Hello everyone, I just wanted to ask ... - CHADD's ADHD Pare...

CHADD's ADHD Parents Together

23,416 members6,217 posts

Hello everyone, I just wanted to ask if anyone is experiencing sleep walking or night terrors before diagnosis/not medication related?

Mybabies2 profile image
7 Replies

sleepfoundation.org/sleep-d...

My son has had full conversations, he even thought the door was locked during a night terror and tried to kick through it. On a lighter note, we call him Chuck Norris but he has full-blown movie style sleep talking, sleepwalking, night terrors for 10 years.

Written by
Mybabies2 profile image
Mybabies2
To view profiles and participate in discussions please or .
7 Replies
Wiola821 profile image
Wiola821

Hi, although my son doesn't sleepwalk he has trouble sleeping. A lot of it has to do with his very active brain due to ADHD. We have tried many different things to help him stay asleep. Things are so bad that we may have to put him on some sort of sleep aid. I have been told by his doctors that its very common for ADHD kids to have sleeping issues.

Mybabies2 profile image
Mybabies2 in reply to Wiola821

Thank Wiola!

My son goes to sleep right away when he lays down, I try to keep him busy during the day so he is tired at night. He never really had issues falling asleep but once he's sleep my goodness. I had to move into a different apartment because my younger son just couldn't share a room with him anymore. The youngest was waking up tired because of the sleep talking, he would have to tell his brother go to sleep like every few hours. I was just wondering if this is a separate issue or connected to ADHD, (inattentive).

Chickymama profile image
Chickymama

When my son was around 7-8yrs old he had horrible night terrors. It would always start around 1 hour after he had fallen asleep. He would sweat, scream, run and walk through the house. If I could catch it right when he started making the first few cries, I could calm him down before he ever got up. We realized that part of the reason was bc he had to pee. Since then, we always make sure he goes to the bathroom before he goes to bed. The research that I did made no connection between adhd and night terrors. He is 11 now and it has been a long time since he has had one, but it used to be every night.

AngelamarieQ profile image
AngelamarieQ

My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD at age 10, but I knew she had it since she was around 4.

She had a couple of night terrors at age 2 and 3, but then they stopped. It was the scariest thing. Nothing would calm her down. She screamed, cried and hit like she was trying to escape. She didn’t recognize me or my husband. For a moment, I thought she was possessed. It was awful. We took her to the pediatrician and he said some kids have night terrors like those. It took like one hour to calmed her down and we had put her favorite character on TV( Dora the explorer ) for her to stop crying and relaxed. She didn’t want us to touch her. I think there has to be a connection between night terrors and ADHD.

In any event, she never had the night terrors again but she talks a lot on her sleep and moves and hits like crazy.

I’m giving her melatonin to sleep. It has helped a lot.

Pennywink profile image
Pennywink in reply to AngelamarieQ

That sounds a lot like our house. My son has a few when he was @ 3. The first one really panicked us, as he didn’t really see us & also didn’t want to be touched. So, it knowing what to do, of course everything we did made it longer & worse. Lol! (We later discovered that just watching to make sure he didn’t hurt himself, but otherwise not interfere, it would only last about 5 mins. And he never remembered them.)

He still mumbles in his sleep sometimes, now at almost 7yo.

Erinjake4 profile image
Erinjake4

My daughter is 8yrs old with ADHD and not medicated and she sleepwalks every once in a while. About an hour after she falls asleep she will get up and come find me. She is usually crying and shaking like crazy. She talks to me but nothing makes any sense. We have a mattress on our bedroom floor that I put her on and 2 minutes later she pops up doing the same thing. I usually have to lay down with her and just hold her to get her to stop. It was very scary the first time it happened! Luckily it doesn’t happen very often!

bassethounds1 profile image
bassethounds1

Not sure if you are still having the night terror problem, but I thought I'd tell you how we stopped them. Our son started having them age 6.5 for several months not on meds, then on meds too. Never failed, it was between 2-3 hours after going to sleep, he'd wake up freaking out and talking nonsense, being scared to death, saying the same words over and over. He wasn't coherent or actually conscious of us or himself.

I read online about this easy technique related to sleep cycles, and it worked: about an hour after our son fell asleep, me or my husband would go to our son and just lightly stir him. A tickle on the ear, or just moving the covers. We would do it until we saw a response like him rolling over on his side or adjusting his arm. It was a "reset" button on his sleep cycle and he wouldn't have night terrors that night. We did this every night for months. Then we gave a trial of not doing the reset to see if he still had them, and they had stopped. So we don't do the hour-later stirring anymore.

You may also like...

8-year-old hoarding food

middle of the night and taking an entire box/package of something back to bed with him (last night...

Adhd and oppositional behavior

My 12 year old son with ADHD has difficulties with self control. I have taken his phone away as a...

Son Recently Diagnosed - Feeling Very Overwhelmed

hours of sleep each night. We are worried to give him the pill this morning for fear he won’t...

Patience with 5 year old ADHD

We’ve tried making him stay in bed but he talks, yells, makes noises and then has a huge screaming...

ADHD Mom Concerned With Asd

better. He also has trouble sleeping at night. Most nights he’s up all throughout the night. But he...