Kanicbird, ADHD and autism are NOT the same thing. :rolleyes:
Second, locking one’s door from the outside – what happens if there’s a fire or something? :dubious: That’s just fucked up.
Medications for ADD are usually stimulants. What time of day is she taking them? What dosage?
I should have mentioned this earlier: GF unlocks the door when she goes to bed.
Again, I’m not entirely sure about the medication. There is one where Daughter gets two doses per day, and the second dose should be taken by 2:00 PM or Daughter will be wired well into the evening. That’s all the detail I can provide.
GF has been dealing with Daughter’s meds for years, and the therapist is aware of this refusing-to-sleep issue.
I’m a little concerned with the “refusing to sleep” phrasing. Is there evidence that this is willful? I’m reminded a whole lot of people who complain that their infant is “spoiled” or “manipulating” them, when really they’re just being a baby. Maybe the girl just isn’t sleepy! I mean, she’s taking stimulants, for goodness sakes. You try chugging a venti coffee at 2PM and see how sleepy you are at 8.
Once more with feeling: you cannot make someone sleep. Child, infant, adult…yourself, doesn’t matter. If they/you’re not sleepy, they/you’re not going to sleep. Refusal has nothing to do with it, it’s just biology.
Now, coming out of the room and being a nuisance, that is something the daughter can learn to control. And that’s why the focus on changing this behavior should be on that. That behavior she *can *change.
Is it possible the doctor can put her on slow release? That’s what I was on – you only take one pill in the morning. Even at 2pm, that can really rev you up. What time does she go to bed?
But if she’s suffering from this kind of insomnia, I’d take her to a doctor. In the mean time, let her keep her light on and read.
And whether she unlocks the door before going to bed doesn’t matter – stop doing it!
I’m not a parent.
My brother and I were awful nighttime sleepers. Neither diagnosed with ADD. We still are horrible nighttime sleepers in our 30s. He stays up later than I do and I think falls asleep with talk radio on. I get to bed earlier but I fall asleep with the TV on (previously I fell asleep reading).
When we were kids our mom just made us go to bed and stay there, like Markxxx’s mom. If we read, we read. Sometimes with a flashlight.
Eventually when we were in our teens and we had a new rec room at the back of the house, our folks let us stay up indefinitely. As long as we didn’t wake them up.
We were awful at getting up in the morning, and I slept a lot in school. But we still made it to school on time and I at least got really good grades. In college the only thing that kept me back from better grades was my lack of ability to get up, but I still got like a 3.2 GPA.
Not falling right asleep is no big deal. Doing some sort of dance with lightbulbs and door locks is a whole other ball of wax. I agree with the posters who say let it go.
What many here have been suggesting came to pass today: at the therapy session it was decided that Daughter could have the light bulb back, and stay up all night reading if she wants. The condition is that she stay in bed. The therapist “worked out this deal” with Daughter, then GF was approached with it, who agreed. If Daughter leaves the room, then she loses the light again and can sit in the dark if she really wants to remain awake.
Tonight Daughter opened her door once, claiming the cat wanted out of her room. Other than that we didn’t hear from Daughter, at least before I left. I’ll find out in the morning how it all went.
GF isn’t holding her breath that this is going to work.
Sounds like a Power Struggle (which would mean that yes, the right solution is to not jump into the ring), but I’m sure there is information missing: why is Daughter doing this?
Both The Kidlet and his father had periods when they didn’t want to sleep because they’d be missing things; Middlebro (The Kidlet’s father) had several months at age 9 when he didn’t want to go to sleep because he’d heard someone say that “death is just a long sleep”, someone else talk about a person who “just went to sleep and didn’t wake up” and he was afraid he’d die. Solving those took finding the root of the problem and attacking it with reasoning the kids would be able to understand and accept - “you’re going to sleep because I say so!” would have caused nothing but tears.
The Kidlet, his mother (SiL) and Littlebro are night owls. The Kidlet had been going to sleep dutifully at the preordained time; then his second Christmas rolled by, and during those two weeks of late dinners and after-dinner partying, he found his natural clock. Both for him and for Littlebro, the solution was accepting that no, they’re not sleepy by the time their parents would have wanted them asleep.
Because fires and other emergencies never ever occur while people are awake, of course. Honestly, if I knew of a family that were locking a child in a room from outside at any time of day or night, my first thing, after asking them WTF was wrong with them, would be a call to child protective services. It’s unconscionable.
The therapist should be looking at delayed sleep phase syndrome and other physiological sleep issues, if this has been going on for a while. The kid’s on stimulants, and their effect can be significant, especially for someone whose brain is still developing.
I hope it works out for you. Making other people sleep to your schedule is never useful, I feel.
Has it gotten worse lately, or has it always been this bad?
I’m glad the therapist provided you with a suggestion. I’d continue to work with her as closely as possible (or seek a second opinion if necessary) to figure out what’s going on. Could be her meds need to be adjusted.
Is she functional during the day? How is her daughter’s behavior? Has it worsened at school? What about at home (other than the sleep issue)? Is she having trouble staying awake during the day or in the car?
Locking a kid in a room seems way overboard, so I’m glad she stopped. Speaking as someone who doesn’t have a kid with ADHD, our rule at home is “Stay up all you want, but no feet on the floor, no lights on.” (He’s almost 5, though - very different from your situation.) Most of the time he’s out within a half hour of us tucking him in. On bad nights he might be up for a couple of hours, but that happens maybe two or three times a month. When it does, he says he has trouble “getting his brain to slow down.” We’re trying to help him with that, too - showing him how to breathe deeply and relax his muscles. It seems silly, but it was something my mom used to do with me (we called it “the relaxing thing”) and it really helped. I still do it sometimes if I can’t sleep.
I like the therapist’s solution and have high hopes for it. I had the same problem as a child (I got my ADD diagnosis when I was around 10). As soon as my parents gave up on trying to micromanage my sleep (they did make me go to my room so I couldn’t watch tv all night), at around age 14 or 15, I ended up sleeping more than I had in years. I still stayed up too late sometimes, but much less, and there wasn’t extreme anxiety surrounding bedtime any more.
I wouldn’t go to sleep at bed time because a]I wasn’t sleepy in the least when my parents made me go to bed, ever and b] I wanted more stimulation - reading or playing was much more fun than sleep, and desperately trying to read or play without my parents catching me made it even more likely that I would stay charged up until late in the night.
I also ended up ruining my vision within a couple years, from reading in the dark.
Trust me when I say my issues had nothing to do with lack of discipline. My mom was authoritarian and a harsh disciplinarian - it just wasn’t effective for me.
When life gives you lemons. . .get her a night job?
What time does she go to bed – maybe she needs a later bed time?
Irrelevant. Mom needs the kid to have a bedtime that works for *her *- as long as she’s reasonable and “bed time” means “quiet bedroom time” and not “you must sleep now.”
If your girlfriend believes she is doing this for the attention has she tried giving the girl lots of positive attention during the day? If she takes an hour in the evening to sit and play a game with her daughter or reads to her or something that might be the difference between seeking attention for being out of bed late at night and going to sleep. This probably won’t help if the problem isn’t attention seeking but I can’t imagine she will look back on her life and regret spending more time with her daughter so it shouldn’t hurt anything either.
Sometimes you need to stick with a plan longer than you think you should to effect real change. Portraying confidence and remaining hopeful in the face of challenging child situations is critical. It would be great if GF could go into with hope and optimism and give the daughter positive reinforcement when possible. I know how frustrating these types of issues can be, but if the parent isn’t committed and doesn’t have faith, it’s awfully hard to expect the child to.
Kids with ADD, autism, etc, brains are wired differently. The part of the brain that regulates sleep can be non-standard. It’s not something one can control by sheer willpower although there are drugs or coping mechanisms that may help. Then when puberty hits things can change eveb more.
We’ve been working with the Seattle Children’s Hospital Pediatric Sleep unit for 9 months and that has been helpful - although not a panacea
I don’t have anything to add other than try de-escalate the power play aspects, don’t blame the kid 'cause her brian wiring is different, and take a deep breath and work on the long term self management.
I think Alice The Goon was remembering the previous thread about where the child poured a glass of milk down the sink.
I agree with Alice and think GESancMan, at the very least, should give some very careful thought to how he’s going to manage this relationship.
I also like the therapist’s solution. The one thing I’d suggest is the mother or OP take the daugther to the library and have her select some books for her to read in bed.
I am a strong believer in getting your kids hooked on reading at an early age. And if she has books she wants to read and the mum is in on it, it’ll seem more like an acceptable deal to the kid and the mother knows at least the kid is doing something useful with her waking hours
I just occurred to me that there is something I need to make clear here. I started this thread looking for ideas on how to help GF; this isn’t about me. I, personally, do not and have not felt any anger or frustration towards Daughter - I don’t have any reason to. So I hope I haven’t given the wrong impression.
As for the relationship, anyone who’s familiar with my postings will know that it isn’t entirely new. GF and I were together for a couple of years after high school, twenty years ago; we recently reconnected. So it isn’t like she’s some random person I just met and started dating. I think this makes the situation better in that the whole “getting to know you” phase has been condensed, more into a “catching up with you” kind of thing. So getting to know Daughter has not made the whole situation overwhelming, as it might have if GF and I were also new to each other.