Absolutely on my knees and I don’t know what to do

[TooMuchPeppa86]

I don’t even know where to start

I work part time (3 days) in a job that doesn’t really fit into part time hours. I cut my hours because I have two wee girls (5 and 2) who are my whole world and I thought it’s fine it’ll be a few years of working at nights once they’re asleep and then I can increase my hours in the office once they’re at school.

Five year old started school last month. Her sleep is beyond horrific. She has no interest in sleep she won’t even try. But I need to stay in her room or she just kicks off. Last night it was 11pm before she went to sleep. I then had to work until 3am to stay afloat.

I can’t do this any more. I can’t. The first thought I had when I woke up this morning was sheer panic about how behind I am at work because I can’t fit it all in.

She won’t have DH. He does the housework at night and keeps that ticking over.

Thank you everyone, I am reading and taking on board all of the responses x

Just another one to suggest that you don't make a decision under pressure.
I have 3 DC. All went to nursery in the school that they started reception in, so in my mind, a straightforward transition.
Each of them found the transition to reception really tricky. DC3 did it last year and it was horrendous - he just screamed with exhaustion from the moment he got home until he went to bed. Or he fell asleep at a really inconvenient time and then screamed when we woke him up. If i'd made any decision during that period it would have been the wrong one! After half term was a bit better, and then from January it was fine.
If you have a good job then see what you can do to buy you breathing space. (If you had any old easily replaceable job then it would be different)

I'm going to log in to my pc to reply to this, it's going to be a long one!

for you OP

I feel like DD2 always gets the shitty end of the stick as well. She’s such a good, easy going wee soul. But I am so tired and jaded that I’m a crap mum to her

Do you have a coffee shop or something that's open in the evening and you could go and work there for a couple of weeks in the evening to get over this period? My DD often only wants her daddy to put her to bed, help brush her teeth etc when he's around, and she goes hysterical if I try to do it with her. But on the nights that DH isn't there for the bedtime routine, she's absolutely fine with me putting her to bed.

Have you tried anything like reward charts OP?

How is she with number recognition? Could you try and give her a little bit of 'control?' Like 'look at your clock. Mummy is going downstairs now, you can read your book until the big hand is here, then you must turn your light off and go to bed. Mummy is trusting you because you are such a big grown up girl now! So muchmore grown up than DD2 who needs y because she's so little, not like you, you're such a big girl now.'

Would something like that help? Then if she doesn't come out of her room until the morning (unless for a wee) she can have a star or whatever.

I would be tempted to introduce a concrete reward scheme and really go heavy on the explanations and the praise, because she is old enough to understand what is going on and why she needs to go to sleep.

I feel for you OP, sleep deprivation is the worst thing I have experienced so far!!

Just an idea - fully expect to be flamed for it - but your daughter sounds just like me as a child esp re the sleep and seeming immature compared to class mates. I was am still am a fidget in bed and my brain fights sleep. I have ADHD. I know this isn't helpful to you in the short term but might be worth looking into longer term if a good sleep routine remains elusive.

Why are you having to put in so many hours at home when you're not being paid for them? I've had the experience of cutting back my hours in the expectation of a reduction in workload, only to find I was still doing a full-time job with a part-time title. If you work hard when you're in the office and can't do everything you need to do in office hours then they can't expect you to work for free from home.

Have a formal meeting with your manager/ employer and make it clear they are asking you to achieve too much given your hours. They may trim the job back so it's manageable or they may decide to let you go – but in the meantime you will have bought yourself some time to look around for an alternative/ consider other opportunities.

Don't know if this link is useful to you OP x

www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/parents-and-young-people/information-for-parents-and-carers/sleep-problems-in-childhood-and-adolescence-for-parents-and-carers

I’d put a lock on my door so she can’t get in and get some earplugs so you can’t hear her kicking off. Let DH deal with her, and tell her mummy’s at work so she can’t come right now.

My eldest DC went through a stage like this. Someone suggested a magnesium supplement and it really helped, it seemed to help with the restlessness.

Off the back of that DP also started taking it as he has the same issue and really struggles with restless leg syndrome as an adult. He's definitely noticed a difference too but he is also very susceptible to the placebo effect....

The science/theory behind it is explained here betteryou.com/health-hub/taking-magnesium-supplements-can-help-poor-sleep/

Right here we go! OP you could have been me a year ago. The work situation and your DD's personality. My DD is the same age and started school a few weeks ago, fingers massively crossed she is sleeping the best she has slept for 14 months at the mo. She stopped sleeping last summer, when we changed from nursery and preschool. I think it was kicked off by anxiety, but then became a body clock mega habit that she actually couldn't do much about. One difference is that she would go to bed ok, but at 1:30 pretty precisely she'd wake up and be awake for at least an hour and a half, and then wake again at 5 for the day. She was an overtired mess and her behaviour really suffered. The sleep deprivation was so so hard. So you have my full sympathy.

My main suggestion is to look up 'bedtime tokens' and try that. The way it works is this. Sit down with your DD and have a family meeting about the importance of sleep, explain the bedtime tokens. Get some nice card, stickers and pens and a pot and get your DD involved in making a set of bed time tokens. At first, make loads, more than you need. When your DD goes to bed, any time she gets out of bed or calls you in, that's fine, but it costs a token. She can use as many tokens as she likes, she's in control. If she has any tokens left in the morning, then she gets a treat. She can choose her treats. My DD chose maoam type sweets, so if she had tokens left in the morning, she had a sweet. No tokens, no sweet. After a few days, you gradually start to reduce the number of tokens available. Your DD is in the driving seat, so you say something like you're doing really well, I think you only need X tokens now! Eventually you get it down to say 3 tokens, and after a long time you forget about it entirely.

To give you an idea of how this worked for us, we started off with 50 tokens and used 33 the first night. We quickly got down to 6, within a few weeks, then got stuck on 6 and had to reincentivise with some better sweets to get down to 3. Then they just gradually got forgotten about, but DD still asked about a sweet. Eventually she forgot about the sweets. This process has taken a full year. But it got significantly better very quickly.

I heard about this method from a sleep consultant who we used, sleepy moonkeeper. However, I researched it myself and found some science based write ups about it. It really worked for us but I still feel DD's sleep is heavily managed and she's only just started to sleep through for more than a couple of nights on the trot. She's at a Personal Best at the mo of 11 nights.

mouse do you mind me asking how you know you have ADHD? And how did you get diagnosed? My dd finds it very hard to sleep, is constantly wired, she does everything at breakneck speed and I find her exhausting. I have been wondering what to do, as her scatty behaviour, her lack of sleep is really impacting.

Obv not wishing to hijack the thread, but it is an issue with girls that can't sleep. For what it is worth my dd is also very clingy op, always has been you tend to enjoy when you are not completely exhausted!

Oh another thought very quick before school run, you could look up the extinction technique. So we worked out my DD would sleep for 7hrs then wake. So we pushed her bedtime waaaaaay back for a couple of nights to encourage her to consolidate her sleep blocks then gradually moved it forward again... To do this properly we should have said as 6am is morning and she sleeps for 7hrs, she will go to bed at 11pm. We didn't do that, we did 9pm a few nights. What we've found is that got her to sleep through and we brought her bedtime forward more. However, whenever we go earlier than 7:30pm at the earliest we get back into night wakings. In the summer hols this applied to 8pm. She's currently sleeping 7:30/8 until 6:30.

Give up work?
Go and work in a cafe in the evenings?

Good heavens, NO!!

The gently gently approach is stories and audiobooks isn’t working.

You sound battered but you need to root out strength to deal with this.

I would tell her that ok I’ll be speaking to her teacher about her bedtime antics. Reception children tend to idolise their teachers.
Then actually go and speak with the teacher, arrange a quick meeting and take her through what’s going on and that you wondered if she has any thoughts. What would be good would be for the teacher to incorporate talk about good behaviour at bedtime and importance of sleep into class discussion.

As for bedtime itself - no books or audio. She gets them the following night after every good night. Be clear with her on this.

Arrange it that you get to pick her up alone and then take her to a cafe for a treat. Tell her that you’re going to talk to her like a big girl, which is what she is. Tell her that the lack of sleep is making you feeling very sad and a bit ill. Tell her that you may have to change things at work, and that might make special treats and holidays difficult. Print off a child friendly article about how important sleep is to brain and health and read it to her. And then set her a challenge to say that if she sleeps well tonight, you will test her brain in the morning to see how much more cleverer she has become!

Little things like that to start with

indecisivelurcher thank you for that. I will definitely give that a try. We have done reward charts before but we haven’t had much success. It’s like she is up for it until bed time then being awake seems to be more important than the reward chart, if that makes sense

Sorry if I’m repeating others I don’t have time to read all replies but honestly I’d put her in her room at 7, make sure it’s dark (blackout blinds etc) tell her she can watch a program for 15 mins or whatever and then it is time to sleep. If she keeps getting up fine. But she stays in the room. She isn’t to play or watch tv. As log as she’s safe that’s it.

"Tell her that the lack of sleep is making you feeling very sad and a bit ill"

She is five! Don't tell her this for the love of God!!

What a burden to lay on a tiny child.

That token idea above sounds really good

I remember when I was little I really really struggled to fall asleep and would like there for hours worrying about not being able to sleep and it made it worse.

She started school three weeks ago. She sounds like my dd always clingy totally adored and a very stable family. She developed anxiety and depression at 15 and started self harming. At 17 diagnosed with adhd, add. Everything fell into place.

She needs love and reassurance. Perhaps keep her up a bit later for special 1 to 1 time. And then put her to bed, cuddled up if necessary and take the pressure off. No audio, just quiet time.

May I ask why you can't catch up with work on a saturday or sunday when your dh cpuld take them out for an afternoon?

But the child is creating an enormous burden on her mother. Huge.

Telling her that she’s making her mum feel sad because Of how tired she is is a huge understatement
But the girl needs to know that there is a consequence to her behaviour

Does she have lots of outdoor exercise? Or swimming lessons? Mine always crashed after swimming lessons and once they get into the routine of sleeping, their brains seem to reset.