8 year old sleep anxiety and sweating!

[maplebaconbun]

My 8yo for several months now struggles to sleep through the night. He takes an hour or 2 to fall asleep because he worries that he won't fall asleep in the first place. He needs his night light on all night because he's scared of the dark and the other problem is he sweats all night and this wakes him up because his Pyjamas will be completely soaked through. I have to help him change every night once or sometimes twice. Sometimes his sheets are so soaked he has to come in to bed with us. Really need some advice if anyone else has experienced this. He wears light pjs, usually shorts and t shirt even in the winter and heating is always off in his room. We even have the window open a crack. Not sure what else to do.

We’ve had this. What’s his mattress like? We changed DD’s this week and it’s helped.

There’s another similar thread running on 8-9yo sleep problems - I’ll link it

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4128104-Child-terrified-at-bed-time

Thanks, will check out the other thread. I never thought about the mattress actually. It came with the bed, so that might be an issue.

Thanks.

Our mattress came with bed too but it was cheap and not breathable. Brought a decent one and it’s lush!

Try a cooling mattress topper like this www.amazon.com.au/Cool-Memory-Foam-Mattress-Topper/dp/B079NZ8JG2?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Just to come back on and mention we had our first night of “sleep through” last night (god, that sounds like I have a baby not a 9yo!)

The secret to my success (on top of a new mattress, relaxing music on YouTube, no tv an hour before bed, restricting any Diet Coke)....
telling her that it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t sleep! Her fear was/is, “what if I never fall to sleep” (resulting in being tired tomorrow, not being good at school, being moody etc). She’s catastrophised the situation that much, it’s stopped her sleeping. So I said, it just doesn’t matter, you’ll have the morning off and not do school / well accept you’ll be grumpy.

She slept from 8pm till 7am this morning! Winner 👍🏼