Q.'s about sleepwalking

[HikeYosemite]

My 6 yo has suddenly started sleepwalking. Usually it is a couple/few hours after falling asleep, and she starts walking or running around the house crying. Her sister, who shares her room, says she sometimes goes in the bathroom, pulls down her pants, sits down, then gets up again without going to the bathroom. Sometimes she turns on a light. She seems awake but uncomprehending and confused. Often she needs to be directed to go back to bed, and she remembers nothing the next day.

Her older sister went through this as well, though she was at least 7 or 8 when it began. It happened almost nightly for weeks or months. Sometimes she would turn on the TV and we'd find it on in the morning. If we were awake or woke up to see her, she would look wide awake but could not tell us her name if we asked her. It is rather spooky. We are worried a bit about her safety--could she go outside? fall downstairs if she is at a sleepover? (we have no stairs)--and of course it isn't helpful to our sleep. But mostly I'm wondering if anyone has any insight into what causes this, or what it might indicate.

[savithny]

Originally Posted by HikeYosemite

We are worried a bit about her safety--could she go outside? fall downstairs if she is at a sleepover? (we have no stairs)--and of course it isn't helpful to our sleep. But mostly I'm wondering if anyone has any insight into what causes this, or what it might indicate.

My DS (nearly 8) has done this for most of his life - he had night terrors as a baby and toddler too, and still does very occasionally.

Sleepwalking and night terrors are both "disordered arousal states" (or something like that). The sleepwalker is rising up to near-consciousness, but the mechanisms that essentially paralyze a person while they're in this state are not synched up entirely, so they are nearly awake, but dreaming, and they are able to get up and move. (Incidentally, sleep paralysis is the reverse of this; being actually awake but still unable to move).

With my DS, I found that night terrors happened most freuqently around big developmental leaps, learning new things, etc. And then the terrors with sleepwalking, or just sleepwalking, often happen when something is happening to pull him up out of deep sleep -- often, it is the need to pee.

So we'll hear him moaning and crying out, and then he'll appear at his bedroom door, trying to find the bathroom. Once he stumbled into the bathroom and peed on the vanity, after fumbling about where the lid of the toilet would have been if he was standing next to the toilet. We've learned to jump up when we hear him up, steer him to the bathroom, help him pee, steer him back to bed.

Often that's enough. HOwever, if he gets too close to the surface, he sometimes freaks out and it turns into a night terror. I think that's honestly teh source of the "never wake a sleepwalker" advice. I'd already learned the same thing about night terrors - your first instinct is to wake the child up, reassure -- but brining them to full awareness causes an even worse flip-out.

For us, all DS ever does is either walk to the bathroom, pee, and return to his bed, or walk into our room and crawl into our bed. I"m not too worried about safety for that reason. And most kids who sleepwalk outgrow it - he's already doing it less and less, and DH also did it as a kid and does not do it now.