A sleepwalker at home: preventive measures to help you
One of the most obvious characteristics of sleepwalking is to walk asleep with your eyes open but it is not the only one. Many kids simply turn on and off the bedside light in their room or have a good time sitting on their bed doing absolutely nothing but looking blankly.
Sleepwalking usually appears between the ages of 4 and 15, has a hereditary character and, although it seems unlikely, it usually affects 15 percent of children. In principle, it usually manifests during childhood and disappears during adolescence.
Keys to identify a sleepwalker
Identifying a sleepwalking child is usually quite simple. It is true that in movies we are tired of watching sleepwalkers dangerously uploaded to the sill of a window or walking on the edge of a precipice, but fortunately the reality is often quite different and, of course, much less dangerous.
At these ages, the most common is to get up to pee and instead of heading towards the service, do it towards the kitchen, the living room or another equally inappropriate place. Or take the clothes off her bed and take her to her brother's room, later returning to her room to continue sleeping peacefully on the mattress.
How is sleepwalking manifested?
One of the most obvious characteristics of sleepwalking is to walk asleep with your eyes open but it is not the only one. Many children, for example, simply turn on and turn off the bedside light in their room or have a good time sitting on their bed doing absolutely nothing but looking blankly.
During this time our son will be deeply asleep. In spite of this, he will be able to perform movements and actions of all kinds. You do not need to stop and think about whether or not to open the living room door to go to the kitchen. It is an action that he has done a thousand times and that he can carry out, perfectly, in a totally unconscious way. In the same way, you can change clothes, take off your pajamas, open the bathroom faucet ...
Precisely because of that, we should not worry too much. Being in a well-known environment and walking with his eyes open, the boy will be able to avoid any collision or danger.
The origins of sleepwalking
For most experts, sleepwalking has a strong hereditary character. Almost without explanation, this type of disorder is often repeated and transmitted in some families, indicating a possible genetic basis.
The incidence in boys and girls is practically similar although some studies point to a slightly higher impact among male children.
In some cases, episodes of sleepwalking are also associated with other problems such as night terrors and, even, enuresis, although this does not mean that our child will suffer any of these disorders.
Moreover, there are many boys and girls suffering from sleepwalking who have never had nightmares or wet the bed.
Sleepwalkers: helping them is possible
Obviously, in all these cases our attitude, despite the preliminary surprise, must go through the most absolute understanding. We never scold our son for this type of episodes, mainly because when the next morning we ask him for explanations he will remember absolutely nothing.
If we observe that our son gets up at night, first of all we should try not to wake him up, because we could create a really anguishing situation. On the contrary, we will try to take you back to bed with gentleness. But first we will try to walk him to the bathroom, because it could happen that he wanted to pee. It is important that we do not wake you up until you have regained normal sleep.
Although accidents occur very rarely, whenever these episodes recur, we will have to consider adopting a series of safety measures.
First, we will lock the house door and secure the windows.
If we live in a house with more than one floor, we will place fences at the top of the stairs. Neither should we put him to bed in too high a bed.
Automated actions performed by sleepwalkers
In any case we should not distress ourselves in excess. A sleepwalker is only able to perform those actions that are automated. That is, our son is probably able to get up and open and close a door to which we do not give him the key. But if the door in question is perfectly closed the boy will be unable to search for our keychain around the house, he will simply turn around and go back to bed.
We can take advantage of that moment to address him gently and say, for example, "come on, honey, you have to go back to bed". In this way, we will get him to go to his room where he will continue to sleep peacefully.
Preventive measures to help sleepwalkers
Apart from all the measures that we have already mentioned we can also adopt a series of precautions before our son goes to bed.
Thus, for example, we can try that the boy never goes to bed without having gone to the bathroom, especially if there is a possible relationship with episodes of enuresis.
We will also try to make your room as noise-free as possible, in such a way that your sleep is calm and restful.
If our son still suffers frequent episodes of sleepwalking, we can try to record the time that elapses from the moment he falls asleep and the one in which the episode in question begins.
This way we can wake him up 15 minutes before the scheduled time and keep him fully awake for five minutes.
We can repeat this operation for several consecutive nights in order to stop this type of episodes.
Tips to prevent sleepwalking
· Make sure that our son does not lie down very tired. In these conditions it is much easier for somnambulism to manifest itself.
· Nor should we allow him to get used to going to bed too late, especially if you are sick or tired. An exhausted child is a child with high chances of suffering from these types of disorders.
· It is important that we verify that episodes of sleepwalking of our child are not related to other factors such as breathing problems. Occasionally obstructive apnea may be one of the triggers.
· Let's try to inform ourselves about sleepwalking, not only going to the doctor but acquiring some books or magazines that propose practical solutions.
In this way it will be much easier to help our son.
· It is not that our son should cut off his exits at the house of friends or cousins to sleep, but it is good that we warn the adults that accompany them. They must watch carefully to prevent the boy from suffering any mishap during the night.
We can not leave our son aside from the problem. Let's take advantage of the clarity of the day to explain what happens to him and why. There may have been other cases in our family that we can use as examples to analyze and minimize the problem.
Marina Berrio
Advisor: Lucía Herrero. Psychologist and family counselor
