If the child is agitated, excited or acting in a manner to injure themselves during the sleep walking, then it may be a sign of emotional distress.
The same applies to adults. Many sleep walkers perform complex acts without coming to harm.
A young Ponsmouth boy drove his father’s car 27 miles before waking in Southampton.
The police checked his story and did not charge him. But sometimes severe injury is inflicted either upon themselves or others. During a dream phone-in on London Broadcasting Company, a man told me his experience of smashing through a glass window, cutting an artery and nearly bleeding to death. In America and England homicidal acts have been committed while the person claimed to be sleepwalking, and the people involved were acquitted of murder.
Because of such powerful activity during sleep, many people who experience this type of sleep walking are worried about what they might do to a partner sleeping next to them.
In most cases one wakes as the contact is made, or the involved person wakes one, but the element of risk cannot be denied. Where such worry exists, hope can be gained by understanding what was observed with many men who began to sleep walk after war combat. In their cases the movements, speech and emotions were observably connected with trauma occurring during their war experience.
The self regulatory process in dreams was thereby attempting to release the tension, horror or emotional pain of the events. Where these emotions could be met consciously, perhaps with the help of a psychotherapist, the sleep movements stopped. This suggests that dramatic activity while sleep walking has similar roots, and can be dealt with. [1]