11 yr old scared to go to bed or be upstairs alone...!

[bittersweet]

Have loved dipping in to mumsnet now and then over the years, but have never started a thread til now... have ds aged 11 and 2 dds aged 8 and 5.

Does anyone else have experience of this - my 11 yr old ds has become increasingly reluctant/ scared over the past 2 years to go to bed and/ or stay in bed in the evening while dh and I are downstairs.

One of us will often take him up at about 9pm and see him into bed. He then reads or lies awake til we go up to bed, during which time he calls down to us every 10 minutes or so to ask when we are coming up. He will not allow himself to go to sleep til we are upstairs too. He often falls asleep within seconds of us coming up.

If we don't see him into bed, he will hang around on the stairs or landing (hoping we don't notice)waiting for us to come up, or he'll make some excuse to come and ask/tell us something to delay going up.

Once asleep, he sleeps well, but I am worried that he's not getting enough sleep (rarely more than 8 hours a night), but my main worry is that he is not feeling happy/confident enough in his own house. He is becoming more scared of sleeping at his grandma's house and he wouldn't want to go to a sleepover at a schoolfriend's.

He's a keen reader and has good imagination. He watches/plays the usual TV/DVDs/playstation for his age, and is happy/sociable/ outgoing during the day. Have tried to talk to him about it, but he just says that he doesn't want to be alone upstairs (his sleeping sisters in the next room don't count!).

Sorry for going on, have tried to be brief. Has anyone got any thoughts on this? I'd be really grateful.

What sort of books dos he read,could it be anything that would make him scared like aliens ,or something similar ? I see you said he has a good imagination and maybe that is part of it.

Yes, I'm sure that is part of it. He loves Doctor Who, Spiderman books, all the Horrible Science/ Horrible Histories etc books, spy stories and that kind of thing. He doesn't like halloween things or vampires and in the past has been frightened by a Simpsons halloween story of all things!

I guess sometimes it can be seemingly innocent things that can frighten them, not just the obviously scary things ...

can you get him to either read or do something more calming before he goes to bed ? i remember i used to see faces in my wallpaper when i was young and that used to scare me.There is nothing likeimagination to scare yourself half to death !

why not get him a dream catcher ,but change it a bit and tell him its to ward off anything that will scare him ?

Interesting idea about the dream catcher - I'll think about that one - thanks.

I remember being like that! I was scared of something like E.T. turning up in my bedroom and used to ask my mum to leave light on until she went to bed. Then we go a night light that you just plug to the wall and that helped. But deffinitelly encourage him to read something more soothing t bedtime, something funny maybe.

dd3 (11) won't go to bed on her own. If the others are upstairs she's all right otherwise she stays downstairs and goes up when we do. Maybe I'm a bit lax but she gets up in the morning so I'm not too bothered. I think my older dds went through the same thing - saying they were scared of noises and stuff. It doesn't help me commenting 'It's ok - it's a friendly ghost up there' etc

gah, bittersweet,

you gave me the heebie-jeebies there for a minute when I discovered your other thread on this subject....I clicked onto it....and there were no posts from me. How could that be? I knew I'd posted there!

I really thought I'd lost my mind for a minute!

How come you've got two threads - did you press "post message" twice?

Any progress on improving ds's bedtime fears?

oh god,

I didn't mean to post on THIS version but the other one.

the original one.

the proper one.

or is it?

^shuffles off muttering to herself and pours another glass of wine^

Yes, you can tell I haven't done this before!! I must have pressed 'post' twice and was pretty surprised to see it appear twice myself.

Anyway, not much progress other than that we have been reassuring ds a lot more this week and trying to not make it all appear a big deal to him.

I think it's a general anxiety about feeling that he's on his own, rather than a fear of anything specific that he's seen or read. At the moment, dh is with him upstairs and staying up there til he goes to sleep. I am also being more aware of what he's doing before going to bed, trying to keep things calm, not going on the computer and that kind of thing.