6 year old waking at night. At my wits end. Please help me

[Bigpinksweater]

My 6 year old is waking 2-4 times a night and I am absolutely broken.

A bit of history - she started sleeping through at 1, but then went through a very long and hideous nursery illness phase and was ill practically every other week for 2 years, so obviously I got no sleep then. Just as she shook this off, I got pregnant with DS, so another year of no sleep entailed. During this year DP moved into DD’s room so I could breastfeed DS, as not sleeping is hazardous in his job.

Just as DS started sleeping through at 18 months, DP moved back into our bedroom and DD started waking up again after a good couple of years of sleeping solidly for 10 or even 12 hours a night. At first it was just one wake in the early hours, she would jump in with us and drop off so it wasn’t too much of an issue.

Slowly but surely over the months this has increased, last night was the worst yet. She woke up 1 hour after falling asleep, then every 2/3 hours until DS woke at 5am then we were all up for the day.

I am on my knees with exhaustion after 6 years of broken sleep. I have a high level chronic health problem requiring multiple meds and this has been exacerbated by the exhaustion to the extent I’m signed off work and terrified of losing my job.

Letting her sleep in our bed isn’t an option. She wants to chat, sleep talks, rolls around, and continues to wake up. We’ve tried sleeping on her floor on an airbed (1 of us) but she climbs in with us and wakes us up that way.

She has no SEN, very little screens, a very healthy low sugar diet, gets lots of fresh air every day and has had no significant life events which could have triggered this off. She has a solid bedtime routine with bath, milk, stories. She doesn’t complain of pain, snore, or have nightmares.

Tonight I absolutely lost my shit and snapped at her that tonight she can keep her light on, play with toys etc, but must not leave her bedroom and must settle herself and that if she wakes we will be taking her straight back to bed. I can hear her crying up there as DP settles DS, I feel awful but I feel like all the ‘gentle’ approaches we have taken have actually made it worse.

Has anyone else been through this and what worked, if anything? Sorry for the long post but trying to pre-empt questions.

DD is 4.5 and we have similar. Worst night was her being up every hour. Last week at 4.30am she decided to put all her lights on and have a mini disco, then come and tell us about it…no SEN, some stress from starting school but she’s always woken in the night. One of us sits with her until she falls asleep. I have no advice, lots of sympathy. DS9 sleeps like a log. I’m ever hopeful this day will come…the advice re tough love is pretty much where we are. Am putting it off due to starting school and routine change but I can’t face another 12 months of broken sleep either. Good luck OP

Personally I think you need less stimulation not more
I wouldn't put the Alexa in her room. She will just talk to it.

Strict bedtime routine. Bath, bed , stories
Set out the rules
She stays in her bed
Get up at night and she loses-no parties, play dates , too tired.
If she does get up , rapid return
No chat. Just " it's bedtime"
You and,DH must be on the same page.
You shouldn't feel guilty She's messing about

I was super strict about bed times as
A. They need sleep to develop properly and learn
B.I needed some time to myself and I felt calmer and a better parent as a result.

Firm but fair

You need to sleep train. What you're describing is my idea of purgatory.

Agree. Alexa needs to have a strict bedtime preferably the same time as your DD.
My DS has a Google speaker and when he was smaller we put it on downtime and he just asked it the time every minute. So we added a WiFi enabled plug that went off half an hour after bedtime.

As a pp said, it's total nonsense.

You are her parent: and you need to actually parent rather than pussy footing around.

I agree but I would have been cross if my kids hadn't slept through by 12 and 18 months, OP 😯

Sleep expert Lyndsey Hookway has a great book called Still Awake. Covering sleep issues from toddlers to tweens. Agree there isn’t much helpful advice available for older children.

I’d also consider something like a yoto player. It plays a lot of sleep sounds including a dedicated sleep radio station which is all designed for children. You can control it from an app on your phone but she could also choose to put in a specific card if she wakes in the night. When I was a child I had a cassette player in my room and if I woke up in the night and found it hard to go back to sleep I’d put a favourite story tape on and listen to that. A yoto is a similar concept.

I gave in and got melatonin at age 6.
That was 10+ years ago and I still get panicky thinking about nighttime’s back then and being woken up. It was awful.

You will just have to perservere. She was in a good routine which was interrupted and she got used to a parent being there all the time.

Can you not just put her back to bed every time she wakes up, it might be difficult for a while but she should learn. Quick cuddle back to bed goodnight.

Thank you for the replies which have all been read and taken on board.

She fell asleep quite quickly after 10 minutes of hysterical crying and dragging her duvet and pillow to the doorway so she could see DP who was settling DS in the room opposite.

I will report back but intend to take her straight back to bed if she wakes and comes through. I feel awful but she desperately needs sleep herself, let alone me. If a few nights of this isn’t improving things I will try the gro clock which I have ordered, I think a night light will appeal to her.

My DD was a little bit younger at the time but we paid for a sleep consultant and she talked us through doing something called "bedtime tokens" - which we did in the night not just at bedtime. What we did is first have a family meeting and make some sleep rules. Get DD to nominate them and draw them into a book she keeps by her bed. This gives her ownership. Then make sleep tokens. Loads of them. If she calls in the night, gets you up, comes in to you, that's fine, but it costs a token. If she's got tokens left in the morning, she gets a reward. Make it high value. We got a Playmobil camper van set DD really wanted and every morning she could draw a slip of paper from a hat to get the next part of the set at random. Obviously she wanted the van and people but sometimes she'd just get a tiny fork! So first night they have so many tokens they can't lose. DD used 32 tokens. Then after a couple of nights you start reducing the number of tokens available. We quickly got down to 6 wake ups then got stuck for a bit then pushed through to 1 and zero. I believe it took just a couple of weeks. We'd had an awful year and were almost verging on divorce, I'd been to the doctor feeling so ill due to exhaustion. I think this worked where everything else hadn't because it was psychological. We'd even tried melatonin prescribed by the doctor before. Good luck op!

Ps tough love take her straight back to bed did not work here as it just made things physical which I do not agree with. She wouldn't go. So we ended up trying to make her. She was crying and shouting with me holding the door shut having dumped her into bed and I thought what the fuck am I doing!

DD has a red night light (better for sleep) , an audio player for if she can't sleep, and a weighted blanket. All have been helpful .

hello op I’m a sleep scientist with a specialism in neurodevelopment.

She likely has a sleep onset delay, which is common, and explains the frequency of the waking. Both my kids are the same (caveat here: I’m currently breastfeeding my one year old to sleep, which you shouldn’t do, but it’s one thing being an expert on the theory and another being an actual mother 😂).

We sleep in cycles of 1-2 hours, increasing in length, for around 4-6 cycles a night. Each cycle is made up of Cycle 1{Stage 0, stage1, stage 2, stage 3, then REM sleep, when we dream, stage 3, stage 2, stage 1, sometimes briefly stage 0}; Cycle 2; Cycle 3 etc. Stage 0 is wake, each stage takes you into deeper sleep. So that’s why at the end of the cycle she’s waking up.

The reason we wake up is most often psychological, to do with sleep associations. The things she had to get her from cycle 1 stage 0 - sleep (teddy, hug, mummy, story etc) is what she needs all over again at the end of every sleep cycle.

SO, the theory is, we train them to fall asleep by themselves and they will learn to do so in the night. But, again I refer you to my current predicament of baby on boob with no sleep training - because I am just exhausted and that’s what is easiest.

There are some interventions, look up Jodie Mindell. You can try the ‘sleep fairy’, she’s the cousin of the tooth fairy- if DD sleeps all night and doesn’t come into bed with mummy, the sleep fairy will put a button/ toy/ note etc under the pillow. Buttons can be put into a jar and once the jar is full DD can ask the sleep fairy for a present. There are a few interventions like this, some not reward focussed if that’s not your thing.

Hope this helps!

Please think about why you feel awful and try to reframe it as the best thing for everyone.

She needs sleep. You desperately need sleep.
Teaching her that bedtime is for sleeping is a boundary
Consistency is key, if you deviate and change things it's confusing for her.
Children need firm boundaries to feel safe even if they push against them
A bedtime reset can help
New pj's, a new book, a chat about how things are going to be.

Hi all.

DD slept! She woke very briefly as DP dropped an ironing board (🙄) but I just said ‘go back to sleep’ and she lay back down again. She’s much chirpier this morning and rosy cheeked, having had a full 10 hours sleep, and I got 7 straight hours so feeling much better too.

It looks like ‘firm’ is the way forward, I expect more tears at bedtime tonight but will stick with it. Thanks for all the advice.

That's great news!

That’s great. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with telling a six year old to go back to bed. You’ve done the right thing.

Yes, 100%.

Absolutely this. I never got up in the night with a six year old! It all sounds exhausting and a habit that needs to be broken asap

Looks like the OP has cracked this.

We had a phase of this with SEN dc and it was relentless! Had to stay firm, keep in room even when it meant sitting outside door and having toys thrown out. Eventually they realised they couldn't leave and went back to sleep more quickly. This was often on the floor or sofa bed chair and then we would put into bed. Rinse and repeat. No magic cure apart from consistency and it's not easy!

I’m pleased to report last night was also much improved. A few tears but less than the first night, she felt asleep herself, woke once briefly because her brother yelled something in his sleep, but we told her to go back to sleep and she resettled herself. Slept through til 7.30! I got 8 hours. I feel like a completely different person. This was definitely the way to go for us.

Firstly, spend some special time with her concentrating on conversation. Whirlwind 2 year olds can monopolise parental energy so have some time to make sure she feels loved and secure. What motivates her? Give her a pound every night she sleeps in her own bed. Or a toy at the end of a week with no get ups? Or special ‘big girl’ time reading/playing in her room for an hour after ds goes to bed. Carrot works better than stick in our house. Does she ever sleep out at grandparents etc? Watch a movie with a kids sleepover and tell her she can have one with her friends when she can be big enough to sleep all night in her own bed.

RTFT