To ask if you think is might be having a bigger impact than I realised

[Blueey]

Or is this just life with children?

I have 2 DCs, 8 and 6.
8yo was always a troubled sleeper and we coslept in the end as the only way to get some rest. Multiple wake ups every night for a really really long time, then DC2 was born and the pattern continued as it does with a newborn, but this time with both kids. However DC2 tended to sleep better than DC1, who was still regularly needing me to sit with him back to sleep multiple times a night at 4/5 years old.

Fast forward to now and I'm still not getting unbroken sleep. The issue is now more my 6yo, he usually wakes up at least once a night but often twice or three times. He will not settle back to sleep in his bed unless I sit with him and I'm so tired I tend to fall asleep curled in a ball at the bottom of his bed, waking up 30 - 60 mins later and returning to my own bed. So it's not uncommon for my night to be:

10pm fall asleep
12am wake up to settle dc2
12.45am wake up on dc2 bed and return to my bed
2.30am wake up to settle dc2
3am wake up on dc2 bed and return to my bed
6.30am up for the day

Sometimes there could be a third wake up in there too.

8yo will sometimes also ask me to help him back to bed if he wakes up but at least that's just tuck in, kiss and go now.

In the 8 years I've been a mum I think I've had very very very few nights of unbroken sleep. Impossible to quantify really but it's really not much. At the end of last year I slept on a mattress in the kids room for 3 months just to get some proper sleep and did actually. So that might have upped my number. It wasn't comfortable though as it was a fold out mattress so my back ached. It seemed to help the wake ups with DC2 for a while though but now we're back where we were.

DH doesn't wake up. If I want him to do it I have to wake him and ask him to go do it, which sort of feels it defeats the point as I'm awake by then, plus I hate asking as it makes me feel like I'm then somehow responsible for neither of us sleeping. He works a physical job that he has to leave at 7am for so I also tend to feel bad in that regard. I also work, in a known stressful job, but only three days a week and I start after I've dropped DCs at school. But of course his working pattern means I do all the morning routine and school runs too.

Anyway I feel unhappy a lot and this morning I completely lost my shit ranting at all of them. I feel trapped all the time and honestly like I'm losing my mind a bit. I've thought it's just me but maybe it's the sleep?

YABU - sleepless nights is part and parcel of having kids
YANBU - those nights sound particularly unusual/awful

Sounds bloody horrendous and your DH is useless. Tell him from now on you’re taking one night on and one off, taking turns. Then put earplugs and an eye mask on and don’t get up for anything when it’s not your night.

I would start telling the 8 year old to go back to bed and not get out of bed to settle them but the 6 year old i would just let them get into my bed the first time they came in and go back to sleep. They are still small and it sounds exhausting to be getting up that much. Theyll grow out of it.

Is there a reason they’re not sleeping? A disability or something?

Because no, I think it’s not that common to be having to settle children that age back to sleep multiple times a night regularly.

I think by 6 and definitely by 8 children should be able to understand that they can’t get out of bed in the night unless they’re sick.
Could you sit down with them and just explain this? Would a simple reward chart work? If they stay in bed every night for a week, they get a Lego set or whatever their currency is?

It’s an important skill to be able to wake and settle yourself back to sleep for DC2 to learn. So could you teach him some strategies? I tell mine, count slowly to 100 and if you’re still awake when you get there? Start from 1 again. I am lighthearted with it, I tell them, you can’t fall asleep standing on the stairs can you? So lay in bed, get all snuggled down, imagine you’re a little mouse in a cosy hole all safe and snug.

Good luck - you’re lucky in that by this age they can understand what you’re getting at and should be able to respond quite quickly.

Not normal. I think you could do with professional advice / sleep training.

Maybe start by looking into a few books around kids sleep and seeing if you find an approach that suits you.

I liked 'Healthy sleep habits, happy child' which also offers advice on how to remediate poor sleeping patterns in older children. He is very big on the importance of all the family (parents too) getting enough sleep, and the advice is intended to facilitate that.

He did used to just get in my bed and we'd kick DH into 6yos bed, which we still do sometimes. But I was trying to get out of letting him in my bed all the time because one I wanted to be sleeping next to DH again after years of DH sleeping elsewhere while me and the DCs coslept.
I also think he seems to wake up more when he knows my bed is an option.
It would certainly be easier though.

This sounds really unusual and quite unbearable. I have a 3 and 5 year old and get woken up at night probably once every two months (I mean that to sound sympathetic, not smug - I'm not a super parent or anything and my kids are quite average).

No, none of this is normal now. When they wake up at night, they have to stay in their own bed unless they feel ill. If they turn up in your room, they get a kiss and sent back to their own room, you don’t get up. Tell them it’s okay if they aren’t asleep, they can just lie in bed and rest.

My kids have always just come into our bed on first wake up. Maximises sleep for everyone. I'd definitely do that if it's easier.

Do you have room to set up an area in your room for them. I went through this with my youngest and eventually set up a camp bed next to my bed so if he woke he would just come and crash on there. He's almost 8 now and sleeps in his own room 99% of the time

Low iron/ferritin can cause sleep issues,maybe try a supplement? We've struggled with sleep in our household too so we bedshare when our kids wake.

Ditto.

What happens if you're away overnight?

Have you tried some sort of reward chart thing - with treats for if DS can sleep in his own room the whole night for a week etc etc?

Get him to design his own ideal bedroom so he wants to stay in there?

At six surely there’s lots of things you could try instead of staying with him “till he settles?”

I think you need to take a much harder line with this. They are 8 and 6; they aren't babies.

Unless ill, if they wake up they stay in their rooms. The end. You'll have a few nights of misery but they'll get it.

Get a bigger bed, and let DC6 sleep in it as well as DH. 3 of my 4 kids have spent a lot of their early years coming into our bed at night. They get in, they go back to sleep, we all get a pretty undisturbed night’s sleep. They’ve all grown out of it by about 8, without me doing anything (apart from the youngest). The 6 year old still gets in pretty regularly now, but I can see the frequency declining and I imagine within the year he’ll have stopped. With no stressful taking back to bed in the night and plenty of sleep. I know it doesn’t suit everyone, but I have tried enforcing own beds over the years, and it has been far more exhausting than taking the path of least resistance and letting them get in!

This must also be exhausting for your children! I'm not sure what the answer is but the 8 year old should not need you to get hon back to sleep every night. Perhaps you should go and stay with some friends and leave you husband to deal with tge nights fir a week. In sure there would be some urgency to deal with the situation then!

He will go back in his room if I've had enough and ask him to, but he sobs quietly and then comes back through a few minutes later and says he's scared. I don't have the heart to be harsh at that point. He is a wonderful kid, a proper ray of sunshine and really quite well behaved and thoughtful and loving, and usually very confident and outgoing. It's just the sleep thing - he is also still in pull ups and I do wonder if some of the wake ups are needing wees which I always get him to do. His nappy is usually wet still though.

My other son is much more challenging behaviour wise, in all other ways is the more anxious one, and can be very jealous of his little brother which also makes me uncertain of letting 6yo get in every night.

I just feel like everything is my responsibility and that my brain is completely clouded with no ability to make decisions. DH is great, doesn't sound like it from my first post but he's helpful and easy to communicate with. I just feel like how we're going to manage things tends to be on me. Then because I'm so, so tired and I get more impatient and stressed, I look like a nightmare.

We also live on a busy road, looking to move. I've added secondary glazing with acoustic glass to the bedroom windows (on top of double glazing) because I wonder if the noise interrupts his sleep sometimes.

Not sure how they are when I'm not there as I'm never really away alone. When they stay with grandparents it used to be OK but more recently lots of wake ups again.

Maybe either having him back in with me or sleeping in there again is the way forward - no space in our room to set him up a bed as we have the smallest room.

It's reassuring to hear others think this is a problem. It's been this way so long it's normal and I feel like I should just get on with it.

Iron supplements is def something I could look into, thanks for the suggestion.

Could your son miss the co sleeping when your husband slept with him?

It doesn't sound very healthy for you getting such disturbed sleep. Could you have a family meeting and discuss the impact of it and maybe come up with a group plan moving forward.

I hope things get better soon.

So… let him sob for a bit?

But take him back to bedroom I mean.

No it’s not really normal so YANBU. Maybe it’s a circadian rhythm disorder ? I’d consult a doctor

Do you think this could be a habit that needs breaking?

It sounds like he's got into a habit that you need to break. Does he have a night light and a groclock? 6 is plenty old enough to understand that you need to sleep. Of course kids still wake sometimes at this age but this many wake ups a night is ridiculous really.

I think both children are more than old enough to understand that they shouldn't be waking you up.

I would recommend talking to them about what would help them go back to sleep - something like a yoto player might help

For me sleep is really important so I was prepared to sacrifice a few nights to get it well established.

Once they were in bed there was no getting up unless ill. But if they were unsettled I would sit in the doorway of the room in the dark for as long as it took for them to be asleep. If they woke in the night I would haul myself out of bed and return to the doorway. Naturally I made myself comfortable there and had a book and a dim light or my phone. When they stirred I would neither get up nor look their way, but say in an expressionless voice 'go back to sleep' or 'it's time to sleep' or similar. Even if they were chatting or singing or crying or even wailing, I would just keep repeating like a stuck record. This might go on for hours and I sometimes fell asleep in the doorway, which was not ideal, but I felt it worth the investment. This way they knew they were not alone, I was there, but I was of no interest whatsoever, so they might as well lie down quietly, and thus, eventually, fall asleep. I did this when they were young, but if a child got out of bed I would just calmly lead him/her back to bed with no interaction and just dull words. As many times as necessary.

A relative came to stay when she had a conference in the area for a week, with late evenings, leaving her toddler with me. The toddler was a 'bad sleeper', but responded to this treatment by the third night and fell asleep within 10 minutes and stayed asleep by the third night. I'm sure it helped that she didn't want interaction with me as much as with her mum.