For the mother and the expert advise.
My son began sleeping in our bed just after he turned 4. At first it was an occasional thing in the middle of the night he would come up to our room crying hysterically, we thought it was night terrors and we would try to get him back to sleep in his bed but he would just scream and sweat profusely - it was so frightening that we would fall asleep either with him on his bedroom floor or because of sheer exhaustion on both our parts we let him come into our room. On the occasion that he would fall asleep in his bed and we were still awake we'ld attempt to sneak back to our room. He would wake within minutes and begin screaming again. We eventually got so tired of staying up for hours on end or falling asleep on the floor in his room that we would give up and let him sleep in our room. On good nights we would get about 6 hrs of sleep. The "terrors" got worse and worse. We took him to a sleep study, but he was so frightened of sleeping in the bed by himself - even though I was two feet from him - that he didn't fall asleep the entire night - he was sweating so bad from panic they had to change wires several times. We had him evaluated by a psychologist, he is still under the care of. There was no previous tramatic events leading up to this. He insists he sees shadows and figures at night and this is why he can't sleep by himself. He has been diagnosed with OCD and severe anxiety. We have to give him a tranquilizer at night for him to sleep now as the lack of sleep began to affect his school work and health.