All children need the right amount of sleep each night for their overall development, emotional regulation, psychological stability, and physical growth, so it’s perfectly natural for parents to worry when their child struggles to sleep.
Anxiety-fueled sleep issues are not uncommon for adopted children, making bedtime all the more challenging to battle every night.
So, how do you help an adopted child stop feeling so anxious at night? What’s the source of their sleep anxiety? Can you comfort them? If so, how?
Child Sleep Anxiety Symptoms
Your adopted child likely has sleep anxiety if they frequently:
- Refuse or delay getting into bed (e.g., run away into another room, chit-chat with you, cry, scream, kick, etc.).
- Try to sleep in your bed with you/refuse to sleep alone.
- Wake you up/keep you up on purpose so they aren’t awake alone.
- Refuse to get ready for bed (take a bath, put on PJs, brush teeth, etc.).
- Become panicked/emotional at night or only at night time, especially after others have gone to sleep or when they announce that they’re heading to bed.
- Worry about potential break-ins, deaths, being abandoned, or other harm that could occur at night/during sleep (this is more common for older children and adolescents with sleep anxiety).
- Express fear of the dark or what could be hiding in it.
Why Is My Child So Anxious at Bedtime?
You would do anything to help your child overcome their sleep anxiety, so what’s causing it?
More often than not, for adopted children, their sleep anxiety is rooted in traumas that occurred prior to being adopted, involving abandonment, abuse, neglect, grief, or violence. It is with these cases that parents see a lot of their adopted kids’ bedtime anxiety centering around avoidance of sleeping alone or being the only one awake.
Additionally, suddenly moving to a new environment to live with unfamiliar people would be scary for anyone at any age. You probably wouldn’t sleep well if it happened to you—at least not until you later had your safety assured. Think of how much scarier that would be to a child with a traumatic past.
Your adoptive child is also forming a new bond with you, and before you, they may never have received the type of attention, love, and consistent care that you now provide. It’s common in these cases, especially for young children, toddlers, and babies, to refuse to go to sleep in a different room or bed from where you are because they are anxious when they’re physically separated from you.
Fear at bedtime is not always trauma-rooted anxiety; nighttime itself can just be scary for kids because they’re afraid of the dark. However, adding fears on top of anxiety and trauma creates a combination that would cause many children to refuse sleep.
How to Help Your Child Overcome Sleep Anxiety
With trauma as the source of your child’s sleep anxiety, addressing it requires a lot of time, patience, and showing your real, unconditional love.
Sometimes, the anxiety symptoms are a good clue about how to be comforting. If your child refuses to sleep alone, you could try temporarily cosleeping for a time, then having them sleep on a sleeping bag or blanket pallet next to your bed for a few nights, then slowly moving the pallet/sleeping bag closer to their room until it is on their bed. This process could take months, but it works for many families. If they become anxious again once you move them out of sight, see if they would feel better with a baby monitor in their room for you to check in on them.
Some parents try cosleeping, but only until their child falls asleep, then they move to their own bed.
You should also unpack the issue with your child in an age-appropriate therapy setting. For toddlers and younger kids, play therapy can be highly insightful into how they feel about sleep. For adolescents, seeing a counseling professional can be both comforting and help them identify and untangle the anxiety-provoking traumas.
It’s also important to note that the anxiety can be more than situational from their trauma; it could be that your child has generalized anxiety (from trauma, genetics, or something else), and bedtime is just one of their many worries. In these cases, seeing a pediatric psychiatrist and getting anxiety medication for your child may be worth looking into for their sleep and overall health.
Healing Support for Children With Trauma-Related Sleep Anxiety
We’ve welcomed many children into our Children’s Home who were struggling with sleep anxiety due to traumas they faced before living here.
From experience, we know counseling and trying different sleeping arrangements are helpful methods for many children with sleep anxiety. However, the most important things that you can give your child to help them heal from trauma are compassion, consistency, unconditional love, encouragement, patience, and stability. You can’t just wish away the trauma they went through before joining your family, and your support is instrumental in their healing journey.
At the Alabama Free Will Baptist Children’s Home, we offer a haven and a home to children struggling with life’s circumstances, as well as counseling services for local families in Alabama.
Our low-cost counseling services are for local families who need financial support for professional counseling. For more information about our counseling services or advice on supporting children with trauma, please reach out to us today.