Sleepwalking 4 yr Old

laura.

hi folks,

i'm at my wit's end at the minute.I came home from work at 4.30am on Saturday nite(Halloween nite of all bloody time's),to find my kitchen light on,payed no attention to that as I thought my partner had simply forgot to turn it off, but i got to the front door and there it was wide open.....rang my partner,as I was scared to go into the house, and asked him to come meet me at the front door. we walked to the kitchen together, and found my cleaning cupboard wide open,strange I thought, then I went to my daughter's bedroom to check on her, and she was gone out of her bed, I am not joking you now my heart actually stopped with fright. I went screaming to my partner up the hall that my daughter wasn't in her bed absolutly hysterical, and he calmly told me she had get into our bed...went into her as she was awake at this stage, what with my screaming and such, and hugged the life out of her..She then said to me why did you leave me in the car mammy, I said I was at work darling, what are you on about....she then asked another 3or 4 times to which i replied each time that i was at work and i didn't leave her in the car......ended up....she had got up went to the kitchen turned on the lights opened the cupboard door, went out to the car got into her car seat put on her seatbelt and then woke up, she had walked outside in her bare feet in the absolute pouring rain and got into the car herself......i dread to think of what would have happened if my car had of been locked that night a little girl walkin on a main road in her little pyjamas.....then last nite she got up and switched on the lights in the house again.....not as severe as Saturday night i know i can handle a few extra euro on my ESB bill, but i need to know if anyone else has had this with their child or did it themselves as a child, i want to refrain from takin her to a doctor or theripst, but then if needs be and as a last resort obviously i will do so.

and a little about my child herself, she is 4 years old, always been an excellent child, never had a minutes bother with her, she has recently started primary school, and i asked her teacher if she was gettin on ok, and there was nothing but praise for her and how mature she was compared to other students, and also asked my child if everything was ok and she loves school so it is not that....

At this point I would greatly appriciate any form of help from anyone.

Thank you in advance

laura.

LegacyUser

My little lad, who is a couple of years older than your child also sleep walks however has never gone outside the house, we have a good few locks on the front door and an alarm so that probably helps, at least it would waken us.

I have done a good bit of searching on it as we have had to deal with it for about the last 3 years or so. What we ended up doing was keeping note of nights he got up and went walkabout, this would include going up and down the stairs, flinging open our bedroom door and just standing there staring at us at all hours of the night etc. It was then we noticed that he was more likely to sleep walk when he had a hectic day or went to bed a couple of hours later than he usually would have had during the school holidays so it was down to being overtired.

What we do now is make sure that he is in bed by 9 at the latest most nights, we've also put a jingle bell thing on his door handle so when he opens the door we hear the bell so we're more alert to the fact he has got out of the bed so we can watch the stairs, a real worry of mine and I'm a light sleeper so I always hear the bell.

While our little lad is walking around during the night his eyes would be wide open but he would have a blank expression on his face, what we do now is just turn him around and he tends to go back to his own room, climb into his bed and back to sleep, he would have no recollection of what had gone on and we dont' mention it to him either.

All I would suggest is that you keep track of things that would have gone on in the day prior to her sleepwalking, did she eat or drink anything different, was she overtired etc. This is probably a starting point, if you can identify something that looks like a pattern then you can try adjust the eating/ sleeping etc. I also think it would be handy to have all this information together if you do decide to go down the doctor route.

laura.

thank you very much for the reply. that is a great idea with the bell on the door handle. The other nite i was goin to put a little bell thing on her ankle put it on obviously when she is sleepin and take it off before i get her up for school. was just wondering if you have got 'professional' help to deal with this or has it been dealt with within your household?

I will start keepin a diary now, of all the things we do on a previous day, she is never in bed later than 8.30 sometimes she watches a DVD and sometimes she doesn't. I will be keepin her in a strict routine now about bedtime and her food and stuff.

thank you very much for your help.

LegacyUser

Hi Laura,

I have said it in passing to him GP and she just recommended limiting or completely stopping anything that had caffine in it, and give him milk going to bed rather than any other drink. We let him watch tv till around 8, then he is up to brush him teeth, a little reading time and then to the toilet before going to sleep as a full bladder can interfere with their deep sleep. He doesn't have any tv in his room and I think that helps.

We were really worried about it until we started the diary, it's amazing the little things that you will notice that then piece together a pattern. If she has just started sleepwalking lately then it is probably to do with the exhaustion from the additional time in school, I would start first by cutting out any caffine and pulling her bedtime back by a half an hour and see if there's any noticable difference. However I wouldn't hesitate in contacting your GP if there is a continous pattern, sleep walking is normally spread out as opposed to being continous for say a week. Hope it sorts itself it can be worrying when it initially starts.