Sleep problems - but not as you may know them

[MrsBoreanaz]

or perhaps you might!

Excuse bullet points, but on way out. Really need some advice.

DD is 6, placed 11 months ago. Background is neglect. She goes to bed at 7.30pm ish and is generally asleep very quickly (in under 15 mins).

She has a habit of waking in the night. She's not distressed or scared.. She just wakes. But rather then go back to sleep, she sings, plays with toys and generally stays awake (sometimes but not always until she's so tired she cries through exhaustion)

The singing gets louder and louder in the volume until she wakes DH and me up. If we go in and ask her to be quiet/give a kiss/say goodnight, this works for about 2 mins then invariably the singing starts again.... We can go through this cycle several times a night.

It is not unusual for this to last from 2.30am to 5 am. We can't continue. DH and I are due back to work soon.

We have tried a lot of things and I will come back later to explain what they are/what happens, but first can you give me your thoughts on how you'd deal with it?

How strange!

What time does she wake naturally after she has fallen back to sleep?

Could your heating be coming on? Is something disturbing her?

Has this been every single night since she came to stay with you?

Thanks for the reply.

She can wake naturally anytime between 7am and 9.30 after falling back to sleep.

The time she wakes at varies between midnight and 4am, so I don't think it's to do with a household noise.

No, not every night. We had a spell of 3-4 times a week for the first 5 or so months. Then it settled last October ish and didn't happen for ages.

It's just started up again... And because we're about to go back to work, we really want to get it sorted quickly.

Okay - been there done that and got several T shirts. Although mine were both placed as toddlers younger DC used to do the wake in middle of the night thing. I always say she was sent to prevent any smugness about avoiding the newborn sleep deprivation!

It is a nightmare and first rule is that almost anything which gets you and her adequate sleep is a good idea. Neither you nor she have had a normal path to 6 year old sleep habits, so you may need unusual strategies.

As explained to me, we all go through lighter and deeper cycles of sleep several times a night but for those of us who have learnt self settling, we come to a bit, roll over, sort ourselves out and go back into deep sleep. I suspect that your DDs history of neglect and the newness of the placement means she is coming to but has no idea how to self settle again, hence the nocturnal singing!

Did she sleep alone in foster care? It's quite unusual in my experience for foster kids to sleep in own bed in own room as is the middle class norm, so she may be missing the company.

What about having a small bed or mattress in your room so when she wakes she can come through and go back to sleep there? This works for both of ours - sometimes they sleep through sometimes they visit but either way the mucking around in the small hours is eliminated and we all get the sleep we need.

Further down the line you could ask for help from a sleep specialist to teach her to self settle but I wouldn't be in a hurry.

If you have other behavioural issues they will be made so much worse by limited sleep, so I would make a pragmatic approach to enough sleep for all a priority. Hope that helps!

Our 3 year old daughter also did almost the exact same thing. She can't read but would get books off the shelf in her room and make up the story- The Gruffalo was a favourite and she would be screeching about purple prickles and wake up not just us but her brother too which meant he was grumpy.

Our DD and DS (5) were placed with us at the start of February. Luckily she wouldn't wake until around 4:45-5:30. At first we tried standing with her quietly hoping she'd drop back off. Then we tried taking the books out of her room but she just made stories up. Then we tried leaving her without going in her room.

I then decided to get them a Groclock each. It's a miracle and worked from the second day we had it. When she wakes up and sees the stars she knows it's not time to get up and goes back off. She does wake before the sun comes up on it occasionally but will just sit quietly and look at it and wait for the sun.

I really would recommend giving it a try. Good luck!

My DC are not adopted, but we have the same problem with one of ours. He wakes in the night and just quite happily chats to himself, plays, sings etc.

We've found it's in no way related to how much sleep he has i.e. going to bed earlier/later, having a nap/not having a nap makes no difference.

I think it could be related to needing the loo (also had some problems with constipation). It seems to be better when he is ok in that department.

Ultimately the only thing that worked was treating it as any other undesirable behaviour. So we talked about it in the evening and reminded him that he needs to be quiet when it's night time and that it's not helpful/kind to wake everyone up etc. In the night, if he did wake we'd tell him once gently to be quiet and then quite firmly (not shouting) 'Be quiet DS'. If he did sleep through/not wake us up we made a big fuss in the morning, gave him a sticker etc. It's almost cured . I don't know whether that would work for you though because you obviously have other issues that we didn't have.

I think part of the problem was that he would wake and then because he started singing and playing he stopped himself falling back to sleep. Now he knows he has to lay quietly I think he drops off again quite quickly. I think he possibly still wakes, but just goes back to sleep iyswim. We haven't cured the waking, just the waking everyone else up and being awake for hours at a time.

Is she playing in the dark? Or turning the light on?

I take DS's lightbulb out or else he does the same.

Hi

Thanks very much everyone.

To answer some questions...

Three at her last foster placement she slept alone. She did it here too at the beginning, but would be quiet after the first time of asking.

My fear of putting a bed in our room is that she will just come and talk to us/not settle and DH and I won't even get a few mins sleep between wakings. I'm also concerned about trying this, it not working, then taking this away from her (she'd love to come into our room, of that I have no doubt!!)

Caba thank you for the suggestion. A gro-clock was the first thing we tried and it worked for maybe a week. It now works in terms of letting her know when she can get up in the morning, but is just ignored if she wakes in he middle of the night.

Outraged, yes although I want her to sleep, my primary concern is that if she does wake, she doesn't wake everyone else. My gut feel is to take all toys/distractions out of her room, not to punish her but to make the only option to lie down again and close her eyes, this seems very heavy handed and not addressing the root cause of the issue.

three I meant she did it there too, I.e. Sang in foster care.

notthe

She turns her fairy lights on her bed on. She goes to sleep with these (I turn them off when I go to bed). I'm reluctant to take this away as I think she'd get scared by the dark. She cannot go to sleep at bedtime in total dark.

I have removed a number of bulbs from the fairy lights in order to lower the light level.

Hi there

I can see why you have the gut instinct to remove all distractions - my concern is that she doesn't know how to get herself back to sleep and she may be ramping up the activity because she is scared/anxious/etc.

I do think you might find she went off pretty fast in your room, but can quite see why you're nervous about starting it, not working and then having to row back.

Story tape so she has some company? Audible downloads on a tablet are v good, but do work out how to lock the tablet so it won't do anything else!

How would you feel about trying the reverse ie you put a mattress or sleeping bag down on her floor and when she wakes, you sleep in her room? That worked for a while with DD and gradually she ceased to need it so I retreated.

OP, my solution to this would be to wake her at a set time every morning, so dont let her sleep in even if she only got to sleep at 5am. Get her up. Then get her to bed at same time. After a few days of this, she should be very tired and it should break the pattern. If not, I would explain that as she is getting too tired, she will have to have an earlier bedtime. Not as a punishment, but as a way of getting more sleep.

Take time off bedtime if she wakes you all up. Put it back on nights where she doesn't.

Permanent night light so don't need to turn off, and remove fairy lights?
ADD2 used to sleep fine in complete darkness, got to about age 5 and started needing a light.

Ah yes, we have this! Younger ADD, but similar issues. Used to be panicked screaming through the night, then after months settled, but now if she is anxious she shows it by frequent night waking when she chats and giggles and plays loudly in her bed. It is brutal on my sleep, but I treat it the same as I would if DD were crying - because I think she's communicating worry, but just differently, and as PP said, she has no idea how to self-settle or self-calm. So I go in, I say it sounds like you're having some trouble sleeping, and I cuddle or rock her until she falls back to sleep. And yes, I am broken the next morning and she is chipper, so we have a very quiet day that day.

Have you seen her chronology/form e? Can you elaborate on the neglect. My instinct says she compensating for being alone. Maybe in her birth family she was expected to go to bed alone far too early and not attended to if she woke in the night. If this was my child I would be considering having her on your room to see if this cracks it, leaving her there a good few months and then a gradual move back to her bedroom.
Children who have been neglected are missing whole chunks of parenting/nurturing. 11 months isn't that long to settle in a new family you need to be patient

Kind of similar here but with a 10 month old so not so unusual! After he was placed with us he stopped sleeping through the night and starting waking anywhere between 2-4am and be wide awake for a minimum of 2 hours. It's still not great here but getting better. I agree about the self settling probably being the issue so we've now put an iPod in his room that plays lullabies all night long at quite an audible volume! It helps to block out any other noise that may disturb him but also helps him to drift off again as he goes between cycles. The other thing we're trying is wake to sleep, I kept a diary for a week to see if it was a regular time of waking and it was 3-3.30 ish so we now just disturb him slightly at 2.00am to try and prevent a full wake up. You would need to experiment with how much to disturb but obviously start lightly, you just want them to react by a twitch or movement but not proper wake up.
I think as with many other things with adoption the key is think younger and you may find you need to go back to baby sleep strategies to teach her good sleep.

My adopted ds needs help to get back to sleep, i just get in to bed with him until he drop back off. i would put a matress on her floor or on yours. Stay with her until she settles back to sleep, at least if you have a bed made up in her room you can go back to sleep. i would just go with anything which get you all the most sleep.
I would also wake her up at the same time every morning.

Thanks all for your suggestions.

Il try to remember to come back and update!

Wake to sleep is maybe worth a try.

I would start by getting her up at 6.30 every morning. She will probably be shattered but keep her going through the day and get her to bed at a good time and hopefully she will be tired enough to sleep through.

There are lots of other strategies to try, and sleep clinics that she could be referred to, but I'd try that for starters.

If they are scared and upset, it's astonishing how little sleep they can function on though! DD had severely disrupted sleep, getting a total of about 4-5 hours per night in several shorter fragments, and had no daytime naps. This was with a regular morning and evening routine, and lasted months and months after placement. Working through distress and grief takes time, and it sounds like you're doing a great job OP.

We did have something similar with DD aged 5, who's been home 6 months now. Some nights she will still wake and then come in to tell us she's 'scared', but now either goes back to sleep, or comes in with us (which is what I think she's really after!). She seems to have stopped the getting up and reading/singing though, after we took the following steps:

Removed bedside lamp
Plugged in a night light - not bright enough to read/play by
Got her an easy reading clock, and got her to understand that she could get out of bed at 7am, but wasn't to make any noise or wake us up until 7.30am.

I'd say maybe 7 out of 10 nights are problem free now. We still have a LOT of messing around at bedtime, and it's annoying having the main light in her room on for storytime and settling down, but it does seem to have done the trick.

good luck!