Sleepwalking/ talking

[sagewinna]

My 13 year old has been a sleepwalker pretty much his whole life. Sometimes he goes a while with only shouting at night, sometimes he is up several times a night, disoriented and wandering until we guide him back to bed or to the bathroom. We have his bookcase bolted to the wall (after he tried to get on the top of it one night), and he is in a low bed now, after hurting his arm on the way off of his bunkbed (he didn't wake up until my husband went in to see what happened!). :

He never remembers what he says or does.


Sometimes I worry that he will never grow out of this, or that he'll end up hurt. Anyone else have a sleepwalker/talker? How do you handle it?

[nextcommercial]

My brother was and is a sleepwalker/talker.

It provided my cousins and I hours of amusement when we were young. We could get him to confess to nearly anything if we talked to him while he was sleeping.

The downside... He peed in my clothes hamper an numerous occasions. He left the house in his underwear when he was 16. Funny... but, dangerous.

My daughter sleepwalks still, and she has since she was tiny. I don't hold out much hope of her outgrowing it. We just keep our doors well locked incase of an underwear wandering incident.

*side note* about six years ago, I woke up to the sound of a child crying outside my front door. In a panic, I ran downstairs thinking it was my daughter. when i opened the door it was a neighbor girl completely naked, trying to get in our house. (we had the same floor plan and she was confused) But, it was also the middle of winter at about 3:00 a.m.

She was ice cold, and I couldn't wake her. I thought something awful had happened. But, she had just been sleepwalking. Poor kid!

[sagewinna]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Sometimes it's frightening to hear him shouting in the middle of the night! You'd think I'd be used to it by now...