To ask how you don’t lose your shit??

[BuzzBuzzBuzzLightyearToTheRescue]

My girls are fabulous. They are clever and funny and close and I love being their mum.

However, they go from being angelic to absolute demons at night. Especially the eldest (7). I’m struggling to keep it together. I end up losing the rag which just makes me feel like the worlds worst mum. It can ruin an otherwise perfectly lovely day.

As soon as bedtime rolls around, they start to ignore me. They go from calm to utterly hyper. It’s like herding cats to get their bedtime routine done and the pair of them into bed. The eldest just carries on, wanders about, ignores me if I ask her to get into her bed (even if just to read).

Youngest (6) will generally carry on for ten mins but then goes to sleep. Fine. Eldest however simply refuses to go to sleep. Tonight my husband was out and she was still wandering the floors gone midnight. I constantly returned her to bed. She has lost her Switch privileges for tomorrow. Nothing worrying or upsetting her, by the way. I have asked and asked. She just gets bored in her bed and doesn’t want to go to sleep.

Whilst midnight is an extreme example, this is most nights with the eldest. I feel like my husband and I get no privacy and no time to just relax because she just appears down to see what we are up to and then won’t go back to bed. Eventually one of us loses the rag and then she gets upset and we feel terrible but to be honest it is just too much!! The other night I caught her hiding in the hall, listening to our conversation and what we were watching on tv.

She has a bedtime routine. Same as her sister and has been the same for years. She goes to bed about 7.45-8pm and is allowed to read as long as she likes (if I go in and take her book off her, she just gets up. I figure it’s better that she’s in bed reading at 10pm than wandering about…).

I’ll be honest. I’m running out of patience. She just doesn’t seem to need that much sleep. How, HOW do you keep your temper with this?! I don’t want to bark and moan and shout at her to go to bed. I hate that. But at 11pm it just feels like…please just go away!!

I can absolutely empathise with you.

I have absolutely no suggestions though! It's relentless and from what I see, most kids are like this. They just don't care about the punishments!

I always end up yelling and feeling terrible, but they they drive me to it?! Just do as you're told! Argh

Could you try an audio book thingy in her room would she lay and listen to that ?

Can you do that Supernanny thing where you do the wind down, bed time routine. Stories, kisses and cuddles and say Good night. First time they get up "Bed time darling", second time they get up "Bed time" third time they get up and there after say nothing. Just take them back to bed each time. No eye contact, no talking. No losing your shit, just breathe. Maybe sit on the stairs and read a book, being boring. No looking at her, no talking. Might take a few nights of putting her back to bed 20 times, but after sticking to it you'll hopefully get to a point where you get your evenings back, and she gets the sleep she needs.

Personally whether she is up or not I would go to bed. Shut the curtains, switch off the lights and take remotes and gadgets with her. I do this to my kids. They need to know it’s bedtime.

Reading could just be stimulating her mind and stopping her getting sleepy. I wouldn’t let her do this past 8pm. It’s book down, lights off. She is old enough to understand

Take them out for a really energetic play or as my MIL likes to say "take 'em out and run 'em" in the evening. Maybe right before dinner then quick bedtime routine, all curtains closed and lights turned down to help their body clocks.

Melatonin

i say that as my 5yo has just breezed down at 9.30pm to use the loo. But at least she’s just gone straight back up.

It doesn’t matter how much I run them. How much I return her to bed etc. she will just fight sleep to the bitter end. It’s just total FOMO. She’s dead on her feet going to school today!!

Why do you feel bad about losing your shit?

She's behaving badly. She senses that you feel torn about enforcing your rules so she keeps on pushing you.

Be extremely firm. Stop wringing your hands. She needs to understand that she's not going to get away with the defiance and the attention seeking and that youre not going to put up with it at all.

Push her bedtime to 8 and there should be absolutely no leaving her room after that.

In the meantime, make sure there is meaningful one to one attention for her with both you and her dad weekly.

IME they do this when over tired and over stimulated. Earlier bed time, earlier wind down period, no screens, try very calm, quiet back ground music, classical or relaxation/self hypnosis stuff.

I saw someone post on here once with this idea: you give your kid three tokens, which they can use if they need to come downstairs for a reason. Once they've used those three tokens, that's it for the night, and any further nonsense is punished with loss of screens, whatever you choose.

We did it for a while with my daughter and eventually she got the idea that she shouldn't 'waste' her tokens on stupid things, so only used them for actual reasons, not excuses. Then she got bored of the whole thing eventually and stopped coming downstairs at all.

I slept really well as a baby, then got to the age of about five and seemingly turned into an insomniac overnight. I'm 46 now and my mum still reminisces about my weird sleep issues.

I think your daughter is unlikely to start falling asleep on cue, to be honest with you. You can't make her doze off. So assuming you've already done all the stuff you're supposed to - the no screens before bed, the reading a nice story, the calm bedtime routine, the soothing bedroom environment and all that stuff - then I think maybe you need to turn your focus towards at least just getting her stay in bed while awake rather than pottering around the house. I can vividly remember the sheer boredom of not being able to sleep - the boredom then makes you agitated and that's when you start fidgeting and getting out of bed all the time. My solution to the boredom as a child was to read for hours in extremely dim light which was obviously not ideal (it may not be coincidence that everyone else my family has near-perfect vision while I needed glasses from the age of 14) but at least my parents weren't having to deal with me wandering about, even though when they poked their head around the door to check on me on their way to bed themselves, I was invariably wide awake and had hidden my book under my pillow, which would then be taken off me - I do think my parents would have been better to just let me carry on reading, however late.

If letting her read isn't working, then how about audiobooks? She can lie with the light off and listen to those with her eyes closed and she may find it easier to relax and doze off when the pressure's off - even if it's much later than you'd like, although I wouldn't worry about that too much actually. Another idea might to be also get her one of those lamps that gradually fades down like the sun setting over a long period, so she can stay in bed listening to a book or reading or even playing quietly with some small toys (a couple of dolls or action figures, or a puzzle or something) while the light gradually changes and helps her wind down.

When my mum was talking about my sleep issues to me recently, I said 'Well, at least I didn't keep getting up' and she said 'I know, but I'd peep round the door to check on you at midnight and there'd be these two big eyes looking at me out of the dark and I'd realise you'd been silently wide awake for the last four hours, and that was honestly really quite unnerving, like having a little ghost in the house...'

Teach her the marines fall asleep anywhere at anytime technique:

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/how-to-sleep-tiktok-military-hack-b2003906.html

Enrol her in a fun physical sport she likes
Chamomile tea at bedtime.
A spray of lavender water on the pillow.
Fresh sheets weekly.
A book subscription to allow her to choose her favourite books.
Her favourite treat food or other things she likes once every two days if she stays in her bed.

If it persists, trip to the GP to be referred to a sleep therapist. You’d be amazed.

I had the same issues as a child, but I was too scared to come down, a smacking was not out of the question, thankfully it was extremely rarely used. I was allowed to keep my light on and read my books, it would have been a literal nightmare for me otherwise. It was underlying lifelong anxiety causing it, rather than a fear of missing out.

You say no bedtime routine for years.

so what actually happens

surely everyone needs a bedtime routine of some sort?

What does your husband do?

In relation to the issue?

OP said her children’s bedtime routine has been the same for years.

It will be good to hear exactly what happens, a blow by blow account.

Is your husband the father of your children?

I wondered that but didn’t want to ask!

What on earth has that got to do with her kid acting up at bedtime 🤣

Take a stroll over to the SP chat room.

It is very often relevant.

Another reader in bed checking in here - my parents sent me to bed far too early, and I would just sit and read in the light from the landing, or play quietly.

Is it possible she actually IS bored in bed?

The dangerous naïveté of some is astounding.

Sorry I’m obviously missing something massive. Why is it dangerous?

The idea that whether or not the husband is the child’s father or not is not relevant is just… baffling.