Some new anxiety issues
MirandaHobbes
member
I'm at a loss with this. A few months ago DS heard a scary story at school about bad guys who kill kids while they sleep. Ever since then DS has been unable to sleep in his bed all night. We went through showing him our alarm system, locked doors, etc. This calmed him a bit. But the only way to get him to go to sleep in his bed is to tell him he can come upstairs to our room, quietly, without waking us, and sleep on our bedroom floor IF he wakes up and is scared during the night. So every night for almost 3 months he wakes up around midnight and we find him on our floor in the morning. Every time I try to suggest he has to stay in his bed all night, he will melt down crying. One night I tried to put him back in his bed and it ended up a big screaming mess. I've tried to talk to him reasonably about it, and he agrees that he can't do this forever, but he thinks we should allow it "until he's a teenager."
DS is only given a pillow and blanket to sleep on in our room- as I'm not trying to make it more comfortable for him, but he is quite happy sleeping on the floor. Again, he goes to sleep without fuss in his own bed, but like clockwork wakes each night and comes upstairs.
Background: DS is 6, pdd-nos, with emotional regulation deficits and anxiety.
Do I wait this out- or do I need to be more proactive?
Re: Some new anxiety issues
This is what I was afraid of. As usual DH and I aren't on the same page. DH will give in immediately "to keep the peace." We did try one night to be strong and consistent. We locked our bedroom door and kept telling him to go to sleep. DS was hysterically screaming and crying so loud I was afraid our neighbors would call the police. Hence the bedroom floor scenario. DS is using crying to his advantage all the time and DH buys it hook line and sinker every time.
I found an article on sleep training from a pysch office online; maybe I can convince DH to get on board. Otherwise I guess I'll be having some sleepless nights alone this week.
This is the game plan for tonight. I sent the article to DH and he replied that he is on board to try it. I predict we'll have one really bad night and then tomorrow he'll be better. I'm going to try to use a "celebration" carrot and tell him we'll take him to Chuck E Cheese next weekend if he can sleep in his bed all week.
Another question: I don't know when to tell him about the new rule. (1) If I tell him right when he comes home he'll obsess over it and cry for a long time- but ultimately he'll get over it (and I'm sure cry again at bedtime). But it would give it a chance to sink in. (2) We could wait until bedtime and then suffer through a good two hours of crying/screaming/etc. Bed time is 8 pm for him so we'd be up and around to deal with it. He knows we don't go to bed until 10 so he would almost certainly stay up until 10 to test the rule and he'd be out of his bed 1000 times inbetween then. (3) We could put him to bed and not tell him, and then when he comes upstairs (I'll put a bell on it to wake me) I'll calmly take him downstairs. This is a little bit springing on him, but he'd be drowsy enough that it may end quicker.
Thoughts? I do hope to get expert advice on this. We've been on a waitlist for a psych for almost a year which is ridiculous; I'm going to call again today and see what's up.
Well, he did it- sortof. We sat him down for a family meeting. We were very positive and said that we were so proud of him for sleeping so well the past few months that we thought he was ready to sleep all on his own again. I told him that to celebrate him sleeping in his bed by himself all week long, we would go to Chuck E Cheese. He thought about it and said, "Ok, I'll do it!" We high-5'd and DH and I felt like parents of the year- until we realized DS thought he'd get Chuckie for just 1 night of sleeping alone. We explain that no, this was forever. Which caused some crying. Then bedtime, which was calm, with reading, etc. Then crying but only for about a half hour.
Slept soundly until 11:40 when he predictably came upstairs. I took him down and there were some tears. Put him in bed. Up he came. Louder crying, protesting. This went on for an hour with DS intermittantly not crying but pleading "I can't handle it Mom, I just can't do it!" to him wailing and sobbing. But mostly it was sobbing and then silence and him running up the stairs. Also lots of "but now I can't go to Chuckie" which made me realize my bribe had backfired- I should have held on to that until morning. After an hour of us both going up and down the stairs DH got upset and told me to try something else. (To his credit, DH did take some turns bringing DS to bed to make it known we were both on the same page. But he's a bear when he's sleep deprived so I took charge on most of this). I took DS down and told him if he stayed in his bed all night I would sleep on the couch. DS immediately said okay and fell right to sleep. I peeked in 5 minutes later and went back upstairs to sleep and we all slept until morning. I made a big deal of congratulating him for sleeping on his own, although DS was pretty grumbly saying he had only done it because I "made" him. He was still grumbling about it when I dropped him off at camp and he said "We'll talk about this tonight!!"
I realize it's not a total win because in the end he was relying on my presence in the room next to him to fall asleep, but it's a start anyway. Tonight I'll probably tell him that I'm only going to stay for 10 minutes.
I really can see the value in breaking this habit. It reminds me of his pacifer as a toddler. He was still using it as an almost 3 year old. He obviously couldn't "pacify" himself on his own and needed a crutch. Same thing with the swaddle- he was addicted to it and we had an extremely rough transition breaking him from it at (yikes) 10 months old. He didn't know how to wind down or fall asleep without being wrapped up like a burrito.