My daughter is five years old and she has been sleep walking for a couple of months. Lately she has started going down the stairs and getting scared because she can't find anyone. Once I wake up I get her back to bed, she pretty much settles in for the rest of the night. The next day she cannot remember anything or even that she was walking around the house. We are considering a gate at the top of the stairs but I am not sure that will be enough. We also want to get locks that she cannot open because we do not want her going outside. I still remember my brother getting "lost" under a pile of clothes when we were little. It's a little scary because she starts crying and running around the house until I come to get her.
I am just wondering how others have dealt with this. Is there something we need to change that might stop it from happening all the time. I don't really know if this is something I should be contacting her doctor about. Any advice or suggestion would really be appreciated.
Maybe a gate at her bedroom door. Wouldn't want her to try to climb one at the top of the stairs in her sleep and then fall down the stairs. Gate at her door may be an obstacle enough to keep her safe in her room. I can imagine that situation would be very nerve wracking!
Hi J.,
We are dealing with a little of this here too. I do like Cheryl's idea of the gate at her door. There are alarms that you can put on the doorknob or you can just put bells or something like that as a way to wake you up.
I believe it has to do with sleep cycles, so you may want to track it to see if it happens around the same time each night. If so, you may want to wake her up before it happens to break the sleep cycle and sort of "restart" the process.
With my son, his sleep walking is combined with night terrors and it happens between 12 & 1. We wake him up around 11 before we go to bed and that has seemed to help.
Good Luck!
B.
I, myself was a sleepwalker as a child. We lived on the sixth story of an apartment building and I woke one night, hanging out of the window!
My mom would lay a plastic table cloth beneath my bed and put a wet towel on top of it. As soon as I put my feet out of bed onto the cold towel it would wake me up.
It wasn't a solution to stop the sleep walking all together but it did stop me from hurting myself if I did take a walk.
My son used to do this too. We put a gate at the top of the stairs. I agree with the alarm on the door so that you get woken up if she tries to go outside. One thing I noticed with my son was he had to go to the bathroom every single time. You would ask him and he would say no but I would say let's try anyway. He would go like crazy!! It seemed to be only when he was really really tired and had to go to the bathroom that this would happen.
I too have been dealing with this. My son is a about to turn 7 and we have had this going on intermittently for about a year and a half. For him it has gotten less frequent and longer in between. He has never been on a "cycle" as mentioned above as far as time of night, so the waking up trick didn't work for us. What I have noticed is that his sleep walking seems to occur during his growth spurts (physical or developmental - like going into 1st grade, learnin to read, learned to ride a four wheeler) his very first pediatrian told me that when he was little and was having night terrors, he was processing change in his sleep. The pattern for him now is sleep walking. We leaned a baby gate up against his door so that if he came out the baby gate would crash down and we would hear it. Eventually that got too dangerous for Mom and Dad - both of us tripped over it trying to get to him. We put magnetic alarms on the doors so he can't get out of the house and now we just get up and lead him back to his room when we hear him. Usually we hear him on the stairs. I was concerned he would fall, but have been reassured that as long as you don't startle them while they are going up or down the stairs, they can navigate them safely. We usually reach him just as he reaches the bottom of the stairs and guide him right back up, take him to the bathroom and return him to bed. I hope this helps!
