What to do when child won't actually stay in bed?

[lollydu]

Daughter is 5, backstory is there's suspicion of some sort of neurodiversity, I have a diagnosis of ADHD.

We've had an absolute shocker of a bedtime and it's been slipping to this for the last 6 months. It's so stressful because there's not one sleep training/bedtime technique that will work with her. She's just constantly calling out and it's a cycle of her telling us she can't sleep, things escalating to her getting out of bed constantly. I try to just lead her back to bed and say it's time to sleep but I'm talking it's just constant as soon as I put her back in bed she's out again and I'm basically standing at the top of the stairs for hours just putting her back to bed and she's swinging between laughing and saying she needs an activity to do because she's not tired to crying when my partner goes up and starts taking things away and being the hard disciplinarian. Then cuddles from me and trying to sort things out for her and settle her and the cycle starts again. We tried moshi kids sleep app tonight but that didn't work. Eventually she settled after the final upset from my partner after multiple getting out of bed and coming to the stairs and cuddle from me, but I just don't want it to be like this? I hate the good cop bad cop routine. I want to help her settle but nothing works, literally nothing! I'm hoping it's partly because of the Xmas holidays and things will settle when she's back at school and routine back to normal. Part of me thinks maybe she's genuinely just not tired and maybe we need to try putting her to bed at 9ish but since these problems have been happening her bedtimes slipped later and so has wake time so we are having to wake her for school still tired. I can't take the chance that we put her to bed at 9 and she still takes 3 hours to settle!

I just don't know what to do, what do you do when sleep training techniques like check ins etc don't work? I even said I would stay with her until she was asleep in desperation but she's just so stimulated she just talks and talks at me, it's the actual settling down for sleep she's so resistant to.

I'm so close to giving in and letting her watch something low stimulation on the iPad but feel it's something I can't take back once I do this and have heard so many awful things about blue light etc I haven't done it yet, but I can see I might be pushed to with the way things are at the moment.

The only thing that worked for my daughter (ADHD) was melatonin gummies ordered from mainland Europe. Game changer. There's a lot of good advice on this thread, though.

She has a Toni box but she's had it since she was 2 and I think it's not capturing her attention anymore as same stories over and over, it might as well not be there now! I wish I'd got a yoto player now she's older as tonie was great from age 2 but not so much now.

You need to step up and say no. Your evenings are way to fun.
I know she is ND but you offer way too much. She doesn't want to miss out.

My dc with adhd were like this. This is how we did it:
Bring bedtime forward to take into account how long bedtime will take. Any attempt at shenanigans once in bed was met with "it's bedtime, lie down and close your eyes". Be boring. It's ok for them to be awake but they must be lying down preferably with eyes closed. If she tries to talk to you, respond in the most boring, bland, non committal way if you have to respond at all (this bit is really hard as i have adhd myself - you must not get drawn in)

Going to a park with monkey bars after dinner helped - there's something about monkey bars that's supposed to help children with adhd. Mine would get very overstimulated by the pool due to all the steps involved in getting to and from the pool/changing rooms etc but there's a park quite nearby so we run there and do 30 mins then run home again.

Once in bed Id set myself up in their room with a comfy place to sit and my Kindle. Id settle in knowing that i was going to be there until they fell asleep, however long that took. Resigning myself to it made a big difference to me because it won't be forever.

Don't use the tonie box and stop the colouring - they're just adding stimulation. You could try playing brown noise - it's like white noise but supposed to be better for ND people.

Every time they tried to get up id immediately tell them to lie back down - very calmly. If you/dh get wound up, their energy levels will rise again. Everything must remain calm and quiet - if you or dh is struggling to do that, swap.
I picked out a few books (usually Mog - something easy to listen to but sufficiently long that they'd fall asleep by the end - we had all of them, so if they weren't asleep by the end of one, grab another and do that too) and as the book went on, id lower my voice, very low tone, stretch out the words, pauses between sentences, breathe deeply while reading - they'd seem to match my deep breathing and eventually they'd fall asleep. If they won't close their eyes, stroke their hair and then stroke your finger down their forehead and down their nose. Having your finger so close to their eyes should prompt them to close their eyes. Once she's got her eyes closed, she's one step closer to sleep.
I have adhd and used to be the same when i was a child, id feel very anxious at bedtime for no apparent reason but it was because i was scared of being on my own. my parents were very stern about it - get into bed, shut the door, that was it. Sleep. But it didn't work like that. Self soothing as a child when you haven't learned the skills you need is awful. My dc needed help to go to sleep. If they're ill very occasionally we need to sit with them to fall asleep - maybe twice a year. Once we cracked them actually going to sleep, we could start to withdraw - telling them "i need to pop downstairs but I'll be back in two minutes, I'll do one more song and then it's time to sleep". Make sure you do exactly whatever it is you said you would do. Eventually we extended the time in increments to 10 minutes and by 10 minutes, they were usually asleep. We saw progress within a few days.
You and dh continue to take turns, it's important you can walk away when you're struggling because if you get wound up, you're back to square one.
If conventional parenting techniques aren't working, try some unconventional ones. The supernanny school of thought (your child must be able to fall asleep by themselves) doesn't work for every child. Your child won't go to sleep if she's hyper and she's not being hyper to be naughty. She needs something , probably reassurance, and it's ok to give her it. When something you're doing isn't working, trying something else isn't '"giving in". It's just trying something else but give it more than a day. Letting go of supernanny tactics and doing what our dc needed was what changed it all for us. Within a week or two they were going to sleep within 20-30 minutes.

We got my son the yoto as I had read they grow out of the tonis very quickly . He's the same as me and he needs stimulation to fall asleep. I also need heat to relax me, I sleep with a hot water bottle 365 days of the year. A new toni figure and a hot water bottle would be a lot cheaper than a yoto to try . You can get blank tonis and put your own stories on them I'm sure.

Ds2 is like this, he’s 4 and has never slept well (polar opposite of ds1 who is 8 and is always asleep by 8:30 and sleeps to 7/7:30)

we’ve found with ds2 a quick warm bath, then into bed for 1 quick small story (chapter books don’t hold his attention yet like a short story such as the gruffalo or similar) and then white noise on low on his Alexa, at the minute it’s ocean noises. Is the best routine for him, he’s still never asleep before 9:30 but this calms him and kind of makes his body aware of it being bedtime - if we skip the bath and go straight upstairs to his room he takes forever to settle down.

My child is very similar and it’s incredibly exhausting.

She used to be exactly the same with constantly getting out of bed and asking for things. She’s a lot better now, but just have to accept she will call me upstairs about 3 times a night, but this is a great improvement

What helped, is we introduced ‘bedtime tickets’. We made them together, cut out cardboard squares and she coloured happy faces on them. Then, every time she needed something from mummy and daddy, she had to use one of her bedtime tickets. Once they were gone they were gone. We had to really reinforce this idea and explain it, how mummy and daddy need their rest and can’t keep coming upstairs over and over, etc.

It stopped that cycle. We don’t use them anymore, but they really, really helped. She still takes like 2 hours to fall asleep, and she calls me upstairs for certain things, but no where near as bad as it was.

Something to try!

This is a great idea!! I'm going to stop with trying new things for a week or so and see how things go but if no improvements I'm going to try this in a week or so xx

Every child is different, but reading about op's child, I think she would find bedtime tickets too exciting. Parents coming in and out, controlled by her. Then she runs out of tickets and gets upset, op goes in anyway to comfort her...

Bedtime can't (usually) be gamified. There's no quick fix. Kids need calm, consistency, patience, every night.

My dd was the worst sleeper ever and it took us years to crack it but now bedtime is fairly reliable. But it took years of consistent routine-making.

Lots of daytime physical activity, then a very calm bedtime where we read books to her and have quiet chat. Very strictly no fun activities before bed. And we always stay in the room with her till she's fast asleep.

Op, I think you need to give up on being able to leave your dd while she's still awake. Stay with her till she's asleep then sneak out.

Is she on the diagnostic pathway for suspected neurodiversity? I’d say this imperative right now. If she is ND, so much of the standard issue advice offered here, will not work and will do way more harm than good.

I do agree with @LetsNCagain i think the tickets would add another layer of stimulation and if your dd is anything like mine they'd see it as a game and make it their mission to use all the tokens up whether they needed to or not. They'd love having a legitimate excuse to call me into their room "but mummy i still had 2 tokens left". Also after the tokens have gone, can you be absolutely sure you won't go into dd anyway? I think that's the sort of thing that might work if the parents can stick rigidly to it, but as op has adhd i think that is going to be difficult for her to stick to it every single night even if the dd runs out of tokens can she guarantee that she won't go in to the room?

But then again every child is different so just because it wouldn't work for my family doesn't mean it won't work for yours. Also not everyone wants to sit in their kids room every night until they fall asleep like i did - it is very boring!

Ahhhh your probably right. Gamifying things really works for DD in other areas of life and allows her to focus on tasks like cleaning teeth and tidying up but I can imagine she will make it her mission to use all the tickets and then start playing up.

It's so easy to say just don't go in or stop talking to her but those with ND children on this thread know I'm sure it's not that easy to just ignore. Even when you try to be boring, monotone, not get drawn in, they make it their mission to break you lol. I know I'm all over the place as well trying different things and not being consistent.

Just put a dog gate at her room door and ignore her.

I know it's not so easy to ignore her. I have adhd and so do my children which is why i know that it's hard, but also that the parent is the one that has to stop engaging, because the child won't. That's the hardest bit but also the most important. It works for us because I'm still physically present in the room - my dc were trying to keep me talking because it meant i was still in the room and not leaving them on their own. They didn't want to be alone but weren't mature enough to identify and be able to say that. Once they realised i was not going to leave, and that i also wasn't up for discussions on the origins of life/why are ants so small/how do radiators work etc they stopped trying to talk to me as much.

My advice would be to have a low light (just enough so that your child isn't going to trip over something on the floor or stub their toe on something) in their room.
No artwork, no colouring, definitely no cutting out.
Is the room warm enough as going from a warm living room to a cooler bedroom can be counter intuitive, perhaps the room needs to be warmer or the bed at least. Would an electric blanked on the bed help with feeling cozy?
I'd definitely think about getting the Calm app which has certain sounds that can play for hours or completely overnight if needs be - sounds like brown noise or pink noise or a tumble dryer or a fan or even being in an airplane cabin and the sound of the engines that rumble along. This app also has sleep stories and they do update the list of stories and who reads them regularly.
If not the Calm app, go for Audible and arrange that your child can listen to a chapter a night of a book.

I also think that you could include in their journal, whether they went to sleep well or if they didn't call on mummy or daddy as often so they were thankful they were able to get to sleep by themselves. Perhaps introduce a section where Mummy and Daddy are thankful that X managed to get to sleep well last night and have a star chart where they get a star for every night they don't call on you and at the end of a week of stars, they get a small treat.

@CherryBlossom321 if you check my other posts you will see I have a post in SN or the ND board about the struggles I'm having in that regard. She is masking at school, or should I say, just not a problem at school for them (it's a mainstream school with an autism unit so they have a lot of very high needs children in reception and y1 some of whom don't have EHCPs yet and I feel my daughter massively falling under the radar). I'd say she does show signs of stress at school (she needs a chewy or she chews her cardigan sleeve so it's wet to the elbow or her hair, and high anxiety about going to school) and there are probably other signs but they are being missed. So actually this sleep situation is making me think legitimately I should go to the GP and start the process, but I worry that I need schools support for assessments etc and they don't think there's a problem as they don't see much at school. The other problem is my partner, he knows I have ADHD and I think he is finally coming round to the idea that she has it mostly for the sleep issues we're having but for ages he was resistant to the label etc and he's always been very resistant to the type of parenting I think she needs which is particular to ADHD children I.e time outs or do this otherwise your fav toy will be on the shelf just don't work. She's internalising now that she's a bad child because of this and I absolutely hate it, I've sent him loads of literature recently about it and he has read it and I have seen a change in his approach. This is also why I think we need help and she needs a diagnosis because we need help. I know what we need to do but he is less in that camp and having support from a professional would help up get on the same page. Sorry I've gone off on a complete tangent there. I've never had so much response on any of my posts about my parenting struggles before so I'm letting it all out lol, thanks for all your support and good ideas xx

Can I also say, it is widely reported that some with ADHD don't release melatonin the same way as a NT person.
I believe the average time is after 10pm in children from what I read previously.
Not only is it delayed but it's not as slowly released so regardless of your bedtime routine, if she has a delayed melatonin release she simply won't be tired or have the need to wind down. Activities that may be overstimulating otherwise, wont be to a child who doesn't produce melatonin the same way.

I know this is an issue for me (an adult with ADHD) as I rarely get tired. It's very much my brain keeps going until it doesn't. I can be watching a film one minute and be asleep the next, with no warning. On the flip side I have to listen to music/podcasts and actively listen in order to stop the "noise" from my mind in order to relax enough to sleep.

I would be getting advice from your GP. If this is a ND symptom then all the best practices may still not work. There's also the national sleep helpline that you can call for support and advice.

Good luck.

Between 9 and 10 is when I would say she starts to get naturally tired but obviously as she has to wake so early the next day this is not ideal and is causing worse behaviour through tiredness the next day, it's a bit of a vicious cycle

DS was the same at that age, it was really hard! Wasn't a magic pill, but we did find some things that seemed to help, trial and error really.

I went from saying its bedtime now time to sleep to its time to relax in your room, seemed to take the pressure off. We did bedtime routine and then as long as he was somewhat sensible ie staying in his room, not causing absolute mayhem he could draw, play, listen to his yoto etc. He'd then often pop himself in bed when ready or shout for a cuddle and to be tucked in; this was often around 9ish but honestly ended up being earlier than it was before.

With you both trying loads of things, it sounds as though you’re both all over the place and she’s getting feedback from different responses. With ADHD, any response is good feedback for them, big responses from you give her a boost.

On top of the connection/exercise etc., I’d suggest you and your partner need to agree a consistent approach. For example, give 5-10 mins “mess around time” where she gets up for another wee or a drink etc and then you both be really boring, low interaction: “it’s time for bed now, good night” and lead her back. Whatever she does gets the same robotic response. Consistency.

The point is you need to be consistent you need to calmly put her back in bed and not say a word and keep doing that, make sure she gets plenty of exercise during the day after school.

Stop the cuddling. Whether she goes to sleep or not is up to her. Start by insisting she stays in her room. Make sure she is not going to bed too early.

Have you looked at PDA? Have you said to her you're not going to sleep let's just rest our heads?

That sounds very sensible.