I'm lost, I'm turning into a horrible mother

[Stargate456123]

Please help, I feel so lost, I'm turning into everything I promised myself I wouldn't.
My ds is nearly 7 and he's become impossible to cope with. Bedtime has turned into an absolute farce and it's tearing the family apart. He's currently standing at the top of the stairs crying and shouting and it's been on going since 7pm.

A few weeks ago this started, said he was worried we were going to leave him. I have absolutely no idea where this came from, we both sat down with him and tried to find out what's going on but all we got back was "I don't know". We've tried positive reinforcement, we did as he asked....be loud when I go to bed, talk to people on the phone, make noise so I know you're there etc but this just isn't sustainable. We need downtime, I haven't even eaten tea.

So far he's smashed up his bedroom twice because I shut his bedroom door, I sat him in the kitchen and he threw an open tin of tomatoes around and smashed all the magnets off the fridge. I've made him clean all this up. Whilst sat there he starts saying he wants to die...this is so fucking abnormal I can't even begin to explain, I don't even know where he would get such an expression.

I grew up in an abusive home, I was a beaten child and ended up in care at 10 years old. I promised myself when I was pregnant that his life would be nothing like mine, I've tried everything to make sure he feels and knows he is loved, I've never laid a finger on him. I thought I'd done pretty good but now I wonder where the fuck it's gone wrong.

I will add, he has absolutely no SEN. Until a few weeks back we had what I would consider to be normal challenges for a boy of his age but this goes beyond anything I feel equipped to deal with. I can feel my anger rising, I've screamed like a fucking banshee tonight and god knows what the neighbours think.

What do I do? I feel like walking out and never looking back right now.

Who is the other person in this dynamic? You said "We need downtime". Is there anyone else in the house who says 'I can't do this' out loud.

Thank you for your input, I really appreciate it.
To answer a couple of questions...my dp is home (ds dad) but he's at just as much of a loss. It's starting to get between us, we're butting heads a lot of the time as we both deal with it in different ways that neither of us agree with. He says I'm too soft, I say he's too harsh...we had similar childhoods in the respect that his dad was an awful man who thought fists were the way to deal with things and ruled with fear. He's not as bad as that, if he ever raised a hand to ds he'd be out the door and I've made no secret of that, but he has the "it did me no harm" attitude whereas I've gone the complete opposite way. I will never forget the fear of my parents walking into the room not knowing what they're thinking and I will not have that for our son.
Also, with the radio, he's always had it in his room. I blame having one of those monitors in his room as a baby that plays lullaby's to help settle them, he seems to have grown a dependency on having noise which I really dislike as I'm a dark and silent kind of sleeper!

I've been in to speak to the head this morning, ds is apparently very respectful and well mannered at school but was flagged last week for becoming aggressive. Ds absolutely loves the head (it's a very small village school) and clearly has a lot of respect for him so he's going to have a talk to see if he can figure out where we're going wrong.

Have there been any changes at home at all? moving house or could he have picked up on any tension between your and your DP? Sometimes the slightest thing can set children off on this path.
my DS who is 5 still seems to think I will 'leave him' and has to be re-assured every night. This all started after i split with his dad. I've never once left him and we've been split for nearly 2 years now. I do believe this has now become a habit for him.
Someone has just loaned me a book called 'My hidden chimp' - check it out.

My now 8 year old is scared of sleeping on his own. This stems from his sister showing him scary videos aged 4 or 5. He knows and says it's his imagination but he's truly scared. He had to sleep with his sister for a few years and now needs fairy lights on to sleep bit every now and then something will scare him and he'll sleep on the sofa or with one of us.

If he's scared then let him sleep downstairs with you until he's no longer scared.

I say lie with him for a while as he falls asleep. Bring it right back to A’s if he was a baby (I know it sounds crazy and backwards) but he is missing something and unless you rewind a bit you won’t be able to go forward. So do dinner, bath, story, chat about his day, then lights off and stay with him until he falls asleep. Once he had settled into this you can remove yourself gradually from the room.

^
I second this

OP I used to behave exactly like this, I even thought that could be my mum posting! I’m much much older now though...

Obviously this may be different for you and your boy but I will share my thought processes at that age and why I behaved in that way. I was hugely insecure. I didn’t want to go to school, I felt scared all the time. I was unhappy. The comments about dying - I can’t remember if I said that at that age but I definitely did a bit later on and when I look back at being age 7 I was extremely sad and low.

What I needed was time. I needed my mum and dad to talk things through with me and not put a time limit on that. I KNOW this is easier said than done. But if my mum had been firm in her responses but also patient in listening AND made me feel like she understood me, I would have settled much easier. I wanted to be treated like an adult in the sense that I needed to be taken seriously. Practically I don’t tbink you can sit there all night, but maybe take him out for a milkshake or something fun and chat it through when you’re not on the cusp of bedtime. Make him feel like he can be responsible too for how he is feeling, ask what his friends do at bedtime or what he thinks they do.

I don’t know if that is at all helpful but I just wanted to share my thoughts as I behaved in the exact same way and it came from a very unhappy place. I can see though that it is very hard on you!! X

It's really interesting that the school have seen a change in behaviour in him too. Can you ask you son if it would help for him to speak to another grown up about what's going on with him? He can call Childline or perhaps there's an aunt/uncle he'll feel comfortable talking to. I agree with @fedupgal23 that he sounds insecure and something is making him angry, the bedtime behaviour sounds like it is a symptom of something else. Hopefully the head of his school can help uncover what is going on, but in the meantime I think you are doing the right thing, lots of love and support. 8 is still really little and hes managing some big feelings.

Sorry! 6 not 8!

Love bombing worked for us with this. DS was just suddenly scared of everything and I indulged his need for company at bedtime for a few weeks. It passed in a bit.

I'm so sorry you're going through a tough time. I hope it passes soon xx

I would lie with him until he falls asleep.

If he's scared of you leaving this seems the most obvious solution.

Bless you, sounds exhausting! I had the same with my son BUT my husband and I had split up in very difficult circumstances (domestic violence) and my ex-husband used to say terrible things to my son about me so his awful behaviour was understandable.

I agree what everyone else says. Go to the school asap to check that something hasn't happened or been said - stranger danger talks etc? Book in to the GP as soon as possible, a sudden change in behaviour can sometimes be a sign of something physically not being quite right, viral infections etc. Do not blame yourself though . Try and give him the stability that he seems to need, cuddle him, lie with him, try and try to keep calm (not easy when you're knackered!). Hopefully it's just a phase, but if there is something more best to try and get it sorted sooner rather than later xx

fedupgal23 has some good ideas. Take him out for a milkshake and a chat way before bedtime, and really listen to his issues, then ask him to listen to yours.
Both my DC were hell on earth to get to go to bed. I never mastered it. We tried everything over the years. Nothing worked. But by the age of about 7-8 they were old enough for me to be able to say: 'I know you hate bedtime. I know you want my constant attention but right now I'm tired and I get horribly grumpy if I'm not allowed to sit down and rest at the end of a long day. It feels like I'm being bullied when I want to relax.' They did actually listen.
They had hoards of attention: bath time where I'd sit in the room and chat, followed by suppe rand chat followed by stories followed by cuddles on my bed followed by being tucked up in their own beds, but they'd just boing out of bed for more and more. In the end, I just said: grown up time. If you're not tired, keep the light on and read or listen to the radio but right now I need to be allowed to think my own thoughts.

You have every right to explain your own needs to your DC. Vicious circle for you: as a child your needs weren;t met so you make a conscious decision to ensure your children;s needs are always met. meaning yours are still not met. No wonder you scream. Make sure he understands you have needs and one is to relax and go off duty at a given time. He sounds intelligent, so you can discuss with him the difference between him feeling scared that you will go away and knowing that in real life you love him and you will never abandon him.

How is he describing this fear? Is it possible that he is having Intrusive thoughts and this is how he is responding to them?

My DS started to get what he described as strange thoughts around the age of 8, irrational fear of various things (getting ill, hurting other people etc) and thus started his journey of mental health issues.

He is now 13 and has been diognosed with OCD and anxiety and is currently in treatment for that.

Would recommend referral for mental health assistance, just to see if this micght be the issue. Good luck to you all

He sounds very very anxious. Rage like this in children often has its roots in anxiety. Agree he may be having intrusive thoughts (part of OCD and can be horrifically distressing - very common for the sufferer to believe that they MUST do so-and-so, e.g. stay awake, and can't tell anyone or something bad will happen).

Please do keep seeking out help for him - this change is a sign that the grown ups need to investigate.

I second love bombing and lying with him until he's asleep, also with the limited info available I would still strongly expect there's bullying still going on.
Ime as a bullied child it doesn't just stop when/if the bully is told off. It changes. I used to be hell on earth to get to bed and get into school in the morning and I didn't even know exactly why and wouldn't have been able to say it was bullies when asked, but it was. I was 8 or so and then it settled and then came back at 10ish.

I like the going out not at bedtime idea.

You're an amazing mum X

I do this book with my DS:

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1848193440/ref=asc_df_184819344057441743/?hvlocphy=1006741&linkCode=df0&hvptwo&psc=1&hvnetw=g&hvadid=311233467079&creative=22110&hvpone&hvlocint&creativeASIN=1848193440&th=1&hvpos=1o1&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl&hvqmt&tag=mumsnetforum-21&hvtargid=pla-567358241014&hvrand=17329317606239981205

It’s great because if he isn’t a hugger or a talker it’s a real indirect way of getting things out of them & settling them down x

This could be a sign of ADHD, Autism or anxiety. Unfortunately children cant verbalize how they feel and alot if the time don't even know.

I went through this with my Son for years. Please go to the go first and try and get him assessed.

Maybe its b’cos he hasn’t had a slap on the bum and been told not to be so bloody naughty, all this attention for terrible behaviour is not the answer

Jaffa that is the attitude my oh has and one that I absolutely don't agree with!

I just wanted to update as I've been away the past couple of days. On reflection there are a couple of things that we feel may have started this.....1) we are both smokers however ds has never seen us smoke, he has never seen any smoking related products around and we've always waited until he was in bed to go out the back. A few weeks ago we were outside after he'd gone to bed and he appeared in the kitchen screaming "where have you gone?!". I wonder if he was calling down before and we didn't hear him? We passed it off as supervising the dog (he'd run away a couple of days previous) and he accepted that and went to bed but I wonder if that's played on his mind? Following that, we decided to wait until he was definitely asleep before standing in the porch. It was my oh who brought this up last night, I'd forgotten about it, but is not outside the realms of possibility?
2) this behaviour coincided with the 2nd week of my uni placement where I was on a Monday to Friday 9-5 rota. We went from me doing the majority of school runs to oh taking him in then having to go to after school club every single day. I wonder if my lack of being around anywhere near as normal has had an effect?

His issues about going to bed seem to be that he's worried we're going to leave him. We even took pictures the other night of us cuddling him whilst he was sleeping so he knows we're still there when he's asleep, he really loved that. But none of this explains the extreme anger he has, it's crazy, he explodes at the slightest thing.

The head has been amazing, has sent him home with a sticker chart that he's clearly spent a lot of time putting together, and they are getting advice on anger management techniques that are transferable to home from the home support team linked to the school. The support we are getting is amazing (although I can't help feeling that I'm failing as a mum as I should be able to deal with this)

@Stargate456123 - when I was 7 my dad was given a terminal cancer diagnosis but I couldn’t really take that onboard. We then went on a big holiday and they went into a shop in a mall and me and my sister waited outside (it was the early 90’s!) and it felt like a long time and I suddenly started to panic that they weren’t coming back. This started a good 18 months of extreme seperation anxiety for me. I wouldn’t be able to sleep because I thought they were going to leave in the night, so my dad would often stay up in the living room with me, I wanted the bedroom door open so I could see if they tried to leave, I would panic every day after school that my mum wouldn’t collect me. I developed this ocd style routine of delaying coming out and seeing if she was there due to the panic and not wanting to cry. My mum obviously started to get very stressed and frustrated, which then made me more anxious she would leave.

The trigger may well have been him not knowing where you’d gone and starting to panic, that feeling of panic is really horrible so adults and children can try to avoid feeling it again but avoiding situations or having ways to manage it.

I agree with others than anger is often the way people express other emotions that aren’t easy to verbalise (kids often describe tummy aches or physical issues instead), so it may be extreme fear or anxiety or feeling unable to control a situation.

Glad you are getting some support at the very least - think about getting yourself some support too - either from your local nhs self referral therapy service (called IAPT most usually), just so you have some space to talk about the way it is making you feel.

But OP, you are dealing with it. You are getting the school to help and you are getting opinions, and thinking what could be the cause. You're doing fine.

You really need to stop being so hard on yourself. I think you are probably right about what started it, and that is not your fault. You are doing all the right things. I hope things settle back down soon.