Will.Not.Go.To.Bed

[aschmied]

Okay, please help me here ladies and gents.
DD has always been tough to get to sleep. The only ways she could fall asleep until she was 2 was in the car or nursing. After that, she mastered snuggling to sleep. Getting her to sleep at night has always been hard, though.

Things, however, are at a point right now that I really am not handling well. Right now we get ready for bed, read for a while while she drinks her milk, brush teeth, one last story, lights out. Then, in theory, we snuggle her to sleep. That used to be true, too. For a while after she dropped her nap, that was fast, like 10 minutes. Before dropping her nap, though, and now, it was and is more like 45 minutes. Yes, she IS tired. Before the nap drop, maybe not, and it was as much as 1.5 hours.

Anyway, the new scenario looks like the same right up until the snuggling. Then she'll start jumping around, getting off the bed, running around the house, anything. I try and get her to stay on the bed, but to do that requires physically holding her there. Same for the room. This, not surprisingly makes for one very unhappy little girl, and mom. I HATE restraining her, and it feels wrong.

All of this is bad enough when DH is home and can be holding the baby (who sleeps horribly in the evening, so can't be safely asleep in a crib or something while I deal with DD) but is a disaster when he isn't. For the last two nights, DD has at some point started hitting DS and I, and I have retreated out of her room explaining that I will not stay where I am being hurt, and I will not leave the baby to be hurt either, and put a gate up in her door, so that she can see out but in theory can't get out. (She'd never encountered one before, but almost climbed over this evening.) This flips her out, and ends up with her calming down, but because it scares her. NOT what I want. Oh, and DS is crying pitifully by this time, because HE wants to be asleep.

She's scared of the dark (there is a night light on), and scared of being alone at night. She's terrified of ghosts, and she imagines scary things all the time. Oh, before anyone suggests it, the only TV/videos she watches is Signing Time maybe once every other week.

It's like she needs a good crying fit to fall asleep, but she just winds herself up tighter and tighter. I've tried talking to her about what she needs to help herself fall asleep, but she won't engage on the subject, or says things like "I just need to stay up forever."

Heeeeelllllppp. Someone have a good idea for us! (Sorry for the novella.)

[grantskismom+1]

This is a HUGE problem for us as well. My 3 year old has always had major problems with sleep.

I take a "you've got to meet me half way approach." I have compassion for being afraid of the dark or not wanting to sleep and as his mother I'll be there every night to help him through but I'm not going to be taken advantage of (which is what my son tends to do).

There are two methods I use. First, if he's trying to stall bedtime with a list of demands I do whatever I can to annoy the heck out of him. My son will demand water (not just water but FRESH water ). When I go to him I give him a sip and then I say, "You look like you need another sip. Here have another. One more. No, you need another sip. Come on, take another sip. How about another sip?" Finally he'll get so annoyed with me that he'll just go to bed. I don't know if that gentle discipline or not but it helps to keep the peace.

Second, I will offer all the snuggling and comfort at bedtime as I can but the second he starts screwing around I'm outta there! If he's sleeping in our bed and starts screwing around he gets kicked out. That's all there is to it.

[Kessed]

When is she going to bed? Is it too early? Too late?

How much input does she get into the 'routine'? I live with my niece when she was 2 to 3. And what worked well for all of us (any one of the 4 of us could put her to bed) was for her to come up with the routine. We all kind of sat around and asked her, and compromised on what was going to happen.

Then we made a short phrase which summed it up. "First we read 1 book, then we sing 1 song, then you ask 2 why questions, then it's time to sleep."

And we stuck to that. We'd talk about what was going to happen each night - saying the phrase. Then after each one we'd kind of verbally check it off the list. When it was time for her to go to sleep we'd turn off the room light (leaving the night light on) and then we'd set the timer in the kitchen for 15 minutes. The agreement was that if she was still awake in 15 minutes - then we'd talk. Sometimes she would say that she just wasn't sleepy (which is VERY different from tired) and we'd let her get up. Other days she'd want to try again with a different set of stuffies. Other nights she'd want another story. And we'd be 'reasonably' accommodating.

And she was a really hard one to get to sleep. Until we all came up with this - the only way to get her to sleep was to drive for ~30 in the car... I'm serious.

But she after we let her be a part of the process - she really liked it.

[hempmama]

My big suggestion is that often kids really need routine in order to fully relax the way they need to to sleep. Especially for a fearful, imaginative child, I imagine she needs a huge feeling of security to relax. That can either be you or the environment. How is the routine? Is it always at the same time, with the same elements in the same order? That might be worth a shot- making it very, very rigid, for lack of a better word.

I also try to figure out what I want from them around bedtime. Have you ever read Ellen Sattyr on food(Child of Mine) for children? She says it is your job as a parent to offer them healthy choices; it's their job to eat it. I take the same approach for sleep- it is my job to offer a healthy environment for sleep; it's their job to actually fall asleep. Sometimes that helps me when they're obviously staying up too late out of being-three-ness. I also try telling them they don't have to go to sleep, but they do need to pretend to sleep. Just telling them they need to lie down and relax is too abstract, I think, but if I can convince them to pretend to sleep, generally they'll relax enough to actually fall asleep.

I don't really use rewards or anything around sleeping, but I will tell them that "Mommy needs some space right now. You need to pretend to sleep, and I will come check on you in a while." Or a particular number of minutes, or whatever- at the end of a long day, this can often be really true, and letting myself get into a power struggle over bedtime really frazzles me and uses up energy I don't really have to spare at that point. I would probably try to drop the snuggle to sleep for a while since bedtime has become so fraught- she has probably realized that time passes while she sleeps, and you leave, which doesn't help her wind down. Maybe start by sitting outside her room and reading while she reads/pretends to sleep in her bed?

[aschmied]

nak

Originally Posted by Kessed

When is she going to bed? Is it too early? Too late?

How much input does she get into the 'routine'? I live with my niece when she was 2 to 3. And what worked well for all of us (any one of the 4 of us could put her to bed) was for her to come up with the routine. We all kind of sat around and asked her, and compromised on what was going to happen.

I think we have it about right time wise. She always wakes up around 6, so we counted backwards. That makes it an uncomfortably early bed time for us, but when she does go down, it works just right. When she doesn't she's tired the next day.

As for the input to the routine, this was one of the things that was making me NUTS. I kept TRYING to get her to give me input, but she wouldn't. I think that the whole thing was too stressful for her, but I was trying to make it less so.

Originally Posted by hempmama

My big suggestion is that often kids really need routine in order to fully relax the way they need to to sleep. Especially for a fearful, imaginative child, I imagine she needs a huge feeling of security to relax. That can either be you or the environment. How is the routine? Is it always at the same time, with the same elements in the same order? That might be worth a shot- making it very, very rigid, for lack of a better word.

I also try to figure out what I want from them around bedtime. Have you ever read Ellen Sattyr on food(Child of Mine) for children? She says it is your job as a parent to offer them healthy choices; it's their job to eat it. I take the same approach for sleep- it is my job to offer a healthy environment for sleep; it's their job to actually fall asleep. Sometimes that helps me when they're obviously staying up too late out of being-three-ness. I also try telling them they don't have to go to sleep, but they do need to pretend to sleep. Just telling them they need to lie down and relax is too abstract, I think, but if I can convince them to pretend to sleep, generally they'll relax enough to actually fall asleep.

I don't really use rewards or anything around sleeping, but I will tell them that "Mommy needs some space right now. You need to pretend to sleep, and I will come check on you in a while." Or a particular number of minutes, or whatever- at the end of a long day, this can often be really true, and letting myself get into a power struggle over bedtime really frazzles me and uses up energy I don't really have to spare at that point. I would probably try to drop the snuggle to sleep for a while since bedtime has become so fraught- she has probably realized that time passes while she sleeps, and you leave, which doesn't help her wind down. Maybe start by sitting outside her room and reading while she reads/pretends to sleep in her bed?

This is a good set of points. I KNOW that she goes to sleep better if I am not there, but I can't figure out how to disengage. She gets sooo upset if I leave her. However, I hit on trying to make her a little nest in a tent that she can zip up. We'll try that tonight. I've explained that the tent is made of special anti-ghost and anti-scary animal fabric. She can zip and unzip, so she's not "trapped". And *I* don't fit in there, so I'll just be nearby. If it works, it could be huge.

Luckily, Daddy will be home by bedtime tonight, so I can focus on her. It's never as bad when I don't have to split my attention.

[Magella]

What helps her relax? Can you begin some kind of relaxing ritual before the bedtime routine? Try some new things that might help her relax when it's time to get in bed? I found that my child couldn't fall asleep with me there, but still needed my help relaxing to the point where she was ready and able to fall asleep-only then could I leave. She likes massages, a certain style of story that is basically guided imagery, instead of music she listens to recordings of nature sounds (rivers, rain, etc.), having us "draw" letters/pictures on her back with our fingers. It helps for her to have a shower/bath about an hour or so before bedtime (something about being warm then cooling off helps our bodies get ready for sleep-there's an explanation about that in the book I recommend below, iirc). It helps to keep all activities quiet(ish) and calming for at least an hour before bed. And for my anxious child, it really helped to address anxiety during the daytime as best we could-talking about what's real and what isn't, what anxiety is, why we get scared of the dark & how so many kids are afraid of the dark, practicing relaxing, reducing stress overall as best we could.

Sleepless In America is a great book about kids and sleep, and I found that it had a lot of helpful and gentle ideas for us when it came to helping my anxious, difficult-to-get-to sleep child wind down, relax, and begin to enjoy bedtime.

Also, could any of this newer struggle have to do with her still adjusting to having a new sibling?

[dubfam]

My ds has a really tough time as well.

:

[aschmied]

Thanks, Sledg. Good ideas, as always! I've been struggling to come up with a new bedtime routine, as book reading is, I believe, counterproductive for this particular kid. It just gets her mind to ticking over even faster. Alas, I know where THAT trait comes from. It is, however, a deeply beloved bedtime routine. The idea of missing her bedtime stories is enough to elicit wide-eyed anxious behavior. Maybe I can add in something and slowly shave the amount of time on the bedtime stories.

I'll pick up the book, certainly. I like Kurcinka, and unless something drastic happens, we're looking at ongoing sleep issues for her. It's been a long slog getting her sleeping reasonably well at night as long as I am there. She was an hourly nurser until 2....

[Magella]

So this has always struck me as kind of interesting/weird, but it may help you: with my dd reading books at bedtime definitely made things worse (as if it prevented her from winding down, and instead, as you said, made her busy-brain worse), *but* telling made up stories to her with the lights out while laying down with her totally relaxed her. Every time. (As long as it had a calming, not funny or exciting theme. Also, I used a soft, slow voice that I attempted to make as soothing/relaxing as possible. Often dd would choose if it was going to be about a fairy, or a butterfly, or whatever. And often the story was that she was the fairy/etc. flying around, looking at all the beautiful things in the world, until she got tired and fell asleep. My ds likes these kinds of stories too, where he's a space explorer taking off in his ship, seeing all the stars and planets, how beautiful they all are, then flying his ship back down, down, down to earth where he falls asleep. Or he finds a dragon, and then it's sort of the same thing. We can change it up a lot, finding themes they like, and still make it soothing and relaxing. They love it.)

So, maybe you don't have to phase out bedtime stories altogether, just bedtime books.

Also, a book before going up to get ready for bed works here. For whatever reason, this didn't usually seem to make bedtime worse.

[BonMaman]

gotta can't read all posts now, but want to find this thread again...

[aschmied]

A solution found we hope!

Last night while DD had finally falling asleep, after another awful bedtime, I did some serious reflecting on our options. Something radical needed to happen. As I saw it, there were two main overall methods:
1) Let her decide when to go to bed. This would undoubtedly be horrid for a while, but the hope woukd be that she would learn to regulate herself.
2) Hold the line on bedtime, and find something, somehow, that works.

#1 appealed to me, but I couldn't bring myself to nelieve it would work. She's fought sleep since long before she knew what it was. She stayed awake for 3 hours after being born, just looking around....
So #2 it was. So what settles my sweet girl? she'll sit still for hours to read, but it doesn't relax her. I stalled out. I couldn't figure out what might work. A car ride, sure, but there I wouldn't go, and shed fight it anyway. Then it struck me! A WALK. Give her the choice of stroller or ergo, and just go for a walk.

It was FABULOUS. She had one minor tantrum that she wanted to take her run bike, but then ran and got in the stroller. I had a wonderful 15 minute walk, then carried my sleeping little girl to her bed. I can make this work when DH isn't home, as I can easily take both kids. Weather might be an issue, but probably not for months thanks to where I live. Oh, it won't always be perfect, but nothing is....