Any age foster child can have sleeping issues. Some foster children have night terrors or nightmares because of the abuse they share. Night terrors can be a very scary experience for the child and for the foster parent that may not have knowledge of them. The child wakes up screaming or crying, they also can be hitting or fighting against you trying to comfort them. It is like they are experiencing the abuse all over again. Some children relive the abuse in the nightmares, so they may not want to sleep.

For some foster children when it is nighttime, in the darkness the horror of their abuse comes out. Some sexual abusers wait for the darkness to go lurking in the child’s bedroom to molest and violate that child. So for foster children nighttime and the darkness is part of the abuse, it is unsafe, and to some the monsters (predators) do come out. Bedtime and darkness can trigger past memories and can lead to a difficult bedtime. It can take a long time for the foster child to realize that the monsters are not in the foster home.

Some foster children do not even have the concept of bedtime or that the rest of us sleep at nighttime. Some foster children’s internal clocks are not in synch because of neglect of the biological parents. It is not uncommon for foster children to be left alone at night, to see biological parents or other adults doing drugs, to see domestic violence, etc. Some parents even take their children to drug houses while they get high. The children are left to care for themselves in a strange place. They are put in a position of more physical or sexual abuse by other drug addicts.

Some children have never slept alone so this can be a huge scary thing for them. Foster parents can spend some restless nights comforting foster children or sitting with them until they fall to sleep.

More reading:

Medicating Foster Children

Medicating Foster Children - The Reasons

Are Foster Parents Doing It for the Money?