Help 4 years old & still no sleep!

[carrieon23]

Hi. Just looking for a bit of advice really. My 4 year old son has never been a great sleeper but it feels as though it is getting worse not better.

He is a very lively boy with a active brain to say the least. He has always been up in the night & not great at napping during the day ( when younger) about a year ago he had started sleeping through the night 3 maybe 4 nights a week but in the last 6 months or so he has gone back to waking 2-3 times every night. Usual pattern is he goes to bed ok, although when left alone to go to sleep he falls asleep with his fingers in his ears as he doesnt want to hear scary things. He is terrified of anything that buzzes and will have a complete meltdown, and says he can hear buzzy bees. I'm wondering about hearing or even tinnitus or something. He will sleep ok generally until 11 or 12 ish then will scream unless you go in to him and when he wakes later on in night he just gets up & gets into our bed & wiggles so one of us usually ends up in a red racing car bed!

He has episodes of night terrors where he is very vocal lashes out and very difficult to rouse, these are infrequent and seem to happen when he is very tired or sick. The worst of these episodes involved him screaming uncontrollably 4 times one night for 40 mins at a time. The neighbours must think I'm murdering him! Fortunately that kind of episode is very rare though.

I spoke to the gp, who was sympathetic but basically had the well my kids didn't sleep till bah blah Just get through it sort of attitude! But I'm loosing the plot through lack of sleep. I'm at work part time and do 12 hr days and need my brain to function. We have a 17 month old girl who fortunately sleeps beautifully otherwise I think I would be insane by now!

I am thinking about a sleep consultant or any advice very greatly received.

Thanks xx

[canela]

mmmm, don't mean to be the bearer of bad news but my 6 year old still wakes every night and comes into bed with us. when i ask him why he says he is scared of the shadows. he shares a room with his sister which has helped, and so has a night light. i've just got used to it but it drives mr canela crazy. one thing i did was put him and sister into a double bed together so at least when i end up in their room - as i do most nights - i get a decent night's sleep.

another thing we did was do loads to make their room nice and safe and special. so we put "magic" toys in which help you sleep and give you safe dreams. and we find that staying with him til he falls asleep had a calming effect on the whole night. so it's maybe just one waking up rather than loads. basically, he just doesn't like being alone at night time and i don't know if there's that much you can do about that...tho i'm sure a sleep consultant would say differently so maybe good idea if you are going crazy.

good luck.

[Growlybear]

Are you sure your son hasn't got acute hearing? I have always been able to hear the background buzz of electricity when I'm lying quietly in bed at night, and I can imagine that could be quite scary for a young child who doesn't realise what it is.

[Saffron]

If it's nighttime separation anxiety, they don't 'just get over it'. It can take a long, long time to outgrow this, and indeed the anxiety may just end up being transferred to other areas (so they never really outgrow).

Many popular types of sleep training are not recommended for children with nighttime separation anxiety and can actually make them worse. I'm currently in a longstanding disagreement with both my husband and mother-in-law over this issue. :( Little Saff appears to have nighttime separation anxiety, and they have both kindly (not!) said that it's my fault! They want me to leave her to cry it out. She's nearly three. There's no way I'd ever have let her cry it out as a baby, and I'm sure as sh1t not going to start now. My instinct has always told me this is very, very wrong for her.

For the record, if your child has nighttime separation anxiety, you didn't cause it: It isn't anyone's fault. All children have some degree of anxiety about different activities. In some children this gets expressed as nighttime separation anxiety. It's normal for all children to wake at night, and some are going to be anxious when they do.

If anyone has a magic bullet for this, please let me know! However, I suspect there are no quick and easy remedies. I'd love to hear some anthropological approaches to nighttime sleep issues.

Wake-to-sleep technique is the neareast I've come to a natural approach... except for co-sleeping, which I already do with Little Saff in her room on her double fouton... She's 3 yo next week, and we've promised her a 'big girl' single bed to try to stop cosleeping. I think we're going to have to put a truckle bed in our bedroom for her as well. I can't spend my entire nights traipsing up and down the hall to pat her back all night.

Rapid return technique has been a total 'fail' for us. I wouldn't even bother if you suspect nighttime separation anxiety.

Have you tried a white noise machine or ipod app? I'd love to know if these are helpful for older toddlers/children.

xx

[Fuschia]

It may well be tinnitus

http://www.entnet.org/HealthInformation/Child-Tinnitus.cfm

Sounds like some soothing cd would do no harm

You can get children's meditation and hypnotherapy ones

[Mrs TP]

We were tearing our hair out with our middle daughter. From a tiny baby she was a dreadful sleeper and it continued until she was 7+. She turned 8 last April and most of last year was fine but thinking about it, it coincided with one of our cats choosing to sleep at the end of her bed or under it - just near her really. Much as she does share a bedroom with her younger sister she loves the company of the cat (I know probably a 1001 reasons why the cat should not sleep near her).

Now it gets a bit much on the odd occasion she still comes into us and the cat follows her as he is getting to be a big lump and takes up loads of space too.

We did try everything to settle her prior to the cat doing it for us, new bedding, teddies, PJs, reward chart, being v. sympathetic, being v. strict, hubby camping for a week on her floor next to her, seeking advice from doctors / health visitors / other parents and eventually a neighbour (who is a midwife) suggested getting a bigger bed and putting up with it as she would grow out of it - she did (fingers crosses it continues).

None of this helps in the meantime as sleep deprivation is horrific but relaxing into what was happening and not stressing / worrying about it did help. Thinking well it's just the way she is and accepting it worked. She's still last to go to sleep and first to wake up at any movement and everything is in her bed to help her settle - secret notebooks, pens, books etc but she stays there most of the time. And has even managed the odd sleepover - early ones were horrific with her being retrieved at 10.30pm sobbing at the prospect of staying elsewhere for a whole night.

Afraid all this rambling is leading to sympathy rather than a solution :(

[canela]

would like to agree total sympathy for anyone suffering sleep deprivation...it can make you feel completely deranged.

both of mine have been what is classified as "bad sleepers", and at 6 and 3 are still waking several times a night. in response to what Saffron said about an anthropological approach, my family is not english and my kids were born overseas. co-sleeping was seen as completely normal and most people i knew did some form of it. i remember i read a really interesting book that i've helpfully forgotten the title of (sorry!) which made me re-examine my own ideas of what constituted a good night's sleep. the book made the argument that only in the western world are we "obsessed" with getting a solid 8 hours. in lots of other countries people sleep in shifts, have siestas, etc. i found it really helpful to realise that my kids' sleep patterns were completely normal for their age in a natural environment (i.e. having not gone through sleep training...) as then i didn't resent it. i just concentrated on ways to make sure i had enough sleep to feel good. mostly that included going to bed early when i could, relaxing on house tidiness when the choice was go to bed or tidy, getting a weekly catch-up lie-in at the weekend, and co-sleeping in some way or another. if mr canela gets fed up with little bodies in the bed, we de-camp to the kids' bed instead. i don't have them in separate rooms or beds - they share a double futon so i can get in too when needed. i think looking at your own attitudes can make a difference as it means you don't wake up angry - which makes it pretty impossible to get back to sleep.

i also became a coffee addict tho.....

[sillywoman]

What a lovely post canela. Thankyou.

[edanna]

Oh, it's so hard and everything else is harder when you're sleep deprived. I'd recommend the Millpond Sleep Clinic book Teach your child to sleep. Hope it helps.

[carrieon23]

Thank you all for your replies. I am getting a sound machine and am going to do a bit of research & reading or possibly just a bigger bed!

The cat post made me laugh alot as I totally agree that cats are very therapeutic, but one of ours is incontinent and the other is a psycho-kitty that would probably just savage him in the middle of the night!

I know I just have to remember its all a phase that we will get through but you know what sleep deprivation is like. X

[Mfichardt]

My 3 yo has also always been a bad sleeper, waking with night terrors etc, not wanting to go to bed etc., and at some points I've been very close to a nervous breakdown - no doubt everyone on this post know exactly what I'm talking about. I've read all the books, tried all the approaches and got all the sleep aids, and at some points it gets better but then worse again.

In the end I consulted Andrea Grace (one of the first consultants coming up on a Google search), we only did a phone consultation and she then follows up with calls / emails, which was a great support. Andrea gave me a sleep plan and mentally I was in a better place as I felt I was doing something strategically, and Andrea had loads of tips of how to approach different aspects I was unsure about.

After 3 nights she was a different child. I was convinced it wasn't a behaviour issue, but most of it was.

It is called no-crying method but there is some crying involved, although very short (1 minute) - although she does a personalised plan for each child.

PM me if you need more information.

Good luck - total sympathy.

Marike