My 6 year old son struggles to get to sleep. From newborn til 4 years old we rocked him for hours on end, lay in the bed with him, resorted to putting him in the pram at 3am and spent ages pushing him around the living room just so we could get some sleep. For the past couple of years he’s been better. Needs some encouragement and messes around needing things etc but once asleep, he’s out for the night.
However, the past couple of months he’s been a nightmare! Probably school holidays and the fact his baby brother is now taking over an hour to settle at night too. I feel like all I do is shout and moan between 7pm-10pm then I’m bloody exhausted and dread the next night. My husband is away this weekend, thankfully my 1 year old went straight to sleep but my oldest wanted to go to sleep in my bed (sometimes we do this then carry him into his own bed as the boys share a room and I can’t always wait for the 1YO to fall asleep before getting my oldest to bed) so I said yes, he took the micky - needs a drink, needs a pee, he’s scared & doesn’t want to be alone, I feel like I just spend hours running about after him come bedtime. Which then means I have zero quiet time or time with my husband before we go to sleep.
Tonight, I went on a massive rant to him about how I’m sick of running around, when it comes to kids bedtime then it’s adults time, I said all the other boys and girls are asleep already, he watched YouTube and I said if he’s too scared to go to sleep alone then YouTube will be banned as I’m assuming that’s what is causing the fear, I could just see his wee eyes staring at me trying to understand what I was going on about. I didn’t hide the fact I was angry. I went downstairs for 5 minutes then felt so guilty I’ve come back up, lay next to him chatting about school etc then stayed until he fell asleep.
I feel awful for not wanting to do this every night, but come their bedtime I’m just so exhausted and need them to go to sleep. I do love having a chat and a cuddle with them before they sleep but that only works if they go to sleep and don’t spend the next 2-3 hours taking the micky out of me.
am I a bad mother for not lying with him every night or is it normal to feel this frustration of just wanting to give my kids a kiss and cuddle and have my own time 😭