TORONTO — Did you sleepwalk when you were a kid? Still do it occasionally? If so, chances are your children will do it too.
A new study adds support to the growing belief that behaviours like sleepwalking and sleep terrors run in families.
Researchers at Montreal's Centre for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine report that the offspring of parents with a history of sleepwalking are between three and seven times more likely to sleepwalk than other children.
The likelihood rises if both parents are or were sleepwalkers.
The work also draws a link between sleep terrors and sleepwalking, suggesting as many as one-third of children who had night terrors when they were very young will have sleepwalking incidences later.
The findings are published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
