Really need help with sleep pattern of 5yo DD

[Triccaj]

I co parent my 5 yo DD. I’m in a very tricky situation around sleep and I just cannot see a logical path forward that I can influence/manage.

My daughter is amazingly well behaved. I have lived apart from her mother since she was about 2, so the majority of our relationship is framed with me not being in her mums house.

At mine, we have a repeatable, expectable bedtime routine, that results in my daughter self soothing herself to sleep in her own bed.

At her mums, she sleeps in bed with mum.

Since the seasons changed, DD has been getting up with the sun, sneaking downstairs and watching TV from like 4am. I’m a sleep and don’t know she is up. I get up to find she has already been up hours, is hungry for breakfast, and I feel many many negative emotions related to feeling like I’ve failed her, that I should know etc etc.

But there’s no support from mum. I have stated to Mum that I feel the reason this is the case is that DD never gets to practice self soothing/getting back off to sleep at mums. She just wakes up, if mums there she goes back to sleep, or wakes mum up and then mum tells her what to do.

Around early winter time mum raised that the co sleeping was feeling like a problem and asked for my advice on how she can get DD in her own bed. I have my advice, which was essentially you need to have a backbone and accept that there’s going to be a week or 2 of DD being upset/crying at bed time. This is a situation she has created for herself and I struggle to empathise or really have any sympathy. But it’s also affecting time at mine (I think/assume).

To be clear there is a Tommee Tippee clock in my DDs room, which is configured to change from a nighttime colour (red) to a daytime colour (yellow).

I just don’t know what to do. Please give advice. I feel like anything I do is undermined by her mum not supporting it

The cosleeping is fine. If that’s what Mum and child want then there is nothing you can do about it. But if Mum wants to stop this then I can tell you what worked for us.

It sounds like you need serious black out blinds are your, more exercise for your child and possible a later bedtime.

You don’t get to control what happens at
mums so forget it. Doesn’t matter. Just keep out of it and focus on you and your dd

I trained my dd to come wake me up when she got up so never had this problem but I have seen a few things work successfully

one family I know tied a dressing gown cord between door handles of parent room and child room, when child opened their door it pulled closed the parent door and woke them
I have also seen families use door alarms so that they can’t sleep through their toddler getting up.

youve got 16 years more co parenting ahead so don’t start causing aggro by trying to control what happens in someone else’s house.

And if you hide the remote control she can’t watch TV.

Second later bed time/lots of exercise /black out blind. Definitely a black out blind. Works for us. Tell her to stay in her room if she wakes up and look at books/play with toys until you come and get her. Turn tv off so she can’t turn it in. If she insists getting up, can’t you ask her to come and get in with you? Might buy you an extra half an hour and sweet cuddles. She’ll be grown up before you know it!

I have blackout blinds already, the room is pitch dark so there are also like pastel star lights around the room.

It is literally the case that DD states the reason she doesn’t get up at mums is that mum is there and so she wakes mum up and then mum soothes her back to sleep.

I honestly don’t understand what is right or healthy about that tbh. It seems like it’s just ‘easier’ but not actually what is best for my daughter consider just under half the time at mine she is clearly capable of getting herself to sleep in the evening.

Bedtime is a good shout, although I’ve already let that go later to 9/9.30.

I also feel the key point here is that Mum has said to me she wants the co sleeping to go away. So this is where saying ‘I can’t control what happens at mums’ obviously is true, but it would appear neither can she. This is what is concerning. At the end of the day I am handing my child off to someone who cannot enforce a simple boundary

You don’t have to understand it. It sounds like you don’t want to understand and different view point to your own. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with comforting your child.

Then suggest to Mum that she asks on some gentle parenting facebooks about how to end cosleeping. You could suggest MN but as you’ve posted here that’s not a good idea.

Um. Your not balling at all your just basically saying ‘tough, mum can do what she wants’… what about me lol… as usual the man just has to stfu and deal with it

your not helping*

What I need is solutions as to what I can do now. I have a call with mum on Thursday and I will raise it there yet again.

I have black out blind, I have Tommee Tippee clock, DD has demonstrated in the past that she can do this, so I think there is also partly a not caring element. There is no world where a 5yo only getting 6 hours sleep is acceptable. The door handle thing is interesting. I’d much prefer to reason through this than literally engineer stuff like that but it’s an option.

I am also toying with setting my own alarm for like 4.30/5.30/6.30 and basically having a shit nights sleep but that’s totally unsustainable.

Tbh not sure why I can here for support I was obviously going to be told, just like her mum, that my opinion can sod off, regardless of how in my DDs best interest it is

Put something on her door that makes a noise, you hear the noise you get up, tell her it's 4am and put her back in bed. Rinse and repeat.

I think you’re being very confrontational saying ‘handing my child to someone who can’t enforce a boundary’. It’s the child’s mother not a random person. Not wanting to leave your child upset at bedtime isn’t like letting them play on an iPad unlimited is it?!

No screens after 5pm also works here. Try playing board games and reading books together. Maybe mum could try lying down with her in her bed until she sleeps then leaving and build in that? Will take a lot of work and collaboration together.
It must be very confusing for her having two sets of rules to follow at such a young age.

Can I just be clear. The only issue I have at mine is DD getting up of her own volition and going downstairs, which is an exercise in discipline right? It takes discipline to realise it’s not time to get up and go back to bed, even if you don’t necessarily feel ‘tired’. This is the step I need to make progress on and am keen on advice. Ideally advice that isn’t going to get unwound by the facts I have presented above RE mums attitude to this…

like we have no screens for 2 hours before bed time. She self soothes to sleep, unattended. She sleeps really well, even with her getting up crazy early.

I am struggling to see what more I can do, but I’m open to suggestions. To suggest that mums decision are in isolation and have no impact on this is naive

But you can’t control what her mum does, only work together. Compromise. Maybe you’re expecting too much from a five year old that isn’t used to this level of control? It sounds like pretty normal 5 year old behaviour to me. Loads of kids I know wake up around sunrise in summer. I go with the co-sleeping approach because I like snuggles and sleep!

Remove remote as suggested and give her things to do in her room. Maybe set an alarm for the time she can come and get you? Not a ridiculous long time as she can’t manage it at that age. Maybe half an hour building up to an hour?

This is useful. Thank you.

I’ve now removed the remote. I do feel she understand the parameters you’ve discussed, but I’ll give it a try regardless lol, anything at this point!!

Does she get tired and then have a nap or go to sleep earlier at yours? Her mum has to figure out how to stop the co-sleeping, theres not much you can do about that.

You could ask her to stay in her room with a lamp on and listen to a storybook or something? And tell her she can come get you at 7?

I've got a 7yr old and 4yr old. They've both had phases where they have woken early in the morning (that's really common).

I would just keep to your normal routine and keep bedtimes at a reasonable hour. You said in one of your comments that the bedtime was 9/9:30, I personally think this is really late for a 5year old! I would expect 7-7:30. The trouble with sending them to bed at 9 is that they will be so overtired by then they will drop into deep sleep phase quicker and this can actually mean they wake earlier! I would try an earlier bedtime (sleep breeds sleep).

I would consider having strict rules about what she can and cannot do when she wakes up.

For example we have a rule that if our two DD's wake before 7 they must stay in bedroom but can read books. They have to wake us up if they want to go downstairs. If they wake us up before 7am they get told to lie down for a bit more in bed/read/play quietly (depending on how early it is). After 7am they understand that they can wake us up and we will go downstairs with them.
We have a stairgate too (for the 4yr old as we have super steep stairs) so we would hear them if they tried to go downstairs without us.

Yeah good shout on the bedtime. This isn’t my preference, and is very much me compromising as at mums she’s not getting to sleep until nearer 10. I know it’s bad, I hate it tbh.

I would have her in bed for about 7.30/8 if I had more control but as has been repeatedly reminded to me I have no control over what happens at her mums and since her mum insists on me NOT having 50/50 custody my hands are quite tied.

it’s extremely frustrating and I am definitely not in an equal position to get mum. That’s why I am quite focussed on this being something that needs resolved there before I can feasibly make any gains

If I were you I would stop thinking about what happens at Mum's. You can't control it, so ignore it.

Personally, I think waking up at 4am and sneaking down to watch TV is appalling behaviour and I'd be coming down on that like a tonne of bricks. You need better discipline. And yes, an earlier bedtime. Run her absolutely ragged in the day and put her to bed at 7. Then insist she stays in her room til 7. Do it every time she's at yours - tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of exercise and firm expectations of behaviour. 5 is more than old enough to know that Mum and Dad have different rules.

Lots of people have given you a range of different ideas. I can think of at least 5 which I can recall of the top of my head. The polite thing to do when you ask for help and people give up there time to help you is to say thank you not whinge at them because they disagree with you. I pity your ex. One of the biggest issues here is you can’t be arsed to get up and deal with your daughter and are blaming the behaviour of your daughter when your in charge on your ex.

My saltiness has been directed exclusively at you. I asked for help and you waltzed in to blame me. Don’t be surprised I took exception to it.

you literally just walked in and went “mum can do whatever she wants” - which is exactly the problem with this situation lol.

Mum also only gets her to sleep by 10 at the earliest. I’m sure that’s totally reasonable in your eyes, cos oh holy mother bath decided it.

All of your posts have a stench of misandry and I won’t just lay back and take it.

Yeah my initial reaction was an absolute ton of bricks and it worked for one night. The second night I explained I can’t see any other resolution, if I can’t trust her to stay in bed until the clock changes colour etc, than to talk to mum and ask to stop the co sleeping.

That night she stayed in bed as required.

The next weekend she told me she had told her mum what I said and mum had said to ignore me and that mum will do what she wants etc etc, and ever since I’ve gotten nothing but ignorance.

But obviously it’s all totally my fault I’m a lazy dad etc etc.

Its totally the lazy dads that come here looking for advice (sorry another poster on here is really grating my gears)

Forget the cosleeping. Kids are adaptable. Your daughter could easily learn to sleep longer at your house and still co sleep with mum. She just needs a plan for when she does wake at 4am. You do this by talking about it in the morning, daytime and before bed. Keep repeating what you'd like her to when she wakes in the night and see that she's engaged in the plan - you can get her to suggest ways to get back to sleep.

My 2 year old knows that if he wakes any time before the "sun comes up" on his gro clock then he can put his night light on and play with his toys and/or he can pull up his covers, turn over and go back to sleep.

Yes, this has resulted in singing and him getting up out of bed at silly o'clock but he doesn't bother me, is safe and is more often than not choosing to stay lying down until he falls back asleep.

The second night I explained I can’t see any other resolution, if I can’t trust her to stay in bed until the clock changes colour etc, than to talk to mum and ask to stop the co sleeping.

That night she stayed in bed as required.

The next weekend she told me she had told her mum what I said and mum had said to ignore me and that mum will do what she wants etc etc, and ever since I’ve gotten nothing but ignorance.

This was a really stupid move. You basically made a threat you had no way of following through with, and now she knows that she doesn't care about what you say because she thinks you're full of it.

You can only deal with what's happening in your house! People are saying "mum can do whatever she likes" as in "there is nothing you can do about what mum does" not as in "mum knows best and you should suck it".

Why did you threaten on the second night rather than just repeat what worked the first time?

It’s a fair statement.

I am a 6’3” skin head. It worked because I literally came downstairs to find her watching TV at 4.15am and I went ballistic, as in full blown shouting at her. Honestly it scared me in hindsight and I just don’t want to lose my tempter like that.

I suppose ultimately I feel like the real route cause is, as many have stated here, discipline.

It’s not fair that I should be put in a position where I am seen to be the ‘bad guy’ to DD because her mum won’t have a back bone and display any discipline at all around bedtime.

As I think I’ve said above, Mum literally said to me over new year that the co sleeping is destroying her, but she doesn’t know what else to do because DD just gets hysterical if she tries anything else (literally DSM enmeshment diagnosis first sign).

I have tried explaining what I did, and she just says it’s too ‘hard’. So she puts her to bed about 8/8.30, and ends up laying with her for over an hour every night getting her to sleep, to then betray her by sneaking off to watch tele until the early hours of the morning.

Whereas at mine bedtime is very different. I already follow almost all of the advice I have received. I have a set routine that I know works, we have screens off at least an hour before bed. I have black out blinds I have the night light. I have set it to be red at night and repeat all day and all evening and the last thing I say before bed, after I love you, is “if it’s red, stay in bed”.

I literally and genuinely can see nothing else I can do to improve this. Today I have taken the TV away all day. I have almost no confidence it will make a difference - because most of the time, she isn’t here. Discipline doesn’t come from the minority, and I have been engineered to be the minority.

So you see, ultimately, I am fairly sure the actual root cause of this is that mum still co sleeps the way she does. I should mention I don’t have any issue per se with co sleeping. But co sleeping to me shouldn’t be like a crutch or a ‘need’, it should be a comfort/nurturing thing. Like child is poorly so have a night with mum/dad.

But that’s not what is happening at mums. It’s toxic as hell and in my book tantamount to abuse. Again, not co sleeping in general but whatever codependent mess I’m witnessing at her mums.