Sleep Terrors, Sleepwalking and Bedwetting: The Effect of Naps
![](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwp.drgreene.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FSleep-Terrors-Sleepwalking-and-Bedwetting-The-Effect-of-Naps.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
Sleep terrors, sleepwalking, and bedwetting all fit into the category of “partial-arousal parasomnias”. Although there is a genetic predisposition to each of these conditions, a report at the 2001 annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies suggests that some children with these conditions respond dramatically to a small increase in total sleep time –sometimes as little as 1/2 an hour a day.
Children with sleep terrors and sleepwalking experienced rapid and impressive improvement after adding a short daily nap, moving bedtime ahead, or delaying wake-up time in the morning. The average increase in total sleep was 1 hour, 25 minutes. With this change even children who had needed medicines to control these conditions were able to sleep without disturbance.
I suspect that children who are bedwetting would have similar experiences, and have seen evidence of this again and again in children I know.