Pediatric Insomnia

Lately, Troy won’t sleep all the way through the night. He’ll wake up between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning and come downstairs crying that nobody was there when he woke up. He won’t go back to sleep until either someone lays down in his bed with him or we move him into our bed. We know this isn’t the healthiest option, but when it’s the middle of the night, and you’re exhausted, you don’t always make the right choice.

I was reading that anxiety can be a cause of this. Fear of abandonment is one form. When someone is there when the child falls asleep and then isn’t there when they wake up in the night, they get scared and confused. But once this routine is established, it’s expected from the child in order to fall asleep, because he associates sleeping with someone being next to him. Besides waking up in the middle of the night, the child may also go through an elaborate bedtime ritual, delaying going to bed as long as possible, because it prolongs the amount of time he gets to spend with his parents.

We are guilty of this. One of us will lay down next to him when we put him to bed and stay until he falls asleep. But studies have shown that children need to learn to fall asleep on their own, because it affects how they’ll go back to sleep if they wake up. And if they do wake up, then you should walk them back to bed and then walk away again. You may have to endure a tantrum or tears, and it may take a few times, but in the end, the child will learn to self-soothe and go back to sleep. You can also “fill” a fluffy with love and tell him he can squeeze it if he feels alone.

An overactive imagination is another form. Children who have vivid imaginations will sometimes have a hard time separating fantasy from reality. Things they see in TV, movies, or video games will endure long after they’ve turned them off, and they’ll conjure images of monsters creeping around in the dark and get scared.

I suspect this is going on with Troy as well. We know he’s got an amazing imagination. He’s also obsessed with zombies, monsters, and witches; making up many stories and songs about them. So, it’s possible that he sees things in the night that bring his imagination to life. I’ve tried to tell him that these things aren’t real, that they’re just on TV, but I’m not sure that he believes me. One of the things they said can help with this is limiting screen time before bed. We could do better at this too, because normally he’s watching TV pretty late, because it’s the only way to get him to eat. But we also know that he prolongs eating to get as much time watching TV as possible.

Then again, some children are naturally night owls, which can make it hard to both fall asleep and stay there. This could be true of Troy. I know he’s definitely not a morning person, but I’m not quite convinced that he’s a night person either. I think he’s more of a middle of the day person like his mother.

So wish us luck as we dive into trying to tackle his insomnia problem. We’ve screwed him up, and now we need to fix him!