Crying in sleep

[Noimaginationforaun]

Hi! Just wanting advice on ‘is this an adoption thing or a toddler thing?’. LO has been with us about 6 months now. They are 2 and a half. Settled really well and everyone is happy with progress etc.

They’ve recently (twice in the past two weeks) started crying in their sleep. The first night it happened about 3 times and I’ve just been in for a third time tonight. They are fast sleep and seemingly unaware when we go in but they are crying/whimpering. We stroke their back, give cuddles and whisper that we are there and they settle back down for another hour or so. Usually their sleep routine is in bed for 6:30/7 and they’ll sleep through until 7/7:30 in the morning so it’s really unusual for them.

I just wondered really if this could be a trigger and adoption related or is it just normal toddler development, a nightmare with a growing imagination maybe. It’s horrible hearing them cry in their sleep and not knowing why! Can’t really do much apart from offer comfort whilst they sleep.

Any advice appreciated!

I am seriously not an expert on sleep… but it was around this age we had to start being careful about what we did and what he watched. We had a problem with a cow we had seen at a safari park (quite a big bull…… actually quite scary if you think about it). Also there’s an episode of the octonauts we had to avoid called the long armed squid.m as it was a bit ghostly… You can’t always avoid things that children find scary as you don’t always know they are coming. Also even now (he’s now nearly 4.) he can have a fright in the night sometimes I think because of the way the light catches things in the dark.

I don’t know if it’s the same sort of thing - as our son properly woke up. He also was in a bed so he just climbs into our bed when he was worried. We’d normally let him get properly asleep and then take him back.

If they are asleep - personally I’d say leave them be… I don’t know if this is true but I’ve read somewhere (probably Facebook!) that waking a child in a night terror is not a good idea. If they are awake and crying - personally I’d just give them lots of cuddles and sleep next to them if they’ll let you…

I think it is very likely an adopted thing, I was adopted and have adopted siblings and I remember my younger siblings doing this at around this, age, and we all have biological children now and none have done this, so my non-scientific assumption would be that it is to do with loss, grief for the adopted child.

It is heartbreaking, and I think pp gives good advice about how to handle it.

I think that an ongoing awareness of these underlying feelings is important, and talking about it and validating it, and explaining it as the child grows, and telling them about how they cried in their sleep, providing comfort. And talking about how we are all sad when sad sometimes and happy sometimes, it is normal, to help them not be afraid of the feelings, when they are older. You can't make it go away but you can make it better, basically.

For context, I’m an adopter, not an adoptee.

I’m also a sleepwalker and have been since childhood. I have no idea why I do it but I’ve never grown out of it. I used to cry in my sleep as a child and it was very upsetting for my parents. I was a happy child and had no recollection of it when I woke up. I still do weird things on my sleep that my OH tells me about in the morning!

You’re doing the right thing by comforting your child as you are. We also talk about feelings a lot, naming them, accepting them and talking of strategies to deal with them. You may or may not be able to pinpoint what causes it and it may or may not be adoption related, but comforting and talking about emotions are always positive steps to take.
Good luck.

I don’t know if it’s an adoption thing or age related. My son went through a short period of night terrors at probably about 6 months in, but he was older than your child at 4. Even a non adopted child will be processing so much during their sleep at that age, an adopted child may have a little more to process. You sound like you are doing the right thing - offering comfort without necessary waking them. I know sometimes food is said to possibly be a trigger for dreams, maybe if your worried you could keep a diary for that and other possible triggers (t.v shows, exciting days)? I’ve also heard that if you lay on your left hand side you are also far more likely to have vivid dreams - not sure how true that is though.

I can't shed any light on whether this is adoption related in your child's case but if it helps my biological daughter started crying in her sleep at around 2 and still does it now sometimes at 3 years. She doesn't wake up but lies there completely asleep, crying. It's upsetting but as an earlier poster said there's very little you can do if they are asleep. It may be completely unrelated but at the same age she also started to say that she was frightened of cats or foxes coming in our garden for example so I think in her case it was a developing sense of the wider world which was scary for her.

Thank you so much for your replies! Especially @TaminaPalace - I find it really helpful to hear from adoptees when trying to navigate parenting!
The night was pretty rough and they ended up waking very early yesterday. We had quite a slow day of cuddles, the park, reading some feelings books and talking about them, watching Bluey. They slept much better last night with no crying. I guess we’ll just have to keep an eye and an ear out of a night and see what happens. Just keep up with the cuddles and reassurance at night and back that up in the day with more work on feelings and making sure we validate them. It has been a very busy few weeks with starting a few hours a week at a childminder and potty training so we think there is a lot of things to process going on at the minute! Thank you so much!

Our little one has periods of sleep crying/night terrors. It started at a time when his imagination was growing but I also think it is linked to early trauma processing. It always seems to happen at the same time - about 2 hours into sleep. He cries and sometimes has eyes open but doesn't seem awake. We give him cuddles and reassurance and find it stops as quickly as it starts. He doesn't seem to remember in the morning. It comes and goes in phases.

Bluey and other gentle programmes are good. We've found restricting watching things like Peter Rabbit helps. Our little one loves Peter Rabbit but it has quite a few moments of peril which seem to cause more anxiety around bedtime and more 'normal' bad dreams which he remembers and tells me about.

We're now in a different sleep phase with lots of middle of the night waking and not wanting to be left alone which is exhausting! I found the sleep crying easier to manage as it was usually before I'd fallen asleep!! 😩

Don't think it's an adoption thing! Think it's a developmental thing. Our biological son is two and a half and started this, no concerns about anything and been reassured by health visitor and GP that it's common.

Even if adopted children behave like biological kids, they often do so for different reasons. Your child will not have developed the same level of object permance than biological children their age for instance and nights are long, dark and lonely. A night is a very long time to be separated from a parent, even more so if you have lost parents before. So even if this is a developmental stage, adoption, loss and grieve will exacerbate that, so you need to parent accordingly, which you seem to do.

just thought I’d bump my old thread for any more advice.

The crying now seems to have escalated into actual nightmares and screaming out. He’s 3 and a half now. Just been in because he screamed so loud! I went in and he basically leapt into my arms, shaking and crying incoherently about ‘I don’t like it’. Just gave lots of reassurance and cuddles and he was back to sleep within a couple of minutes.

It’s not every night. Maybe a couple of times a month so I don’t know if I’m worrying unnecessarily but they screams and the shouting really are awful. He sounds so scared.

@Noimaginationforaun that sounds tough. My son also has nightmares and is up most nights. It could be either developmental (my birth child at the same age went through the same thing for a couple of weeks) or trauma related. Unfortunately, either way, it’s hard to manage and you or are doing everything you can. A structured bedtime routine and spending time with him when he is asleep. Lots of reassurance. The opportunity to talk about it. if you want, you can pm me.

My DD was older when placed with us but she had night terrors and sleep walked for a long time - she’s still sometimes unsettled at night.

We process a lot sub consciously when we sleep (which is why sleep often goes when we’re stressed), it may be that as he gets older and his cognitive understanding changes he’s processing early trauma in his sleep - while it’s disturbing to see it’s a natural process when dealing with trauma.

Id keep a good bedtime routine, as calm as you can make it and check on him regularly through the night. I’d also work on him being able to name his feelings and express how he’s feeling as that process can often be disrupted with early neglect/poor care giving. I also found having a comfort toy and a low lamp/night light helped - my DD is 11 and still needs a light on for sleeping.

Hi, so sad to read this for LO but he's in the best hands with you. ❤

I am a sleep crier, but I grew up in a situation where I should have been placed with Foster/adoptive parents myself and even now, over 30 years after some of the things I witnessed I still sleep cry and have night terrors and sleep paralysis.
The docs can't do anything for me, never have done and I can't imagine they're going to give you much support on this, not bashing my doc by the by, there just isn't anything they can do.

I'd really be mindful of triggers that come in all sorts of forms, imagine if LO has seen a particular brand of alcohol in his birth home littered around and one day out shopping he recognises the logo, that was a trigger for me that I couldn't articulate until my 20s, so I'd go home and cry that night that the kestrel from my dad's beer was attacking me.

Just lots of soothing bedtime routines, cuddles. Spray his pillow or stuffies with your perfume maybe? Might reassure him you're close. Do you do affirmations? "You are smart. You are funny. You are kind. You are safe and you are loved" is the kind of thing I'd have loved to have heard.
I know I as I got older would use my Teddy to almost protect me in my sleep so I stuck him over my head, if my mum wore perfume I think smelling her close would have helped.

My autistic child has a very particular routine, bath, cuddles (if I can catch him), stories do absolutely jack shit for him so we look at pictures, could you maybe get a photo album from groupon or something with pictures of you all happy and lots of things reassuring for him to look through?
Then we have last cuddle and he uses to like singing lullabies but now says "knock it off" because he's too old for that now. 🙈

Sometimes my DP will try waking me up if I'm very distressed or if I'm yelling and cuddles me until I go back to sleep, but then I can always slip back into that distress level an hour later so maybe it's something that just needs processing? So I'm unsure if waking him would help him.

Youre honestly doing amazing and have tons of brilliant advice from the adopters here I just wanted to send love and offer my wee amount of insight to shitty sleep x