4YO Daughter sleeping issues that wife won’t acknowledge

[Msti34]

Hi all, my daughter is 4 and her sleeping is awful. She wakes up each night at least twice from about 9.30pm, and has ended up in our spare bed with my wife every night for the past 3 years or so - my wife might spend 30 minutes in bed with me on a good night before she disappears.

My wife refuses to acknowledge there’s a problem and every time I raise it she thinks I’m a monster; she simply doesn’t want to make it any better. It’s affecting our sex life (less than once a month!), our intimacy and obviously our marriage.

My wife puts her to bed every night, she lies in bed with her singing her nursery rhymes and letting her play with her hair until she drops off. I’ve suggested that this is the problem as I feel like when my daughter wakes up she doesn’t know how to settle herself and I’m concerned that this will just go on and on. My wife refuses to try letting her fall asleep by herself; she disagrees that she needs to do this and thinks I’m totally unreasonable for asking it.

I don’t know where to turn any more. I’ve told how unhappy it makes me but she doesn’t seem to care at all and just thinks I’m being a b*stard for suggesting that my daughter should fall asleep by herself. I feel like I’m not being unreasonable by suggesting she should and that every child is like this.

Please help for the sake of my marriage!!

Well, I think this situation is doing your child no favours. Broken sleep isn't great for anyone. And it's not normal for a 4-year old to be waking up 2+ times a night, every night.

Also this doesn't really sound like an actual co-sleeping arrangement - sounds like OP's wife comes to bed and only goes to sleep with the child after she wakes up.

I think the first question you need to ask your wife is whether she's happy with the current situation. If she is, there isn't much you can do. Maybe tell her that you don't think it's ideal and would she be open to doing things differently, for the sake of your daughter. And also try and determine whether she's genuinely happy with the situation, or putting up with it because she has to.

If she isn't happy with the situation then you can work together to solve it. But nothing will happen if you're not both on the same page so you need to communicate as much as you can.

Honestly I can't imagine sitting in bed with my kid until they fall asleep, let alone for four years ! The problem, obviously, is that now the child has these unhealthy sleep patterns, breaking them will be hard.

I have friends in a slightly similar situation. No co sleeping but the child will turn 2 soon and is still being fed to sleep, and wakes up multiple times a night. Dad is very hands on though but his wife was not interested in him taking over the nights. I have definitely wondered if mum guilt didn't play a huge role in her insistence to put herself through this. It's definitely impacted their family, as they decided to postpone the second child for this reason (they wanted two close together originally, now they don't have a date on when they'll ttc).

YANBU and the words rod and back come to mind but you can’t say that on here without being accused of child cruelty.

In regards to the sex - you need to change when you have sex to some point in the day and not fixate on having sex at night. So you need to arrange a few long lunches with your wife when your child is at school. If you make your wife feel special by showing you have time for her and not just come onto her at night she may be more receptive.

Plenty of young children co-sleep or are troubled sleepers but their parents still have sex.

In regards to your child going to sleep in general - take over completely from your wife. I've been told by family members, who are child health professionals, that often children will stay in bed if their dads put them to bed. So do the complete bedtime routine on your own including putting your child actually in bed. Then when she wakes up you be the one to put her back in bed every single time. You will get little sleep for the first couple of weeks. Don't let your wife take over.

@maddiemookins16mum

YANBU and the words rod and back come to mind but you can’t say that on here without being accused of child cruelty.

Loads of posts on this thread agree with you and no one has made accusations of child cruelty so I think you can probably speak freely if you want, yours isn’t a minority view

@Balonzette

"My wife puts her to bed every night, she lies in bed with her singing her nursery rhymes and letting her play with her hair until she drops off."

Your wife sounds like a really lovely mum.

I disagree, a really lovely mum is not about having a child totally reliant on you to be able to do a basic thing like go to sleep. It's about teaching your children to have the ability and confidence to be able to sleep alone (amongst other things).

I think the next few weeks might be pretty tough on your wife if she is used to spending every second with DD. I have a 4yo who just went to school and its always been me and him, DH was abroad working for a year and we went back and forth, we did everything together. DH is v involved but we were like a little team. I work and have a smaller DS to entertain but I was shocked at how much it wasn't just him needing me during the day but me needing him.

For the sleeping you are of course not unreasonable to want to have a adult relationship with your wife. I settled DS until 1.5 and coslept until 3 and it is a lovely thing to have a child in your bed but I think you may be reaching the stages where the things you do to make your life easier are actually making it harder.

I think I would definitely leave things for a month or so until you see how school is going and how DW is feeling. I find it hard to go between wife and mum mode sometimes.

On a slight tangent, I'm curious about those who say a 4 year old should not wake up at night. Do you never wake up at night? I know the point is partly that if you do, you settle yourself and don't shout for your mum, but it's interesting so many people think kids shouldn't wake at all.

My DH wakes twice a night quite often, and I usually wake up once for a drink or to use the toilet etc.

My DS needed someone with him to fall asleep at 4, he grew out of it around the time he turned 5 and I'm glad we didn't force him.

DH or I end up in the spare room with him many nights (posting from there now) but the number of nights he sleeps through is gradually increasing.

The small years are so short. DH and I will have decades of sleeping next to each other. As a child I could never understand why adults could share a bed but children couldn't so I have ways committed to sharing with DS for as long as he wants to.

Oh and our sex life has massively improved since DS started school and DH started WFH. We now have lunchtime sex :)

@Balonzette

"My wife puts her to bed every night, she lies in bed with her singing her nursery rhymes and letting her play with her hair until she drops off."

Your wife sounds like a really lovely mum.

I agree!

My advice would be to do nothing for now other than get as involved in bedtime as you can be. I would also back off complaining to your wife and try to make it easier for her. - IE bring a tea or a blanket etc.

I am sure she is also finding it hard too and if you can get somewhere near the same page you might be able to work through it together.

It doesn't solve the intimacy question per se but I do like the suggestion of a mattress in your bedroom for the dc to come to if they wake in the night, and it gives you a bit more space and control.

Fwiw my dc3 was still quite a baby aged 4, and he didn't get stuff really. He is coming up 6 now and in a much different place. And in the last 6 mo or so has sorted out his sleep a lot amongst other things. So it might resolve itself soon otherwise if will go even wronger and you will end up with a hardcore co sleeping situation with an 8yo like some have described above!!

If the DD is starting school then leave things as they are. She will be exhausted if she normally spends all her time with her DM. It's a busy, noisy environment.
Do you plan any other children?

In my experience the 8+ yo cosleepers are outliers and would probably just have had different sleep issues had their parents not gone down the cosleeping route.

We are finally, finally tackling this issue with our 7yo. Until now he hasn’t been ready and neither have I. At the end of the day I’m exhausted, and need him to go to sleep as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. For pretty much his whole life that has been with me lying next to him in the dark. Recently that’s changed and any slight movement from me results in him waking so we have moved to sitting in the room - he actually prefers DH to me for this because he gets cross with me.

In the past, in the pre covid times, I have had regular evenings out which has meant that DH has been able to get him to sleep, but DS wants different things from each of us. So it doesn’t work well when I’m home.

Our 4yo is quite different and still wants company for sleep but drifts off easily and stays asleep all night. He’s always been a far better sleeper. If your daughter is one of those ‘not great at sleeping’ children then your wife is probably exhausted. I know I am!

I think if you want your physical relationship to improve you probably need to approach parenting as a partnership, where you pitch in too, and take some of the weight. It seems to be a common theme that men are concerned with their right to a sex life and (some) women of young children are too exhausted and ‘touched out’ to care much about having sex. This probably would have washed in the 1950s, but the world has changed.

@Msti34

This isn’t about the sex thing, that’s a bi-product. It’s more about my daughter waking up multiple times and is all having disturbed sleep. We’re all knackered and she’s going to school in a couple of weeks which is my biggest concern - although part of me is thinking she may tire herself out so much at school that she starts sleeping through. It seems that there’s split opinion as to whether the co-sleeping should continue or whether we should try and get her to sleep by herself . I think maybe trying to persuade my wife to actually go out might be a good plan as this would then allow me to put my daughter to bed.

I’ve read your other posts but thought I’d respond to this one. My DS at four was also climbing into my bed in the middle of the night (still was some years later) it’s what he needed and if he snuck in quietly it happened without me noticing. If he created (and woke me) he was taken back to bed and I sat with him until he went to sleep. It was tough those nights due to the job I did.

I didn’t feel able to change DS’ sleep, he has always been a terrible sleeper, so found a way that we all got sleep to get through that stage. I’m not saying that this is how your wife feels but maybe your approach isn’t enabling her to communicate with you effectively.

I sympathise with you op.
However nothing will change until your wife is on board. Your daughter might resist a change to bedtime you’d both need to be a team putting her back to bed, sticking to the plan etc.
It sounds like your wife is almost hiding herself your daughter, so before addressing the bedtime issue I’d have a long hard look at why your wife isn’t getting to the end of the day keen to spend some time with you without your daughter (I don’t mean sex, I mean chatting or sharing a meal just the two of you etc). Does she have hobbies, interests, things she enjoys, not big events but just something she does not as ‘mummy’? Maybe take an interest in those, or ask about anything she used to enjoy which she might not have done for a while. The obligations of motherhood can be very trapping even if you love your child. She may be happy, she may be stuck.

Erm it's okay to want to have intimacy with your wife OP, and I really don't get the posters jumping on you for that. If it's normal to co-sleep with a four year old because they can't self-settle it's hell normal for a husband to crave physical intimacy with his wife.

I would hazard a guess your wife enjoys the close bond and her daughter needing her, there are thousands of articles and advice and ways to try and establish healthy sleeping patterns so if she isn't interested in trying them she probably is happy with the status quo. Is she going to be an only child? Because your wife may be very much aware that this time will never come again.

I do think long term things will change but your feelings are valid, yes it's a short season of childhood but children are supposed to grow up and move away eventually as fully independent functioning adults and then the parents are left alone together, it's important that parents keep a healthy and happy relationship between the two of them as well for the marriage to survive.

Also, you’re assuming your child is neurotypical. Are you and your wife in agreement on this?

YANBU op your wife is being ridiculous. Is she avoiding you?!

This does not sound ideal to me and I'm not surprised you want to make changes. Talk to your wife about making positive moves that will help your Dd when she begins school and to give you more part in your child's care.

At around this age we used a reward chart for staying in bed all night. It completely did the trick and dd was staying in her bed after just a few days of starting the reward system.
The chart we made had 7 empty circles on it. Each morning she would get the picture circle to stick on it (we used Velcro). After 7 full circles, she had a prize from the box. It was so simple, but effective.

I wouldn’t like that set-up. It also wouldn’t be feasible if you had another child or she was working. I also think If they’ve spent every moment together school will be a hard transition and that isn’t really fair on your 4yo. There have been a few children in my daughter’s class who can’t cope with the separation from their parents at drop-off and it is really hard to watch them having to be carried in kicking and screaming by a teacher.

This means you can get go out for dinner/the cinema/theatre/to see friends, I presume? Did you used to do things like that? I would hate being entirely bound to the house, I sympathise.

I would be knackered if I was your wife. Is that part of the problem? She might be holding on by the skin of her teeth and any suggestion of change to this routine, which knows works albeit badly, is just too much?

Or she also might just like the current set up.

I agree with the previous poster who says you should try to foster intimacy in other ways. Reframe the whole thing as you both as a team rather than you vs your daughter with her stuck in the middle trying to please you both.

Looking at this from the point of view of your wife, she is being pulled in two. Your dd wants her, you want her. It's hard to put a mother's instinct to mother her child behind a wish to keep her husband happy. She is probably feeling torn and unhappy too; I've been in this situation and you need to be the grown-up and stop competing for your wife's time at night. Find other times/places to have sex. Your dd will eventually grow out of it.