Goodnight, Sleep Tight: How to help young children cope with nighttime fears

My 3 1/2 -year-old has started to get up in the middle of the night after saying he had a bad dream. He comes into our room and wants to sleep with us.  We’ve been able to get him back into his bed, but he won’t let us leave until he falls back to sleep. Some nights that can take over an hour, and he often gets up multiple times in a night. No one is getting enough sleep and we are all very cranky. We want to be sensitive to his fears but at the same time help everyone get more sleep.

This is a very common phenomenon starting at around 3 years, as this is the age at which children’s imaginations really start to take off. At the same time, they don’t have a very firm grasp on the difference between fantasy and reality. This translates into the development of fears: the monster from the book may appear in their bedroom; the snake in the TV show about animals might climb through their window. Naturally, these fears are more likely to emerge at night when the lights are off and children are alone. Understandably, most parents feel it would be harmful to leave a child when she is frightened.

But this is one of those parenting moments when what is best for the child is not necessarily consistent with our impulses; when the most effective strategy, in this case, for helping a child learn to cope with her fears, is counter-intuitive. We think that staying with children until they fall back to sleep is the best and most loving thing to do. But in fact, allowing a child to sleep in your bed or staying with her until she falls back to sleep after having a bad dream, inadvertently confirms your child’s belief that there is really something to be afraid of and that she is only okay if you are with her; that she is not safe on her own. 

The only way children (or any of us) get over their fears is by living through them and experiencing that the fears are unfounded. For example, when a child finally goes down the big slide he was terrified of and sees that he survived; or, when a child makes it through and thrives by the end of the first week of preschool after screaming for dear life not to be left in this strange, scary place.  At nighttime the same rules apply: your child needs to experience that the fears in his head are not real and that he is okay on his own. He doesn’t need you to be with him to be safe. We don’t want to set kids up to think that they can’t handle these feelings and that they can only cope if you are with them, which will not always be the case. We want to empower them with the tools and confidence to master these fears. This is very important to keep in mind, because if you think that you are hurting your child by not physically being with him as he works through his fears, it will be very difficult to follow through with any plan that entails setting some limits and boundaries around sleep. Note that research shows that allowing children to learn to sleep on their own is growth-promoting (“positive stress”) and not harmful. (Here is a good piece on myths/facts about sleep training.)

The other factor to keep in mind is that young children are very clever. They quickly put two and two together: saying they had a bad dream results in a lot of attention in the middle of night and often lands them a spot in their parents’ bed. This can take on a life of its own and lead to major sleep deprivation for parent and child which has its own set of negative consequences.

The following strategies can be helpful in making a plan for how to deal with middle-of-the-night wakings: