Hallucinating

[bubblesxx]

My son is 5, for the most part he sleeps okay but once in a while he’s stays awake all night just sat up in my bed looking around and talking to himself. Tonight has been one of those nights, I took him to the toilet at 1am because he needed to and he’s been awake ever since around 3am he started to behave in a way I’ve not seen before taking about their being angry snakes in my bedroom, I told him there was nothing there, half an hour later he’s screaming saying there’s turtles on the floor, at 4am I brought him down stairs because he was holding his legs in the air and wouldn’t put them down because he says there are animals crawling around, I brought him downstairs because he was in a state and he’s stripped himself off saying that he has flies on his back, it’s not 5am he’s calmed down now but he’s complaining of being itchy and flies every 10 minutes. I’m quite worried I’ve never seen him behave this way, could it be lack of sleep causing hallucinations, a bad dream?

I’m sorry to hear, this sounds really horrible. I think you need help from a medical professional

My youngest DD used to get this when she was 6. Off and on. But the first time she started getting them it’s quite alarming. She would say that she could see creatures in her room crawling up the walls and going under her bed. She would make herself stay awake because of them which would just make the hallucinations worse. We spoke to our GP and he said it was actually more common than you think. It’s normally caused by periods of low sleep or periods or stress or change. We were told they normally go away on their own and that good quality sleep was really important to calm the mind.

She had them, on and off, for a couple of weeks and they stopped. She would occasionally have another episode but again, within a couple of days they would stop again.

I would say power through for now and hope they stop but if they don’t I would definitely seek some help to understand how to calm his mind and get him proper restful sleep.