Age related bedtime fears

Children’s bedtime fears often change as they grow, and their age can give you clues about what’s worrying them.

Younger children are more likely to be scared of things from their imagination — like monsters, shadows, or creatures under the bed.

Older children tend to worry about more realistic things, such as burglars, scary people, or something bad happening to their family.

Understanding the root of your child’s fears can help you respond in a way that feels both age-appropriate and very reassuring to them.

 

Older children’s fears are usually based on realistic things such as burglars, scary people, bad things happening to the family etc. 

Stress levels at home can make normal bedtime fears worse. This is because an anxious parent, or a tense atmosphere can cause them to feel emotional or worried, even before bedtime.

Sometimes fears, scary thoughts and worries can lead a child into a feeling of separation anxiety, or fear of being left alone. 

It can be tricky to work out if your child is truly scared or if their resistance to go to bed is due to other things such as delayed sleep onset. Or are they simply resisting bedtime because they are enjoying playing, or watching TV?

Children quickly come to realise that if they say they are scared, you are more likely to be sympathetic. Naturally, you should give them the benefit of the doubt, and if they say that they are scared, you need to respond in the right way. That way may not necessarily mean staying beside them as they go to sleep.

Studies have shown that often children who have bedtime fears or are scared in the night don’t tell their parents.

What if your child is not crying at bedtime or telling you that they are frightened? There are some signs to look out for that show they might be scared about separating from you and going to sleep.

Signs of children’s bedtime fears

• Saying they’re not tired.

• Telling you that they feel poorly – and actually feeling poorly sometimes – with tummy ache/upset or headaches. Young children can experience genuine physical signs of anxiety – just as adults do.

• Delaying tactics such as needing a drink/feeling hungry/haven’t got the right pyjamas on.

• Curtain calls – where they keep coming to find you and check that you’re still there. They might be hoping that you’ll come and stay with them as they go to sleep.

• Sleeping better when they share a room with someone else [on holiday for example.]

Many of these signs can be typical of a tired child who is just pushing the limits. If your child is resisting bedtime and is also oppositional with other things non sleep-related things, their night-time behaviour is probably just part of a bigger picture of how they are at the moment.

 

Whether your child is genuinely scared at bedtime or simply pushing against the boundaries, your approach to dealing with it should be exactly the same. Try to be calm and kind with a gentle authority. This will let them know that they are safe. If you can handle bed-time fears and resistance in a positive way,  you will be better able to help them with other challenges too.

Putting a scared child to bed

 

Don’t!

Look under their bed/wardrobe/windowsill to check that there are no monsters there. Long term, this won’t help with children’s bedtime fears.

Use imaginary monster killer spray in the room before they go to sleep.

Tell them things that give truth to the existence of fictitious creatures, such as, “No bad fairies are coming tonight because we haven’t invited them!” Or “Mummy and daddy will keep the dragons away from you!”

Sit or lie beside them, sit inside or just outside their room as they go to sleep.

Let them have a screen device in their bed to distract them.

The first three of these strategies, whilst they might help in the short term, will only tell a child that their fears are real. Otherwise why would you be checking under the bed and staying with them for protection? Screens in bed are a really bad idea, as they delay sleep onset and impair the quality of their sleep, by restricting the production of the sleep hormone, melatonin.

Do!

♥ Listen to their fears and show them that you care about how they feel.

♥ Explain that monsters/bad fairies and so on are pretend and are only in books, films and other fictional situations.

♥ Let them know, if they are old enough to understand, that night-time worrying is normal for children.

♥ Stay calm and demonstrate to them that they are in your safe hands.

♥ Tell them over and over that you are close by, can hear them, will keep them safe and nothing bad will happen.

♥ Encourage them to repeat positive statements, “I am safe in my bed!” “I’m not scared!” “Monsters are not in real life!” Get them to say these statements out loud.

♥ Let them have a night light on/their bedroom door semi-open/a touch light/torch or similar. Nightlights should be red, to encourage melatonin production.

♥ Leave their bedroom door open a little bit, so they know you can hear them.

♥ Encourage comfort/transitional objects such as a favourite teddy or blanket.

♥ Allow room sharing with a sibling/s if that’s practical and works for you.

♥ Consider letting them have a [quiet] pet in the bedroom if they think it would help. [Not like my youngest daughter, whose hamster whizzing round on its wheel kept the whole family awake.]

♥ Teach an older child some simple relaxation/distraction/ techniques such as the 3-3-3 rule.

♥ Ask them to stay in their bed and reassure them that you will go in and check them regularly. Do go back reliably and frequently, rather than have them leave the room to find you. If they call out for you, call back and let them know you’ll be coming to them soon. When you do go back, always praise them for waiting.

♥ Give rewards in the morning for sleeping alone, staying in their bed or being brave.

Books & media

Look at some of the wonderfully reassuring children’s books available which address and help with bedtime fears. A good example is Franklin in the Dark, by Paulette Bourgeois. 

 

Avoid scary stories if your child is sensitive to them. Another book recommendation is What a Day by Emma Ballantine & Mark Strepan. [I wrote the bedtime routine advice for this lovely book about mindfulness for children!]

As much as you can, supervise what they see on TV or hear on the radio. If they see or hear anything distressing, make sure that you take time to talk about it and put it into context, “The reason that that has made it onto TV is because things like that happen so rarely” or “Things like that don’t happen in our street.”

Talking out children’s bedtime fears

Encourage your child to talk about their bedtime fears if they can. Talking will make things feel better rather than worse. Listen and reassure them but don’t reinforce or give truth to their fear. Respond with something like, “That’s a scary thing that you’re thinking, but nothing bad like that can ever happen to you here, and it’s safe for you to go to sleep.”

Some parents worry that talking about fears will make them worse — but that’s not the case.

In fact, encouraging your child to talk about what’s worrying them can be really helpful. Saying fears out loud takes away some of their power, even if the fear doesn’t disappear completely.

It’s true that over-reassuring can sometimes make unlikely fears seem more real, so it’s important to stay calm and matter-of-fact.

But don’t be afraid to bring up the subject. Letting your child know it’s safe to talk about their worries is a powerful step toward helping them feel secure.

Managing their thoughts

Encourage your child to describe any pictures or images they see in their mind when they’re feeling scared at bedtime. Once they’ve shared what they imagine, you can gently help them change those scary images into something much less threatening — or even funny or kind.

For example, if they picture a scary man with a knife or a slimy monster, you could say, “What if you used your magic wand or superpower to change that picture?” Help them turn it into something like a kind man holding a bunch of flowers, or a beautiful horse dripping with raindrops instead of slime.

This simple technique can be really effective — not just at bedtime, but also for helping them feel less scared after a bad dream.

With an older child, if their thoughts and fears are grounded in reality [e.g intruders] you can still help them to replace the bad thought with a good thought. Then ask them to speak the thought aloud. You can encourage them to SAY, “That’s just the neighbour putting something in his bin!” Or “That’s only the stairs creaking – you’d creak if you’d been walked on all day!” If they say it a few times, it will become a new and less frightening thought.

Also, as a parent, it might help you to recognise that it is the thought in your child’s head that causes the feeling of fear. This feeling can include real physical symptoms such as tummy ache, nausea, headache and diarrhoea. If you can help them to change the thought, you can often ease their unwanted feeling.

Don’t put a worried child to bed too early!

On a very practical note, with all young children who have bedtime fears, it is important not to put them to bed too early. If they go to bed with energy to spare, they will spend that time worrying. With most young children, a huge build up of sleep pressure, leading to extreme sleepiness will over ride fear and anxiety. Get them into the habit of getting into bed and falling to sleep quickly, even if at first it is at a time that you consider to be way too late for them. Then you can then gradually bring their bedtime forward. You do this when they start to fall asleep easily and within a few minutes of going to bed.

Further help

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