What to do if your child is afraid to sleep alone in the room

Why is your baby afraid to sleep?

Fears arise for many reasons. This may be overexcitation, overdeveloped imagination, strong attachment to parents, place of sleep and other factors. Many of them may seem far-fetched and banal. But it won't hurt to know the full list of possible causes of restless nights and phobias before going to bed in your own crib. Let's divide the main reasons for fear according to the age of the children.

Infant

Children from birth to 1.5–2 years of age show a negative attitude toward sleeping without their mother for the following reasons:

• The baby is cold and hungry.
• The baby is pissing himself, but mom doesn’t notice his wet panties.
• I'm used to being held in my arms all day. Without feeling the warmth of someone else's body, he cannot fall asleep.
• The newborn was overexcited: he did not sleep for too long or played noisily before bed.
• The baby has colic, stomach pain and gas.
• The bed is uncomfortable. Breasts are uncomfortable in a spacious bed, or the mattress is not suitable in terms of hardness.
• The baby got sick. There doesn't have to be a fever; perhaps he just feels unwell.
• The baby is used to sleeping in his parents' bed.

On a note! Children should sleep in a separate bed from birth. This is normal from the point of view of hygiene and the psychology of raising an independent personality. Place the cradle near you at night.

At 3–4 years old, you can carefully move your baby into a separate room.

Children from 2 to 6 years old

This is a period of rapid development of the kindergartener’s imagination and independence. He communicates a lot with his peers, other adults, and watches TV. An immature nervous system provokes fears due to the following factors:

• The baby sees monsters under the bed. This is due to the wild imagination of children.
• Lack of attention from parents. The little one started going to kindergarten and sees his mother less often.
• The baby is raising its parents. More often, parents of 3-year-old children face a test of endurance when another age-related crisis occurs under the motto “I’m on my own!” The child dictates to his mother where he will sleep and when he needs to go to bed.
• Unbearable mental load. After 3 years, kindergarteners attend clubs, dance, sing, learn English, that is, they actively develop under the strict supervision of their parents. By the age of 6, you need to learn to read, count, and take a course for a future first-grader using an enhanced scheme. It is difficult for an unformed psyche to withstand such a load. As a result, self-doubt and fears are formed.

On a note! Often young children do not understand exactly what feeling they experience at night. From fear, the heart beats quickly, breathing becomes difficult, and the desire to run to mom appears.

Talk about what fears and nightmares are with your 4-5 year old child. Explain that fear of something is a normal human reaction, you need to cope with it, and not hide under your mother’s blanket.

Junior schoolchildren from 7–8 to 10 years old

This is a time of enormous changes in life.

The reason for fear may lie in the following:

• Anxiety related to school. Most often, first and fourth graders are at risk for sleep disorders. For the former, the reason for anxiety is getting to know a new team, the academic load, for the latter - final exams from primary school and entering the secondary level, where there will be new teachers, difficult subjects.
• Socialization. After kindergarten, children spend more time alone, meet new people, make friends at school and in the yard. On this path, difficulties and misunderstandings with peers may arise. Children need parental support.
• Watching “adult” programs and movies. In the absence of parents, and even with them, children watch horror films, scary cartoons, and have nightmares at night.
• Computer games. Walking and fighting monsters have a negative impact on the baby’s psyche.

In addition, there are several other causes of night phobias that are not related to age. This:

1. Life changes. Moving to another city, to a new apartment, changing the decor in the room, another bed, and so on.
2. Psychological situation in the family. Most often, phobias are formed due to frequent quarrels between parents, especially if they occur at night. Children hear that mom and dad are sorting things out, they don’t understand what’s happening. The next night they find it difficult to sleep; they want to be close to mom and dad to prevent a quarrel.
3. Ailments of the central nervous system, mental health. Restless nights often accompany children with mental and neurological diseases (autism, schizophrenia, ASD, hyperactivity).
4. Psychological trauma. This is fear, surviving fires, earthquakes, wars. Newborn babies may be frightened by loud noises.
5. Baby's temperament. Phlegmatic people are more sensitive to changes, separation from mother, and noisy games in the evening than choleric people.

On a note! You need to immediately wean your baby from going to his parents at night or being whimsical in his own bed. If the mother agrees to the baby’s terms several times, then the next nights she will definitely sleep in the toddler’s arms. The baby will understand that he can manipulate his parents.

Age-related characteristics of fear

Night terrors most often begin in children after 3 years of age and end at 10–11 years of age. In some cases, the child is afraid to sleep alone from birth. If phobias and visits to mother’s bed at night continue in a teenager after 11 years of age, you need to seek psychological help.

Also, to find out the causes of fear, it is necessary to analyze when the child began to be afraid, which could provoke the phobia. Every age has moments like this. Let's give a few examples when fear is a normal reaction to growing up or changes in life or care.

On a note! Dr. Komarovsky considers night terrors in children from 3 to 9 years old to be normal if they do not constantly exhaust the child and parents. He advises you to seek help from a psychotherapist if nightmares and hysterics intensify and become more frequent; any non-drug methods of calming and training to sleep separately do not help.

How to get rid of fear

If a child is afraid to fall asleep in his crib, parents need to become more attentive to the baby.

Ask your three-year-old why he is afraid to sleep alone, what worries him. Make a daily schedule and follow it strictly. Don't fall for childish tricks.

To solve the problem, you need to eliminate the cause of fears and arrange for the baby to sleep in a separate room. Pity and laziness are inappropriate here. Staying in a separate bed without a mother, in the nursery all night, is an important stage in raising a full-fledged personality. Otherwise, your son or daughter will grow up soft-bodied, indecisive, and mumble.

Could you be unknowingly encouraging your child's anxiety?

If you are concerned about your son or daughter's anxious behavior, take a close look at your own. You may be - without meaning to, of course - encouraging your child's worries and fears by giving him much more attention, care and time when he expresses these feelings.

Many parents find that their so-called anxious child becomes more confident both at bedtime and during the day, as soon as he acquires the ability to sleep properly. Children in general are often capable of more than their parents think. Your baby will quickly master the skill of falling asleep if you express your confidence in his abilities and consistently apply the five-step plan.

It may be easier to ignore fears and worries during the day (for adults too!), but when it comes time to leave the room after saying goodnight, what should you do if your child begins to worry? Remember: if your baby is lying in bed with nothing to do, it will be much more difficult for him to cope with his own worries. That’s why the Five Step Plan recommends giving your baby a “sleepy watchman” and a “sleepy basket” to keep him occupied until his eyes start to droop.

If a child asks to leave his bed for yours when he is scared, hold on until the last minute, otherwise you will end up teaching that his own bed is an unsafe place. And the transition from a feeling of anxiety to a feeling of peace would better take place in his room, and not in yours. Therefore, without a doubt, take your baby to the nursery and help him fall asleep there.

Advice from psychologists

Recommendations from psychologists are aimed at creating a comfortable emotional environment for going to bed and overcoming fear, which is provoked by the child’s wild imagination.

Make friends with fears and monsters from dreams

Let him draw the monsters that live under his crib. Or make figures from plasticine. Play, give them names. But come up with entertainment where the monsters have positive roles.

Create a bedtime ritual

It could be a book, a lullaby or 100 kisses on the cheeks. The ritual may take a long time, but at this moment the child will receive maximum attention from you. You cannot skip the discussed method of going to bed for a single day. If the little one fell asleep in bed and came into the parent’s bedroom at night, you need to return the baby to the nursery and repeat the ritual.

Create a positive image for the night

Explain that he must sleep in a separate bed, because magic awaits him, a night fairy with a gift. In the morning, place a small surprise under your pillow.

Discuss tomorrow before going to bed

The child should fall asleep sooner so that morning comes faster. Talk about how you have a busy day tomorrow: going to the cinema, visiting, going to the playground, tasting ice cream. But in the morning, don’t give up on your plans, you need to keep your promises.

Appoint a night guard

A child's sleep near the bed can be protected by a teddy bear, soldiers, or a doll. Place the toy in the bed or next to the door. Discuss the story with your preschooler, and let him nominate his own defenders every night.

Change your child's interests in games and cartoons

You can’t just ban viewing or entertainment; you need to offer more interesting entertainment options that are safe for the psyche.

On a note! For sound sleep, the temperature in the bedroom is very important. Air heated to 18–22°C is considered comfortable. In winter, ventilate the room before going to bed, and in summer, turn on the air conditioner.

Signs of clinophobia

The patient experiences horror at the thought of sleep. The fear is especially pronounced in the evening, before falling asleep. A person is overtaken by real vegetative symptoms, such as rapid heartbeat and breathing. He develops dry mouth, chills, and body tremors. Possible clouding of consciousness. Vision is impaired.

Changes also occur at the mental level. In the compensated stage of the disorder, clinophobe feels anxiety and internal discomfort in any situation related to sleep. Even the mere mention of this condition can destroy the patient’s mental balance. Attention becomes scattered, the ability to concentrate on the desired object is lost. The field of perception seems to narrow, limited only by thoughts about the dream.

In the severe stage, especially in the evening, potentially intended for sleep, the patient is overtaken by panic. In some cases, panic attacks develop with a feeling of suffocation and hopelessness. The hypnophobe is overcome by frightening thoughts that the hour of dreams is approaching. In a panic, a person drinks sleeping pills, sometimes in too large doses. Such remedies can only alleviate the condition for a while, but do not eliminate the phobia.

To try to sleep, a clinophobe resorts to various tricks. He finds activities that exhaust him to the point of exhaustion, so that in the evening he collapses from exhaustion - then, in his opinion, sleep will come inevitably. The patient is immersed in intense mental activity or resorts to intense sports activities. Any physical activity is also welcome. People suffering from hypnophobia come up with certain rituals that are bound to lead them to the kingdom of Morpheus.

There are patients who use any trick to avoid dreams. Their constant companion is insomnia, and with it, disorders caused by lack of sleep. It happens that a hypnophobe spends up to two days in constant wakefulness. To cope with a depressing state, a person becomes addicted to alcohol and drugs.

Advice from pediatricians

Sleep disturbances and anxiety in the baby in the evening are easily explained by mental, emotional and physical overexcitement. Small children do not notice that they are tired, they resist going to bed, but in fact they have been in need of rest for a long time. As a result, the baby becomes capricious, demands his mother in his bed, and going to bed turns into a scandal.

To avoid conflicts and hysterics, pediatricians recommend the following:

1. Monitor bedtime and playtime in young children.
2. Spend active time 1-2 hours before bedtime.
3. Follow a daily routine on weekdays and weekends. You can discuss bedtime with school-age children.
4. If your child is hyperactive, enroll him in a sports section, but do not attend training 1 hour before bedtime.

Question from parents! Is it necessary to treat a child if he is afraid to fall asleep alone? Children need medical help if anxiety and phobias plague the child night and day for a long time. Seek advice from a psychiatrist, pediatrician or neurologist.

Are your child's bedtime anxieties real?

If you don’t know whether your baby is really afraid of something in the evenings or whether he is simply inventing an excuse to avoid going to bed on his own, answer yourself a few questions:

• Does he complain more often about being scared before bed than during the day?
• Does he share his fears with only one of his parents? In other words, does he only express his anxiety when that parent is putting him to bed?
• Does the baby fall asleep quickly and without fear when someone lies next to him?

If you answered “yes” to at least one of these questions, your son or daughter may be exhibiting anxiety simply because he cannot fall asleep on his own. The baby complains about fears in order to keep you close, since he has not yet developed the necessary skill.

Advice from experienced parents

The following measures will help relieve fear:

1. Stay close to your kindergarten-aged child all evening. Don't take him to grandma's or to visit him after kindergarten. It is important for the baby to feel your love and receive a sufficient portion of attention.
2. Buy a book to read in bed. Don't get these fairy tales during the day. Read 1-2 pages before bed.
3. If a child is scared by the emptiness under the bed, place a box with books and toys there.
4. Stay close until you fall asleep completely for a couple of days, then you can talk or watch TV in the next room. The main thing is that the baby feels your presence in the apartment.
5. To wean yourself from sleeping with light on, buy the dimmest nightlight. Turn it on before leaving the children's room. After the baby is fast asleep, turn it off and leave the baby in the dark.
6. Equip the children's room with comfortable furniture and come up with a bright, positive interior. The child must have a desire to spend the night in a separate room. You can create an intrigue in advance, a couple of weeks before moving into the nursery: tell the baby that a surprise awaits you, and redecorate the bedroom.
7. Leave the nursery door open all night.
8. Put the youngest child to sleep in the same room as the older ones.

A shared nursery promotes the development of friendly, trusting relationships between brothers and sisters. Older children will be more responsible and independent.

This is interesting! According to research by physiologists and psychologists, children begin to feel real fear when they develop fantasy and imagination. Boys become fearful at 3 years old, and girls at 4 years old.

Fear of sleeping alone is a phobia

July 25, 2021, 05:20 p.m.

Good day everyone. My name is Alina, I’m already 22 years old, and as for such fear, I’m already old enough to be so afraid of the dark, namely, to stay at home alone in this very darkness. it all started 6 years ago. I stayed at home with my stepfather (I didn’t see him as a defender, since he beat me, thank God he and my mother didn’t live together for a long time) and then at 3 o’clock in the morning. I remember well. it was 3.05. it’s hard to write. I hear a noise (something fell in the kitchen), I react very quickly to noise, and my stepfather was fast asleep in the next room. I turned on the light and went to the kitchen, but something inside didn’t let me in, I didn’t open the door there, she returned to her stepfather and in a trembling voice said that there was noise there, we went there, we went in, and there was a window that was open, the tulle and curtains were moved to one side. Sorry for my Russian, my native Ukrainian. He went out into the street with a lantern, but there was no one there. Since then, I often wake up at night and I’m scared to look at the clock; I sleep when I’m alone, with the clock on. light, but when I turn it off, it starts to become a little clearer. I’m very afraid. Help

July 25, 2021, 5:43 pm

I’m 25. Nothing bad has ever happened to me in my life, but after I turned 20 or a little later, I’m afraid to spend the night alone. Before this age, I often spent entire weekends alone, I had never encountered anything like this. Now, when it’s getting dark and there’s no one in the house, I turn on the TV in the next room, music, and don’t let the cat out of the room, just so as not to feel alone in a dark apartment. When I need to go to bed, the worst thing is, I turn off the light, jump into bed on the run and cover my head. God forbid I want to drink or go to the toilet at night - I won’t even be able to get up - it can take me 30 minutes to decide. This is how I live. What is there to do?? Since there are no prerequisites for such fear, I don’t think that a psychologist or anyone else can help me. In general, after I turned 20, I began to be afraid of anything; before that I was a daredevil.

July 25, 2021, 5:49 pm

I'm 34 and this also started recently. I imagine that they will climb in and kill me. but I guess where the legs grow from. Throughout my childhood, my drunken father would come at two in the morning and I was afraid that there would be another scandal, he would go wild and kill us.

I’m also afraid if I sleep alone at home with only the lights on and the TV on))) I’m not ashamed. I just accepted the fact that I am very impressionable. Author, if you believe in God, place the icon near the bed, cross the bed and the room before going to bed, and sprinkle it with holy water.

Pfft, I’m 31 and I’m so fucking afraid of being alone, I went alone to the dacha to spend the night, it didn’t help, the fear only intensified.

July 25, 2021, 5:51 pm

sounds like anxiety neurosis author. I advise you to contact a psychotherapist to solve this problem. For reference, neuroses take years to mature, and the incident you described could have become a catalyst for the development of a phobia. But most likely this is not the reason. Contact a psychotherapist, analyze and solve all your phobias and fears, obvious and hidden.

July 25, 2021, 6:02 pm

on the first floor, install bars. You can have a cat or a dog, they will hear first. There are more pots on the windowsill, and basins under them. Sleep with the stun gun on.

July 25, 2021, 6:07 pm

on the first floor, install bars. You can have a cat or a dog, they will hear first. There are more pots on the windowsill, and basins under them. Sleep with the stun gun on.

That time there was a dog, but she didn’t react, at night she doesn’t even react to my friends, at whom she barks during the day. And the cat slept with me then like dead. I need to save light)) and get rid of fears.

m.woman.ru