Behaviour during Overnight stay

[Bomblingone]

Hoping for some advice please about what might be causing this;

DDs 13 & 7 stay with myself and DH one night in the week (weds) and for a Fri-Tue EOW. DD13 seems to really struggle on the one night in the week.

They arrive after school or early PM if weekend, hols etc, and then are collected by DM from School the next day, or a similar time if not at school. DD13 is very heightened when she arrives in terms of excitement and this just escalates over the course of the evening until DH battles to get her to go up to bed.

She isn’t “naughty” as such as in theres no malice there, just very very excitable. Running round the house, garden, winding up sibling who is trying to settle (again playing, not being mean in any way), gets lots of games out, can’t sit still, flits from one activity to something else, very loud, can’t pick anything to watch, bored easily etc. When she wakes up this spills over into the next day until she goes to school or is collected. If they’re collected it stops very abruptly about 20 mins before she goes back to DMs.

I don’t know how to describe it other than she seems to be trying to get all of this energy out in a really short space of time. The only thing I can think is that she has a few days of being at DMs, then ours, then DMs then ours and I think it might be that she can’t settle.

@Bomblingone

Maybe she is just over excited to see her dad and be staying over.

He couldn't probably do something with her on that evening to quiet her down.

That sounds like a good idea. Perhaps they go for a walk/run and burn off some energy and spend time together at the same time.

Could be she's had a buzzing day at school?

Yes absolutely comes from excitement, I think about seeing Dad which is lovely and I know he’s happy she’s pleased to be home.
We’ve tried a few things to sort of dial it down a bit on that day but it’s not always easy after school etc, but have tried sitting down with a game, chatting to her, going for a walk, bike ride etc. It just delays the reaction to be honest, so bed time ends up a nightmare.

Mostly I’m just confused why we only get this on the one overnight. I would have understood the excitement if she was the same on their first day of DHs weekend. She’s happy to be home of course, but nowhere near the same level of uncontained emotion

We reached a point where midweek overnights became too disruptive for DSC. We had some good conversations with the, about how they did want to see their dad but they were finding it too stressful to go to their mum’s from school, come to their dad’s for the night, remembering any specific uniform things for the next day. Plus fitting in dinner and homework.

We lived very close to ex and school, so there was no travel. It was purely just the mash up of routine that made it harder and it definitely became a bigger issue as they got older. We added a weekday onto weekends but we did alter the schedule a few times to make it work best for DSCs.

We knew there was nothing more to it as they were super happy to spend extended time with us during holidays.

Can you ask them what would work for them and go from there on logistics?

She sounds very much like my DS, this kind of behaving seems to be worse when he's dysregulated, maybe she struggles with the adjustment? Or maybe she's just excitement.
when my son is behaving like you described, the only thing which helps is exercise. What about getting in a routine of taking them swimming or for a bike ride / walk etc on a Wednesday evening?