Transcript of
Sleepwalking in children
Anyone can sleepwalk
any time between the first and second year of life
to as late as in their 70s.
There are three types of behaviours
that can occur when you suddenly wake from deep sleep.
You can have very mild confusional arousal,
where you wake up, look around, maybe do some automatic behaviour,
go back to sleep. And that's very common.
The more distressing are children who wake screaming
and they look very frightened
and they're sweating and terrified and parents get very distressed about it.
But again, they have no memory of it the next day.
And then you have the more complex behaviours of sleepwalking.
The most common trigger, of course, is stress
or people who are not very good at letting go at bedtime,
so they don't create closure and carry a lot of mental activity to bed with them.
It occurs usually in the first part of the night
because that is when we have most of our deep sleep.
And it occurs as you wake very abruptly from deep sleep,
so instead of waking gently and going to the next sleep stage,
these young people wake very abruptly
and they are in a sort of dissociate state, half asleep and half awake.
You have to manage it and look at other triggers.
In younger children, it's just making sure that they are safe,
parents understanding that it's not doing them any harm.
Because sometimes parents think, "If I don't let them have a daytime nap,
they won't sleepwalk."
But that's not true, because they need more sleep,
so if they're tired, they might need a little nap,
so they don't go into such deep sleep. So sleep deprivation should be avoided.
You need to make sure that there are no intrinsic triggers,
like obstructive sleep apnoea, periodic leg movements.
Sometimes just a full bladder.
It's quite common, sleepwalking,
to get up and pass urine in the wardrobe instead of the toilet.
So the impulse to empty the bladder has caused the sleepwalking,
so make sure they don't drink a lot of fluids,
that they've emptied their bladder several times before they to go bed.
During the sleepwalking behaviour itself,
they need to make sure that the child is safe or the adult is safe,
but not intervene, because if they intervene, they will lash out.
Lead them back to the bed gently, go into whatever they're thinking about.
Agree with them. Don't start arguing.
Get them back into bed, and when they're in bed, then wake them fully,
because you don't want them to go back into that same deep sleep cycle.
And then let them settle back to sleep.
The sleepwalking behaviours in an adult, the same principles hold.
Making sure they're not sleep deprived, they're not on drugs,
they don't have the two sleep disorders we discussed.
Sometimes, if they're very high-risk behaviours,
then we will give medication,
especially to take if they're staying in a hotel or in an unfamiliar environment
where they may put themselves at risk.
Occasionally they do need sleep studies.
Most people sleepwalking don't need sleep studies.
Sleepwalking is very common.
About 20% of children will sleepwalk sometime in their life
and most of them will grow out of it.
The figure for adults is around 4%, so the majority have grown out of this.
