She's a Sleep Walker

How do you "treat" sleep walking?

I think over the past few days we've been noticing a major pattern with S and her suddenly-strange sleep habits. And it looks like sleep walking is a big culprit.

Although its not the only reason she is out and about at night time, it surely explains some of the behavior.

The other night, as we were in the livingroom, with the hallway door closed, watching a movie, I started to hear a scratching noise. Followed by "Mommy ... can you let me in?"

She had walked out of bed and was still half asleep. [It didn't help that we were watching a horror movie, and it felt like the scratching bit was coming to real life!!]

I put her back to bed, closed the hallway door again, and went back to the movie.

A while later, as we were in our room getting ready for bed, I heard her calling out for me. In the dark, I went to find her, turning on the living room light in the process. I couldn't see her anywhere, but as I got farther down the hallway, I noticed where she was: she had gone into her brother's room.

Luckily she hadn't woken him up!

When I asked her what she was doing, she replied, "I wanted L to play with me!" She had no idea what time it was, where she really was, or that she was even out of her room, for the most part. I quickly and quietly put her back to bed.

And this isn't the only occasion its happened on, either. Its been happening more often than not lately.

We have a small plan of action.

I no longer am mad when I find her curled up asleep on my bedroom floor. I simply scoop her up, rock her for a few moments, and put her back in her bed. Her getting out as soon as we put her to bed? Thats a completely different story/issue.

We plan on getting a chain lock for the top of our back door, so we aren't worrying about her getting out of the house in the middle of the night and wandering off. I've lost sleep too many nights worrying about the what-ifs.

And I'm getting a baby gate to put in her doorway. She'll still be able to get out of her room: she has a door into her bathroom, and another door from the bathroom into the playroom, and then living room. She'll still be able to come to my room if she needs me, or call out for me, too. But at least she won't continue going into her brother's room and waking him up to play.

And hopefully, this sleep walking is just a little phase and doesn't last forever.

At least she's not sleeping in bed with us, right?!