Problems with sleeping with my 9 year old son

[lornaandclifford]

Can anyone help? My 9 year old will not settle to sleep without a great deal of anxiety. He wakes up every night calling for mum and usually ends up sleeping on our floor, He refuses to walk to our bedroom on his own (too scary) so I have to go and get him.

Currently he's scared of something he saw on Doctor Who?

Any advice?

Hi there

Does he have a night light? My 7 yr old has been a bit like that in the past and although he has a light in his bedroom we ended up having to put one on the landing too so it wasn't so scary walking to our room. That way he didn's shout and wake his little brother.

Is he having bad dreams or just scared when he wakes up? Are you sure it isn't just an excuse now? My son has been genuinely scared sometimes but the original cause of the scare gets forgotten after a few nights and the worries end up being from habit - he kind of winds himself up. In that case I would just keep escorting him back to his bedroom and maybe sitting with him for a while until he settles again.

Alternatively, a friend of mine with a DD of 7 was really hard to settle at night and waking all the time and it turned out that she was worried about a family friend she had seen seriously choking at a get-together. She didn't say anything about it for ages, just kept saying she was scared of all sorts of things, but in the end it came out after a lot of probing and her parents where able to talk about it and put her mind at rest that nobody was hurt and nothing bad was going to happen. Are you sure that your son isn't worrying about something other than Dr Who and needs to get it off his chest? It might be difficult to get it out of him but I would keep asking even if it seems to be upsetting in the short term. Can you pin point the start of it to something or sometime where things might have been difficult for him?

Think that's good advice to talk in the daytime when its not so scary.

I read on here something about empowering scared children, by asking them what they think would stop them being scared and doing it (within reason).