out into the night.
• Think twice before installing a bunk bed
• Remove sharp or breakable thing from around their bed and keep dangerous objects out of reach
• Close the safety gate at the top of the stairs.

Unless the episodes are very regular, cause your child to be sleepy during the day, or your child is engaging in dangerous sleepwalking behaviours, there’s usually no need to “treat” sleepwalking. But if the sleepwalking is frequent, causing problems, or your child hasn’t outgrown it by the early teens, it’s probably worth talking to your doctor.

Sleep tight. 

Waking up in the middle of the night?

Many of us wake up intermittently in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and endure a “witching hour” of wakefulness.

The most likely causes of this are changes in your environment, stress or age.

Going way back into our evolutionary pasts, we could only sleep well if we felt safe and secure. And the same applies today - anything that threatens our feelings of safety and security will disturb our sleep.

Actually, we all wake very briefly at the end of each of our sleep cycles, but usually are blissfully unaware. It’s just a case of rolling over and drifting back to sleep most of the time. But if something is worrying you or your attention is seized by something going on in the environment around you, you will become more awake at that point.

Changes to the nervous system and hormones as we get older also mean that as we progress through adulthood, our sleep becomes progressively lighter and more fragmented. Which means we wake up more and find it harder to get back to sleep. Bummer.

Top tip for a great night’s sleep: Try to make your bedroom feel isolated, comfortable, safe and secure. (And remember to lock the back door / turn the oven off etc. etc.)