Sleep walker

Kroten is a sleep walker. He is a sleep talker. He is a sleep comedian.

It took us a long time to figure out that he was not awake for our late night interactions. I started to understand the oddities when he was about 3 or 4 years old. One night he was screaming and crying in bed. He was acting like he was being tortured or murdered. I assumed he had just woke from a bad dream. I tried and tried to console him and nothing worked. A few minutes later, like a light switch, he stopped crying, looked me straight in the eye and said as happy as could be "Hi Mommy. " it was one of the creepiest things ever, something straight out of a horror movie. It was at that point that I realized, he wasn't awake for the crying portion of that interaction and he didn't even remember being  upset.

He is 8 now and still had these episodes or night terrors about twice a month on average. I can tell now by his breathing, his mannerisms and even the gloss in his eyes if he is awake or not.

A few weeks ago he came out of his room and while squating and standing alternately he said "I don't know where to sit."

One night he ran from his room to the front door, like he was going to leave. That was scary.

Occasional he will wake up crying or panting like he just ran a mile. He will sometimes say things like, "help me" or " make it stop" the scary night terrors break my mommy heart. And he doesn't remember anything after or the next day, so he can't even tell us about his crazy adventures.

Tonight was probably the best one I have seen so far. I was laughing out loud.  I heard commotion in his room and his normal heavy, I'm not awake,  breathing. When I came into the room, he had no pants on and he was trying to wrap his quilt around his waist. He said, "I need help, I can't get it to stay on." I helped him back in bed and asked him if he wanted pants on, he said "I tried." As I helped him put them on he said "why are those off?" Meaning he had woken up in the process of getting back in bed.

The doctor advised us to interact with him as little as possible, put him back in bed and let the dream play out. We are not supposed to wake him up and we're not supposed to talk about it the next day. All of those things are super hard, especially when he does funny things or is acting really scared.

I sure hope he grows out of it. I hope he never goes outside or pees in my kitchen pots. If I am ever murdered in the middle of the night, tell the cops that he wasn't awake.