to think very few people have YEARS of sleep-deprivation with kids?

[drivenfromdistraction]

I have 3 kids, aged 6, 4 and 2. The middle one is a fantastic sleeper (since the age of two, was dreadful before that) - shuts his eyes at 6.30pm and opens them again at 6.30 am. If he was my only child, I would be very smug and think I'd done this with my fab routines.

The other two - different story. Youngest still wakes at night 4 or 5 nights a week and needs resettling, which takes an hour or more and leaves me wide awake. Eldest has always been an early waker (5am-ish) and now is struggling to get to sleep, and waking in the night with 'bad dreams' two or three nights a week and then taking hours to get back to sleep.

For seven years, I have almost never had an uninterrupted night. This is unusual, isn't it? Other people don't seem to be sleep-deprived like this. I have just taken the older two to school for the first day after half-term, all the other parents were making comments like 'Oh, it's hard to get up early again after the break, isn't it?' Wtf? I have been up before 6 every day of half-term as usual (either the eldest or the youngest awake and usually both) plus being woken in the night.

Are there other parents like me out there or am I alone?!

Exactly, precisely echo what Jolly said "8.5 years here. And the thing that drives me mad, more mad than loss of sleep, is people who say "oh I couldn't cope with that, I love my sleep, need my 8 hours". Whereas me, hey I love having no sleep, wouldn't want it any other way! And what do they mean by saying they couldn't cope? Would they actually have their child taken into care? Or would they simply not have the problem in the first place because they're a better parent than me?"

Down to the 8.5 years and the thoughts, almost word for word! :o What on earth is going through the heads of the "I need my sleep" crowd in reply to hearing about somebody else's sleep deprivation! You deserve/ need your sleep more than I do, do you, you unbearably smug thoughtless being! How is it different from saying - I need my peace so my kids are well behaved unlike your horrible monsters, or I need my comforts so naturally I am rich, whilst you, less deserving of 3 holidays a year and a 5 bed detached house with pool, are not... .

I think (touch wood) I am finally coming out the other side now - there have been a couple of full nights sleep, and a normal night is down to an average of 2 wakings, usually both brief-ish, though you can bet when sleep is most needed there will be 4 or 5 wakings and a 5am start... all kids are up by 6am, but then on a week day they need to be...

In the absolute depths of the very worst sleep deprivation though, I could cheerfully have beaten anyone who said that to me to death with their own slipper (people who say that wear slippers, don't they?) and felt the better for it (at least until I woke up after a few good nights sleep in jail) :o

5.5 years of my eldest waking 5/6 times per night. Dd2, who is 4 years younger slept through before she did
Sleep deprivation was my main topic of conversation for years!
On the plus side, I finally found medication that prevented my migraines. They were triggered by lack of sleep and I had an unbearable few years before the doctor finally cane up with something that works.

"And the thing that drives me mad, more mad than loss of sleep, is people who say "oh I couldn't cope with that, I love my sleep, need my 8 hours"."

Jolly someone once said to me "Little Matthew sleeps all night, my husband and I both love our sleep so he must take after us." I had some very uncharitable thoughts.

Saw a mum with her newborn on the school run this morning. She said she'd had a terrible night, and then said 'but you probably remember those'

I decided not to say that both my 6yo and my 2yo were up in the night last night and I hadn't been back to sleep since 3am...

Driven - my DS is 11 (yes 11) and he still gets me up in the night!! I havent had a full night sleep for yonks unless he is away or at a sleepover!!

I disagree about the whole 'teaching' aspect of sleeping through.

I think it is a developmental milestone like crawling or walking.

You can force the issue with sleep though through training, which really isn't my cup of tea. I don't want to teach my daughter that I don't come to reassure her when she needs me at night. I can see how many parents feel they need to do it though for their own sanity.

I am almost at two years of interrupted sleep with my daughter, I wouldn't say I was sleep deprived at all though. Tired? Yes some days I am, but I am lucky that when my daughter wakes in the night I take her to our bed and she falls asleep at the breast and we co sleep till morning.

My other half gets up with her on his days off and lets me lay in, i catch up then. I used to nap in the day with her in the early days but haven't done that for a long time, I need that time to do 'stuff' now she's more demanding and mobile!

It is incorrect to think that developmental milestones are met independent of culture (teaching).

I disagree but hey ho, the world and MN would be a boring place if we all agreed.

The free range school of child rearing is very popular in the Anglo-Saxon world - "leave them to their own devices and they will develop naturally without any horrible interference from busybody adults" - but it is very misguided .

The self satisfied people who like to share with the world their opinion that others have failed to "teach" their children to sleep and therefore essentially have "made a rod" and all that delightful sneery tripe are also highly infuriating to the sleep deprived - very many families contain both good and poor sleepers, rather indicating that there is a gigantic serving of luck involved

There are very extreme people and methods in lots of aspects of life I think, I like a happy medium.

There are some useful gentle methods in this book.

Of course these may work very well or not at all, depending on your wee one.

You can't change children's dispositions to sleep but you sure as hell can get them trained to play quietly in their rooms when others are asleep, or to settle themselves at night if they wake up. That's behavioural.

No all good sleepers apart ds2.He didnt sleep for about a year after he was born.Felt like he could get 5 minutes kip and be awake for weeks.
Ds5 goes to bed no bother but if he wakes up or anyone wakes him,thats it hes awake for teh night.Thankfully doesnt happen very often now.

Unless by teach you mean lock them in their room (literally) until, after hours, they pass out exhausted... I actually had a mum of 2 (who had both slept through from a few weeks old without any effort on her part aside from stuffing them with "hungry baby" formula on the grounds that if they woke when she wished to be asleep they were excessively, abnormally hungry, and therefore required that) that she would lock the door and ignore if her kids got up regularly at night!

Rapid return improves things for us, but it is not a matter of doing it for a week, or a month, and the sleep problem being "solved" - rather it is a technique that has probably reduced the number of get ups on an average night and persuaded the nearly 3 year old that he can go back to sleep in his bed without me sitting for literally hours beside him...

Co-sleeping is another one that doesn't work for everyone - they don't all snuggle in and go back to sleep, some of them sleep on your head whilst pulling on your ear :o but also in practical terms I would defy anyone to sleep with a 17kg toddler on their head, doing this, and then randomly yelling "Mummy, I've got a joke for you ..." in your ear... and no, "try explaining that you want to sleep-" doesn't work either... "But I need you." is toddler logic...

Oh god jolly yes. I have a friend who "needs her sleep" and apparently just gets angry if she doesn't get it, so her DH deals with the kids now they are past baby age. I hate the way she says to me that she needs her sleep while I am thinking

I have a 3yo who bothers us once or twice almost every night and needs resettling, and an anxious 8yo who struggles to fall asleep and often wakes up with nightmares. I'm just used to hardly ever getting a full night's sleep and tbh I think of what I have now as OK, because at least it's an improvement on being up all night with them as babies. But I am stressed and exhausted and very jealous of people who can just retire to bed knowing they are going to have a proper rest. We don't have family help so no child-free trips away - I could throttle certain friends when they say how much they are looking forward to a week of lie-ins in a hotel. (Though I know it's not their fault and they deserve a break.)

We're not "free range" type parents and I think it is OK to try to "train" DC to have a set bedtime and getting up time, stay in bed etc - and it's healthier for them to get a decent amount of sleep. But it's just an ongoing struggle with us. Sticker charts, reward schemes, special clocks etc etc have some effect. But once someone is ill, or has a run of nightmares, or there's any kind of upheaval or upset, it goes back to square 1.

One child.

No sleep since a few weeks before he was born and for the whole of his 5 years of life.

I often wonder if it will ever stop....

10 years here, 3 autistic kids who sadly can't entertain themselves til the household is ready to get up.

5 years for me. I have two children and they both started to sleep through at about 2 to 2.5 although I had about a 3 month break when I was pregnant with DS2.

After the night wakings stopped, we'd start the day v. early (from 5.30 onwards) but finally they have started regularly sleeping until 7am with the odd 6am start for the younger one (4).

They don't do that thing that other parents say their kids do though if they keep them up late - it doesn't matter what time mine go to bed - they still get up at 7am grrrr!

Ds is 7 he didn't 'sleep through' until he was 3 and always gets up at 5/6am.

Dd was a fabulous sleeper until she was 2, she's now 3.5 and is often up at 5am and fairly regularly during the night too.

"And the thing that drives me mad, more mad than loss of sleep, is people who say "oh I couldn't cope with that, I love my sleep, need my 8 hours"

I think it's annoying generally when people say that. I've heard people say "I couldn't cope if I had miscarriages." "I couldn't live without my tumble dryer." "I'd end up in a mental asylum if I didn't have a cleaner." It's just a stupid thing to say.

MrTumbles - yes, I agree. My 3 DC have the same bedtime routine, and have had a very firm bedtime routine from the start. This has magically 'taught' DC2 to sleep 12 hours every night, and not DC1 or DC3. I think DC3 is just not physiologically there yet. DC1 has anxiety issues and also is the type of person who, when he wakes is immediately wide awake (like me) whereas DC2 remains drowsy (like DH) and just rolls over and goes back to sleep.

"Sticker charts, reward schemes, special clocks etc etc have some effect. But once someone is ill, or has a run of nightmares, or there's any kind of upheaval or upset, it goes back to square 1."

Sticker charts, reward schemes, special clocks etc are all ways of intellectualising why DC should stay asleep. Sleep doesn't require intellectualising - in fact, I believe that intellectualising the behavioural training is pointless.

I am always stunned at some parents who expect their small DC to sleep on their own, often many metres away from an adult. It's an unreasonable expectation.

So, Bonsoir - what are your tips for 'teaching' DC to sleep? I asked you before, but the only thing you came up with was 100% cotton nightwear & bedding.