Am I being unreasonable

[SSF8]

Bit of background. I have one DD age 11.
OH has one DD age 5 and we have one DS together who is 3 month old.
Basically OH's DD lives with her mam and shares a bedroom with her and gets cuddled to sleep all night (borderline child abuse in my eyes) she is almost 6! So when she comes to ours she expects the same thing. We gave her a bedroom, decorated it in unicorns at her request, all the decorations and fairy lights she wanted.... this was almost a year ago when we knew the baby would be arriving. We now have a 3 month old baby... my darling little stepdaughter still won't sleep alone. My other half is on her bedroom floor every weekend, leaving me to the night feeds while he's off work and could be giving me a break.
DS has started sleeping better and I am wanting to give him his own room and space as we now tend to wake him up coming to bed. If we don't wake him he sleeps from 7-5am (I know this from the number of times I've fell asleep on the sofa) DH won't let me give him his own room as he wants his daughter to have her own room when she sleeps. My daughter is 11 and would be happy to share with his 5 year old once a week IF she slept good .... but she doesn't!
What do I do. I'm at my wits end. I want everyone to be happy but I feel like we just argue constantly over our children!!

How? Because as I said at the start,my brother had awful sleep issues that my parents tried to address through whatever intervention was the fad at the time. He still has to have the light on if he's alone.

Only improving his generalised anxiety and time (years) had any effect on him being able to stay alone in bed (with the light on). Everything else made it much, much worse. It was years before it was even recognised that he is generally anxious and doesn't just have sleep related anxiety. He was like 13 and my parents still had to be in the room with him a lot of the night for him to sleep enough to function.

Then I think you need to talk to the gp and see what else could be going on. My ds has lots of emotional issues and has anxiety problems. They could be down to her mum or maybe that’s just the way yiur dsd is and that her mum is coping by co-sleeping.

There maybe unrecognised additional needs at play and you some proper guidance from experts and not us on MN.

My ds cannot be parented like my other 2, there is no point getting fed up with him for it that’s the way he is. Btw he coslept with his sister until ages 5.5 didn’t share a bed but a room. We’ve only just got him into his own bed. He always had his sister in the room with him from age 1.

I think we need to bear in mind that many of the reports about things with mum come from speculation or the 5 year old.

*@Kewlwife
*
*How? Because as I said at the start,my brother had awful sleep issues that my parents tried to address through whatever intervention was the fad at the time. He still has to have the light on if he's alone.

Only improving his generalised anxiety and time (years) had any effect on him being able to stay alone in bed (with the light on). Everything else made it much, much worse. It was years before it was even recognised that he is generally anxious and doesn't just have sleep related anxiety. He was like 13 and my parents still had to be in the room with him a lot of the night for him to sleep enough to function.*

If it is that bad then she obviously needs a proper diagnosis of anxiety, because for a majority of children without additional needs, the fear of doing anything independently would be improved by gentle encouragement to do things independently as they grow up. There is strong evidence that this is not happening in her home life, so in the absence of a medical diagnosis to the contrary, no reason to think this isn't the logical course.

Until she is assessed for anxiety, you can't just go against all logical parental guidance because you assume her needs are more complex than the glaringly obvious, which is being caused by no encouragement of independence from her primary carer.

She does go to school now. But she wasn't sent to nursery. Just straight to school when she turned 5. Her mum is a teacher yes. But hasn't worked since she was born and is starting work again this September when the schools return. So I think she will be in for a shock juggling school and all the anxiety issues anyway, without adding sleep into the mix.
We have spoken to school who don't have any concerns about her, she seems quite content at school although her teacher says she is very clingy and cuddly. School weren't even aware that her parents were separated as the ex wife had told them they were still together 🤦🏼‍♀️ so now they are aware they're keeping an eye on her.
When SD was talking about getting a new baby brother, they congratulated the ex wife 😂
I think she just wants to paint herself as having a perfect family unit and not wanting people to know about her failed relationship and things. which is also not healthy for her daughter

So you know for a fact this little girl has the same condition as your brother despite never having met her or being a HCP?

Sounds like it considering she can't have a piss alone

My brother wasn't that bad though. He was still generally anxious.

Or its just because shes never had to? New things are scary to 5yos.

We will never know.
You don't know if you can do something until you try it. Kids and adults!
We try to get her to do things independently that she should be doing at her age, her mam does it for her and goes with her to do things so she's never had to learn to do it alone.
It's a vicious circle really. What we try is undone, but doing these things for her at our house isn't feasible.
Say I had gone to do a weekly shop and left dad at home with the 3 kids. (Which I do once a week as it's easier and cheaper to go alone)
3mo needs a feed, 11yo needs help with homework, 5yo needs a wee. Which do you prioritise.
Feed the baby.
5yo wees alone
Help 11yo with homework after
What would really happen is 3mo would be left to cry hungry to make sure 5yo didnt wee on the floor. 11yo would still be waiting for help on a math sum an hour later.
It's all about independence for age. what they can and can't do. And what you can and can't do for each of them as a parent because of how much children of different ages depend on you.

Have you tried a proper red night light on all night, less simulating apparently. My son calls for me if he wakes up, but I just go in and give him and cuddle and he's off to sleep again. Probably takes 10 minutes. I have a baby monitor and say I watch him on there all night. Is that worth a try ? My son didn't wake up last night, but it can be 4-5 times a night. He's certainly worse if he's had screen time near bedtime ( tv / iPad within 3 hours) or if he drinks a lot before bed.

My friend takes her DS for a walk / bike ride or scoot after dinner then it's PJs and bed. She swears it wears him out. It could cause a bit of adrenaline so it's just trial and error.

I even encourage her to dress herself. Which she can do. But she refuses and says her mam dresses her so why can't I. I say because I'm feeding the baby/ironing so she reluctantly does it with a big frown on her face. But she CAN do things. She just won't because she doesn't have to at home

@shoulderstoesandknees that's a good idea.
It's worth a try, but as I said, I think it's the "touching" that she requires to sleep and then the fact that after 2 nights of trying a better routine it's undone as soon as she returns to her mum

I know my DS is the same has to cuddled, but I guess if you can get her to be less anxious about going to sleep she may fall asleep quicker and sleep deeper, which is certainly more manageable than staying in there all night. So trying things like red light or monitor or different routine might help.

Here's an article on red light, it has certainly improved my DS' sleep.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/sarahockwell-smith.com/2015/03/19/one-simple-way-to-improve-your-baby-or-child-sleep/amp/

@SsF8

Carry the baby with you and feed it on the way to the loo (a pee takes a minute or 2). Chat to the 11 year old while baby has bottle and is burped and settled and then actively help 11 year old.

@Kewlwife that's not the answer. A 5yo should pee alone. She does it at school. She can do it at home

@shoulderstoesandknees
Thank you. I will have a read and probably forward it straight to my OH

She obviously can't.

Many kids with additional needs of varying descriptions behave differently at school than at home.

If he wanted 3 kids, he has to parent 3 kids. We don't always know how our kids will develop. We don't know if they have some disorder genetically or will develop something that means they are never truly independent.

Not everyone has one of my crystal balls, see.

Honestly, the more you kept saying things like "she can, she just won't", the less likely I would be as a mum to consider anything you said.

@Kewlwife and if she had a condition where she COULDN'T That would be different. She CAN but WONT. I make my 3mo a bottle and feed it to him because he can't do it himself. I make my 5yo a drink I hand it to her and she drinks it herself, because she can't reach to make it herself, but can drink it herself. My 11yo needs a drink, she goes to the kitchen, gets a glass, makes a drink and drinks it all by herself, because she can.
It's all about different abilities at different ages

I don't like the way you refer to her ' as your darling little step daughter' sounds very sarcastic and mean. She is just a child. I appreciate it's difficult and step parenting can bring up some ugly feelings in adults, so I'd keep an eye on that.

But this child doesn't have the abilities you think she should have for her age. Which I suspect has more to do with her unhappiness and anxiety than you would like to think. She can't do the things you want her to do. Whether her reasons are emotional or physical, she can't.

It's a popular miconception that you can force independence on an anxious child by simply removing the supports and MAKING them conform. It simply doesn't work that way. Children develop independence by having their needs met consistently and lovingly, not by being pushed into the deep end and told "all the other children can swim so you just need to do it".

@swangloves if you read the more recent comments you will see that I wrote the original post very angry, very pissed off after another very bad night with her and you'll see that actually all I want to do is help her to develop and become less anxious and more independent and that my original post was me venting anger to strangers at the time to stop me venting to OH and creating another argument over the children.
But I can see how that makes me look like a bitch

@Greensleeves because she is not encouraged to to it herself. But we encourage her to do it herself and she does. So she can do it. She just tries her luck with getting someone else to do it for her first because that's what she would get at mums house. That's why I'm saying she can do it. Because she can!

So is it your belief that she could go to sleep on her own, but just won't?

I feel sorrier and sorrier for this little girl.