7 year old sleepwalking and distressed every night

[Discombobulation2020]

My 7 year old has been sleepwalking at 10:30pm, 6 out of 7 nights this week. He sleepwalks through to the living room muttering jibberish with the odd phrase often relating to something to do with the “end of the world” or “too many things”. He won’t wake up and alternates minute by minute between being fine and shaking/panicking/sobbing/itching/wriggling/pacing. We have worked out that if we give him something to eat (usually an apple) after about 5 - 10 minutes, he’ll start to wake up gradually. But it’s so frequent - has anyone else had this? It first happened a few weeks ago with a fever (covid test negative!) then not for weeks and weeks, but has been most nights recently. It sounds classic sleepwalking but would love to know if it’ll stop soon. He seems fine but it’s quite scary to watch him going through it every night.

My DD walked in her sleep and we worked put that it was when she needed a wee so we tanked up on fluids in the morning and reduced them in the evening and it stopped.

If you think he's worried about something and that's triggering it, have you tried a bit of meditation with him at bedtime? There are lots of guided meditations on YouTube aimed at children, think it's just a case of trying a few to see which ones he likes. If he arches it listens to the news, I'd avoid it fir the time being too. He's getting to that age where he's more aware of what's going on on the world but doesn't have any life experience to rationalise anything.

Mine went through a sleepwalking phase at 3. I found that any engagement with her would just be distressing so the only thing to do was to guide her back to bed. Hers was always worse if she was tired or poorly.