SD wakes her mother up every night and we're both exhausted

[Mtjscott]

My girlfriend (40) and I (M26) moved in together at the start of November. We have her daughter 5 days out of the week. And since moving into the new house together, I can count on my hand the amount of nights that me and my gf have slept on in the same bed for a full night.

Like clockwork, 15 mins after my girlfriend's head hits the pillow, her daughter (9yo) will come into the room and complain that she can't get to sleep.

We start the bed time routine at 7:30 / 8 on a weekend. Shower, hair brush, teeth, cream for exma on, noise machine and night light on and mummy sits with and cuddles her then she's off to sleep.
We leave the landing lamp on just in case.

When we first moved she was up and down the stairs until we'd go to bed. And often my girlfriend would just disappear when called and I wouldn't see her again until the morning.

After the first month we managed to get her to stay in bed. But as I have said, it's like she has some magic 6th sense. We could be in bed, talking and cuddling and then as soon as my girlfriend closes her eyes, 15-20 mins later, she would come in and wake her up with "I can't sleep". Even though she has been flat out snoring in bed up until then.

And she won't go to sleep until her mother either goes to sleep with her or at least strokes her hair until she falls asleep at which point my girlfriend is shattered and sleeping in the same bed anyway.

There have been three occasions in which her daughter has ended up in our bed sleeping with us. Usually as my girlfriend has, whilst half asleep, just lifted up the covers and let her in. Each time I have put my foot down for all the obvious reasons. That can't be allowed to happen.

It has set me on edge every night and I can't get to sleep because I'm listening to every creak and noise dreading that the next one will be her coming in to disturb us.

I'm extremely frustrated because my girlfriend is exhausted and is constantly tired. Her daughter scratches, kicks and grabs in her sleep and my gf doesn't sleep well at all when in the same bed.

And it's killed any intimacy we have in our relationship because we can't get a minute to ourselves. Any day we do have together without SD is spent trying to catch up on lost sleep or jobs we couldn't do because she needs her mother to sleep.

Before I started to stay over, they slept in the same bed at their old house. However, I've been staying at their house on a regular basis, sometimes a week or more at a time, a year now. She has had her bedtime routine pretty much together.

We knew it would be a struggle for her with mood and sleep moving into her new house but I can't seem to help or change anything and it's killing me.

It doesn't help that when my gf and her ex split, he moved into a caravan with a tiny room for their daughter. So instead of sleeping in her own room whilst at her dad's, they sleep in the same bed and don't plan to change that as far as I'm aware.

I don't want to insert myself into their relationship or tell my girlfriend or her ex how to parent but I don't think this is healthy at all.

I've had several conversations about it during the day with my girlfriend voicing my concerns but my frustrations about her lack of sleep just get palmed off with a "don't worry about it. I'm used to it". And the fact that she is still leaving our bed to sleep with her daughter is responded to with "we knew this was going to be an issue and it will take time, we just need to get her skin better and then things will get better". "I'm her comfort blanket and she needs me right now".

But what if her skin doesn't get better? Why are we jumping to the nuclear option of her sleeping with her every night without question or chance of change?

And trying to reason with my gf at night when it happens is a no go because she half asleep and I usually just get a kiss "don't worry about it" and she leaves the room.

Don't get me wrong. I completley empathise with SD. It's all a big change to a place she isn't used to and the skin condition is hard to deal with to boot.

I just can't stand the lack of sleep and lack of intimacy or closeness, as well as the change in mood due to tiredness/frustration in our relationship now without having a plan to fix it.
I can't keep pushing it off and saying it will change eventually and pinning it on an arbitrary "when she gets better" date because who knows when that will be. And when I suggest putting her to bed and coming back, or telling her to go to bed without leaving. Or working up to that I'm shot down.

I'm pulling my hair out here. I just want the best for everyone. Please, any advice would be appreciated.

It doesn’t really matter (in regards to my opinion) what time we are living in now. As my children are older. one is an adult. I am not parenting small children in the time we are living in.

and let’s be honest. People love to trot out that line. Mental health issues are also a massive problem in adults of all current generations. Often stemming from unmet needs in childhoods.

My grandad would be over 100 and had huge issues due to having an abusive father and struggled with alcohol his whole life as a result. So let’s not pretend poor mental health is a new thing.

Let’s not pretend previous generations got it right. One of the reasons that mental health issues are appearing to be on the rise, is because it’s more common to discuss them, it’s less stigmatising to seek helps.

I was a child in the 80s. No one considered the mental health of children. Despite me being able to recognise quite a few school mates were clearly suffering with their mental health, eating disorders and so on.

You can put intimacy above the non essential needs of a child. But you don’t need to sleep in the same bed for that’s and this couple have 2 nights a week alone. If the partner here really wanted to have sex, they would.

As I said, it’s ironic that your boundary is that you can not sleep alone and it’s damaging to you. That your boundaries must be respected. But don’t recognise that some kids may also have needs that need to be respected too.

There’s no one size fits all. The fact that you assume manipulation, when this child has had a lot of change in a small space of time, rather than the child is struggling with change suggests a real lack of empathy or ability to understand anything outside your own sphere.

I don’t like the constant bashing of parents of small children and how they don’t make their children resilient enough. I am pretty sure parents are doing what they have always done. Recognised what negative impacts their parents had on them and try to avoid it with their own kids. Are they going to get it all correct? No. But the pretence that previous generations didn’t have mental health issues and were more resilient, is a lie imo. They just hid it better which caused further issues. It’s just another way parents of older kids can make themselves feel superior to the people parenting younger kids now.

@CanImakethisbetter I have younger and older kids, so not feeling superior to anyone. It’s just frustrating that grown ups with kids who want a new relationship with a partner who is not that child’s parents so often think they can do it without compromising to prioritise the new partner’s needs at points. It’s not that I can’t sleep alone, it’s that, fairly normally, I want intimacy with my husband on a regular basis which doesn’t get interrupted by a little child. That’s why my dd and sd know not to keep disturbing us in the night and understand they have their own beds for sleeping.

If your absolute priority is your child and you don’t want to make any concessions to your parenting to accommodate a new partner, you should not in my view be getting into a new relationship. If a new partner is that traumatic for a child that they can’t sleep at night, what on Earth is the mother doing countenancing a new partner.

Or maybe, if you don’t like how someone parents their child you should get in a relationship with them then try and dictate how they parent?

The responsibility is both ways. Not just the parents.

It is about superiority. Of course it is. Looking down on parents who you think just aren’t doing it right is about superiority. Blaming the way people parent for the surge in mental health issues without looking at historical and current context, including a pandemic which impacted a lot of adults, is an attempt at being superior.

I don’t know what this mother or the boyfriend were thinking moving in together so quickly. On that we can agree. and that’s the nuance between your situation and theirs that you aren’t really thinking about. But how would you know your child won’t deal with it well before hand? They may have appeared as if they would.

The Op isn’t happy but is staying where they are. The mother is clear on what she is willing to do. The Op, who is also an adult. Could just decide it’s not for them.

This parents believes their child’s needs, right now, trump their partners wants. So I am unsure why you think you know better and think the parent should be prioritising the partner? Because you decided that was what should happen in your home?

and do you mean intimacy or sex? Or both? Because you can have intimacy without sex and vice versa. It’s quite clear op means sex. They still aren’t having sex when the child isn’t there.

The OP asked for views. So I’ve given mine. It’s not about superiority but a perspective based on experience. IMO it’s fine to assert boundaries in a relationship, even if that relationship is with a parent of an existing child. Yes, the OP has agency to break up the relationship, but it’s not unreasonable to expect a partner to put you first sometimes, and this not happening is a reasonable grounds for breaking up.

Yes we are more knowledgeable about MH now and that is part of the picture of rises in cases. But I have worked in universities for 30 plus years and in the last 10 the change is in students who now in general struggle to cope with the basic emotional ups and downs of life. This predates covid. It’s pretty clear to me this is a culture shift partly to do with a wholesale change in parenting - not that harshness is right (or that past generations didn’t cause different kinds of mental problems), but I speak with primary teachers as part of my work on young adult mental illness who tell me it’s not unusual a for parents to arrive at school with child in pjs and ask teacher to intervene because ‘child was too upset when I asked them to change into school clothes’. If you shield children from any negative emotions you have adults who can’t deal with emotions.

Yes intimacy in a relationship is bound up with sex for many (most) people. Adults like sex. If the problems with the kid are causing sex to be a no go when she’s there, it’s no wonder it is more difficult to have sex when she’s not. A child’s behaviour should not be dictating the sex life of its parents! That’s unhealthy!

Ok. You say it’s about experience.

But I don’t agree. It’s about making our parents to young people are causing children’s mental health crisis, like parents before never have. That’s superiority.

Why do you think the partner never gets put first? In anything?

It is grounds for breaking up. But the Op doesn’t want that. They simply want the parent to change. Thats what I disagree with. People moving in with kids then dictating how parenting happens.

Yes we know. People here post about all the time that when they went to uni, no one even helped them move. They needed to pack their wholes lives on to the train and walk miles to the accommodation where they say in the cold and ate a pot noodle once a day, but it’s ok cause it builds character and parents doing anything more than the bare minimum are damaging their kids. Actually, it’s not a race to the bottom. Of course people want more for their kids. Have you ever thought that parents might get involved in uni more because they are responsible for helping to fund it? Again, not considering context. Just ‘parents today don’t know what they are doing’ it’s superiority.

Not sure where you grew up or where these teachers grew up. 20 years ago my daughters primary had issues because the children coming in were so far behind from a skill point of view the school was spending more time trying to to toilet train them, teach them to eat with a knife and fork etc. it was even commented on in the OFSTED report that children were starting so far behind that the school couldn’t possibly support that and get all children to where they needed to be. We actually took dd out of that school.

When I was at school in the 80s there were plenty of kids that turned up with no uniform, or didn’t turn up at all for months. Or who just had completely ineffectual parents who may not even turn up to pick them up. I am not saying there’s no problem with parenting today. But the impact isn’t worse that years before. it’s just different.

Shockingly a lot of parents realised their parents were quite neglectful of their needs as a child so are trying to be better.

The child isn’t causing sex to be a no go. It’s not happening with the child out of the house. Because she doesn’t want it. If she really wanted it, it would happen. And this is the issue and it’s very telling. Blame being put at the child for the non parent not being happy with their sex life. The child isn’t dictating the sex life of the parents. The partner isn’t her parent. He is her mums boyfriend.

The use of the word dictating suggests the child has knowledge of her mother’s sex life and wants to stop it. If that’s true there’s huge problems. The fact that you think like this about children your own and others. Rather than she is just trying to get her own needs met. That she is does this to stop them having sex is weird tbh.

Of course sex can be important. But if you mean sex say sex. People have intimacy without sex as well. And not all sex has to be on night.

I get it. The Op having sex when he wants it is far more important that meeting the current needs of the child, to you.

To me (and the ops partner) it’s not. And the moan of ‘I know the child has had huge upheavals but I want sec’ is incredibly unattractive.

Also just out of interest. How old your older child? About what age?

You say you speak from an experience? And stated you have younger and older children? I do wonder what age range they are and how much experience you have of getting children to adult hood?

My children are 25, 19 and 7. My stepchild is 9.

There’s been bad parenting forever, that’s true. But meeting every emotional up and down of a child is not good parenting. Taking children’s acting out seriously and refusing to set boundaries because they cry/tantrum/push is not god parenting. It’s as problematic as emotional neglect imo.

Kids don’t hopefully know about sex, but they know a parent’s affection and attention is now directed at a partner as well as them and they often resist that with manipulation tactics. Not ‘needs’. No child ‘needs’ a parent sleeping in their bed instead of a partner’s every night. It’s not unreasonable for a partner to want to have sex with their other half. It is not unreasonable to expect a partner to make parenting decisions that enable a frequent sex life. In a family, it’s a balance of needs and yes, regular sex with a DP is a valid need! Albeit no one should be coerced/forced into it many of us wouldn’t be in relationships if sex dried up to the extent it seems to have for OP. We obviously see a lot of things differently. Hopefully OP can take useful thoughts from both and come to his own conclusions about how to proceed.

Really? That’s quite interesting.

A child struggling with change wanting a parent, is a need.

No adult needs another adult in their bed every single night.

Its definitely more a need than the Op having Sex.

As odd, as I find the conversation and how you think children intentionally ruin their parents sex lives. I am going out. So have fun.

I am sure you and your husband will have a long and happy marriage!

I think the answer to this does a good job of crystallising my thoughts about the issue of step-children and co-sleeping. It’s a thing! Have a fun night.

https://www.drpsychmom.com/my-live-in-boyfriend-still-sleeps-with-his-11-year-old-son/

At this stage I tell your girlfriend that she needs to work towards having her daughter stay in her own room. Ask your girlfriend how would she feel if her daughter walked in you both having sex?
Her daughter is 9. My feeling is that she is not to happy with you their and is acting out.

Tell your girlfriend she needs to bring her daughter back to her own bed each night and tell her daughter to stay in her own bed.

I am not saying that this is going to be easy but your girlfriend needs to do this as it is not good for her daughter at 9 to be acting this way. I know that kids can get sick, have a bad day ect and need a bit of extra comfort at times but this has been going on a while.
Also it's important for a child as they grow up to know that they can't be put 1st always or they can't expect adults/parents to do what they the child wants always.
I don't think that this is been mean but it preparing a child for life as an adult. I have seen some child who were let do what they wanted and the word no was never said and they end up as horrible adults who cant cope in the real world.

To be honest I think at 26 and 40 your at different life stages. She has a child and she has to consider them in her plan's. Your 26 and you could met a woman who is single around your own age with no kids. I think it's hard as a man or woman when you get involved with someone who already has a child.

I have a friend a number of years older than you and she has decided to stay single for that reason because a lot of men she met already had kid's. My friend said they have to spend alone time with their child and consider how their choices will effect their child.
My friend whose childfree does not have to consider this and she enjoys her free time.

Exactly this! Anyone who has been a parent and a step parent knows that kids need and appreciate boundaries and in a blended family everyone including kids have to make space and compromise to facilitate the adults having ‘adult time’.

Wow I'm so glad that my kids could still come to me when they needed at night when they were younger. I think it's actually made them more resilient as teens as they have that secure base (and now happily prefer their own bed at night!)

It's a bit sad when the sex life of the new partner (and surely people can get a bit creative/use the other 2 days) is prioritised over an anxious young child.

With all due respect, that page is a dumpster fire.

Have you read and looked at the qualifications and accreditation of the people running that page?

Including Dr Mom. And then her team of coaches.

I appreciate you are a big fan. It’s also really obvious they are also highly focused on sex and adult needs and making your partner happy first. I take it you follow a lot of their advice? Has it made your marriage happy?

Has it made your blended family really happy? If it has. That’s great. But it’s not how lost of us parent at all.

and I can promise you it doesn’t guarantee good outcomes.

and again, you are ignoring the nuance, that this relationship is new. The living situation is new. This man is new. So it’s quite different to yours.

I wouldn’t call myself a ‘big fan’, I agree with the response to that one query on that one subject.

Yes I am also focussed on making partner happy and vice versa. Adults are as important in a family as children, and their health, happiness and fulfilment actually shapes the health happiness and fulfilment of the children. Sex is a vital part of life for many (most?) grown ups and relationships in the family should be organised to accommodate adults need for sexual intimacy. People who put the children ‘first’ over their partner to the extent they choose to sleep in a bed with their child each night are in my view doing the children a disservice.

But we are going in circles now…

Yes we are going in circles.

We won’t agree. I don’t think comforting a child that needs it, shouldn’t ever be classed as putting your partner last. It’s not a competition. Though I can see you feel it is.

I don’t believe you need to be in the same bed to close to a partner or to have sex. I don’t believe family life should be organised around the adults sex life.

And I think if you need to do that to make a partner happy, there’s something wrong. I think a relationship can health and people can be happy and healthy without sex being the focus.

I notice you didn’t answer whether You, your husband and kids are a happy blended family. I assume you are. But seem to feel the need to defend centering sex so much. It works for you.

Doesn’t work for many and doesn’t work for many children.

Like all healthy families, we have happy and stressful times. I think the question ‘are you happy’ is honestly a bit reductive and naïve. I don’t trust those who profess a constant state of happiness. Happiness is not a constant thing for anyone. Life has pleasant and unpleasant parts. My kids are well fed, secure and doing well by the standard measures. My adult children have jobs, friendships and secure relationships in their lives. None appears to have been terribly damaged by having to sleep in their own bed every night!

You are also determined to misunderstand me as ‘putting sex first’ or somehow not considering that children have emotional needs, simply because I acknowledge that marriages need space for the sex lives of the spouses (the rhythms, frequency and kink of which will wildly differ from couple to couple). Of course you work to meet kids needs as well as your own - and as a parent you do your best to meet them in a way that best sets them up now and in the future for a secure and anxiety limited life.

In my view, this means teaching children that they sleep in their own space, and not having a dynamic in which quite mature children feel it is their right to have every moment of nighttime anxiety result in waking a parent/co-sleeping. They have to learn self soothing and resilience and age appropriate times and in age appropriate ways (I’d bring an eighteen month into into my marital bed at 1 am after a nightmare. I would send a 9 year old back into their own bed with relevant soothing words). It also means not meeting your own needs for comfort after a divorce by co-sleeping with your child. Boundaries that are consistent and enforced produce security.

I could equally misconstrue your posts as those of someone in a sexless union/single who meets every whim of her child because she’s unable to cope with their unsettled emotions. But I won’t because I imagine in reality you don’t and wouldn’t tolerate a child coming into your bed every night when you had just moved in with a partner.

I deleted my account after making this post but I see that It has had a lot of responses so I have made another account so I can address some of the comments made here.

It was 2am and my gfs daughter had come in again. My girlfriend was extremely exhausted that day after a week of not getting proper sleep and I needed to get my concerns out of my head because I have been and am worried for her physical health, mental health and just overall mood due to the last of rest and sleep she is getting.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and reply to some comments.

If the child was in the bed from the beginning would they both be getting enough sleep? If so then they should sleep together and trial transitioning in a new months when perhaps the child is feeling more settled and less needy.
people can and do have sex in places other than a bed in the dark of night…

Yes, my apologies, I misspelled eczema. It was 2am, running on little to no sleep and I had a lot of thoughts to get out of my head. A silly mistake.

When I refer to intimacy sex is a very small part of that. I'm talking about intamacy as a whole. Kisses, cuddling, smiling at each other, saying I love you, the odd touch of the arm here and there, hugs, kind words of affection and just acknowledging the other person when they're around. Just because I have a dangly thing between my legs doesn't mean that that's all I'm thinking with.

Don't assume when I say intamacy I mean sex. Whilst our sex life has dropped off a cliff I can deal with that.

I couldnt sleep because her daughter would come into the room and wake her mum up, which obviously woke me up every night like clockwork.

Someone getting in and out of your bed wakes you up.

I have to get up for work at 5:30am, my girlfriend's start to the day is at 7:30am. When you have a child coming into the room at 11:30-12am wanting her mother. Then again at 2am or 4am every night if she doesn't sleep with her, it's not something I can sleep through.

The talking to her mum in our room during the night, the getting into our bed worrying the shit out of me.

Knowing every night that around 30 mins after we settle down and try to sleep that she will come in and wake us up.

It set me on edge. I can't sleep but more importantly my girlfriend needs sleep desperately and I just want her to get enough rest to feel better even for a day or two for her own sake. But then trying to sleep knowing that the next creek or noise could be her daughter coming in to wake her up would set me on edge.

Research menopause. That's going to be a far bigger strain on your sex life in your thirties than this is currently.
Do you really see a future here?

My Dd was dreadful at night. Slept in our room until she was 12.

Children do these things.

You're right. I need to relax and give things more time in the grand scheme of things.

I think my problem is/was that when we have talked about the problems that we are both having, and I think a lot of people assume this is just me complaining, but it's not, my girlfriend has the same issues too, there seems to be a reluctancy to try to improve or change how the situation is handled.

Ive gone over setting up nightlights, suggested we have a day where we let her daughter rearrange her room to how she wants it so it's more comfortable for her, changing her daughters sheets/PJ's to cotton so it's easier on her skin, I payed for an allergy/intollerance test as getting one through the doctors was taking too long, adjusting timers on the lights and setting up a noise machine, making self soothing mantras that we can introduce to her daughter's daytime and nighttime to reaffirm that her bed is good like "I love my bed, sleep is good for me, I am comfortable when I relax" etc that she can say to help her calm down, putting a bed into our room that she can use so her mun isn't kicked and scratched during the night so they both can get some good rest whilst feeling close, the list goes on.

But when I have tried suggesting these things, the response has been "there's too much going on at the moment, I/we can think about that after X event happens" which can be as big as Christmas and as small as an up and coming work meeting.
Timing on this isn't really my issue though, it's that these things are dismissed after that comment. And when a situation arises when something I suggested would have been useful, I get "it's alright, I'm used to being tired" and nothing changes or is planned to change.

As I said in my original post, it seems like change or want to change for the better, for the both of them, is pinned on some event in the future that may never come.

And again, I only want to help. Maybe I need to take a step back and allow her to parent the way that she wants. I'd argue my suggestions have merit. But maybe I just need to give it time.

It's hard to balance the feeling that this is our home (including me) and the fact that they need their space together to parent and child and live as they have been doing. It's hard to know how to fit myself into that equation. I am mum's boyfriend but I can't not acknowledge that there is a kid in the house that likes me and wants to interact and do things with me.

People will say, well, you're not her parent you shouldn't be parenting at all, she has her mother.

But there is a little person in the house, who has routines and needs and interests and wants and all of those things bisect with the way I have to conduct myself now.

E.g. she wants to watch TV with me or play a card game together but it's 5 minutes until her bedtime.
Of course I can't say "I'm your mum's boyfriend, not your dad, play yourself"
I shouldn't say "sure I'll play with you" because it's nearly her bed time and she should be getting ready for bed!
That's parenting to some extent. I know better than to start a game that we won't finish and I know how that would leave her feeling let down and in happy. And it's also an opportunity to encourage her to be aware of what time it is and how long things take to do. And so being completely detached and letting my gf get on with it in all respects simply isn't possible.

It's drawing that line in a way that works for her daughter and me that is the key. And that will only get better with time I suppose!

She isn't using it to avoid intimacy.
Free days haven't been very free at all with the range of things we've had to do. But any extra time seems to be filled up with chores, jobs, food shopping and then when we do get some time together. We're both knackered. My poor gf in particular. And so when it's quiet she/we catch up on rest. She'll fall asleep and I know she needs it and so I would much rather her get sleep and rest when she can when she is desperate as that comes first over any intimacy or just plain time together.

She and her daughter have needs that are more important than anything else right now. But I don't know how to help or improve the cycle that we're in at the moment.

My gfs daughter is tired, so my gf is tired, but both are reluctant to do anything different until they're less tired. I'm in here somewhere trying to make things better and support the two of them but I'm stuck in the middle and everyone around me being tired, stressed and moody, with a lot of shouting between my gf and her daughter as her daughter is starting to get an attitude/choosing not to listen is leaving me feeling like I'm spinning my wheels with no one around to turn to.