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Home › Articles › Sleep Issues › Taking a Night-time Stroll

Taking a Night-time Stroll

Children and Sleepwalking

By Carma Haley

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Brette Sember's 8-year-old daughter has been sleepwalking since the age of 4.

"She has gone downstairs from her room and she would walk around and then go back to bed," says Sember, of Basom, N.Y. "I think it is related to stress, but when she was younger I am not sure there was a trigger, just her growing and developing. You couldn't get her to really wake up so the best thing was just to get her to lie down and she would go back to sleep, never to remember a thing about it."

Very helpful tools used in identifying stressors related to sleepwalking include journals or sleep diaries, which may offer the opportunity for a parent to see a pattern related to the sleepwalking episodes and help in eliminating outside stressors.

"Journals or sleep diaries may allow parents to see 'the big picture,'" says Sheldon. "They can even be taken to the pediatrician or the sleep disorders center and perhaps patterns can be seen or observed by the doctor or clinician that the parents may not be able to identify from being too involved or simply seeing these influences as normal."

The most important factor for the parents to know regarding their child's sleepwalking is the need to protect the child from harm. Since children are not awake, the risk of falling down stairs, tripping over objects on the floor or falling from the top bunk bed is extremely high. In addition, some children have been known to wander outside of their home during a sleepwalking episode, running a risk of falling off a porch or deck, or walking into a road or highway.

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