9yr affraid to go to sleep but not telling us why

[msgman]

I have a 9yr old boy (Cody) that is affraid to go to sleep. He isn't telling us if there is anything wrong. He complains that he can't go to sleep and it seems that any little thing makes him affraid. He says that he is scared. It seems like anxiety. He does have a mild touch of Aspergers. I need to know if this is normal and it is really bothering us. We are getting tired of him every night coming to us about 30 minutes to an hour after we put him to bed. He has two younger brothers and they are fine. The next younger has Aspergers really bad and is on some anti-anxiety meds so he can control his own behavior. I am wondering if we need to put Cody on some anti-anxiety meds now.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

John in Colorado

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

If this is the only problematic behavior I would not advise use of medication at this point. Rather, try to handle it behaviorally, perhaps by utilizing a straightforward incentive system (the reward would be earned by staying in his bed). Often children with such a worry are not able to articulate any specific reason - they simply feel frightened. So, it's likely he's not holding anything back. In fact, if we press such kids for specific reasons, they'll often comcoct something in order to satisfy the question. Such fears are often associated with children who display diagnoses along the PDD spectrum, but by no means are such behaviors confined to that population. I'd stick with a behavioral approach and see where that leads you. Let us know.

[msgman]

We will work on the behavior mod. He did stay in bed lastnight. I will let everyone know as the time goes on. We did find out yesterday that there was a slumber party for a bunch of boys and most of them from the same class as my son had such a fear about sleeping in the basement of hosting house. The mother didn't understand where the fear was coming from. Is this possibly a developmental thing at this age? The others boys were 9 and 10. Thank you for your information.

John

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

No, it's not particularly common at this age per se, though often kids are at the beginning of doing sleepovers and can be a little antsy about it. The group of them likely would have been fine in a different context. Sleeping in basements or attic areas generates concerns that sleeping in other areas does not. And of course there is the matter of contagion with a group of latency-age children. If one child voices some worry or alarm it's quite easy for the others to be influenced as well. Also, the comfort of sleeping at others' houses is also influenced by how much experience the kids have had. This tends to be the age at which such sleepovers are starting to occur, so it's not necessarily a familiar experience to them.