Working through sleep issues with our kids feels like something that has been a lifelong battle. It starts immediately after birth and, for us, has continued up through ages eight and ten for our boys.
Addressing sleep issues as a family has taught me the importance of patience, consistency and communication and I hope that you can benefit from the struggles I have gone through on the topic.
The Cause: A Destabilizing Event
We sold our home a little over two years ago. We were looking for a new home in a very specific area (roughly a square mile) and this was causing us some problems. An opportunity to sell our previous home came to us before we had a chance to find our current home. This caused some problems.
We ended up finding a short-term rental that, in the grand scheme of things, worked out really well for us. The net result for our kids, though, was that we moved two times in two months.
I believe this is what first started the sleep issues that our oldest son experienced. A lack of stability in our living situation was causing him anxiety that manifested itself as anxiety during bedtime.
The Issue: Hypersensitivity and Anxiety at Bedtime
The problem we starting having with our older son began when we had finally moved into our current home. It started simply, with him saying nothing more than "I can't sleep".
He was normally a good sleeper so my wife and I tried laying with him in bed for a while to let him fall asleep. He did fall asleep this way plenty of nights, but he became hyper-aware and sensitive to any motion at all. When we would get up to leave the room, he would spring awake and say "I just can't sleep" (even if he had been snoring for 20 minutes before you tried to leave).
This was clearly not working. We needed to come up with something better.
Lesson One: Consistency and a Solid Plan
The first thing we learned was that there was a ton of information out there online about how to deal with the issue, but none of it seemed to work for us as well as it did for others.
Eventually we came upon something that described three basic steps that could be used to help with these kinds of sleep symptoms. Those steps were:
- No more laying in bed with our son. We could sit on a chair in the room or nearby in the hallway.
- We would check on him periodically, increasing the duration between each check as we went.
- He would agree to stay in his bed and try his best to fall asleep.
Lesson Two: Communication is Critical
Throughout the process we made sure that we explained what was happening and why. We made sure that our son was on board with the plan and looked at it from a positive perspective — that this is something that would help him because having trouble sleeping was definitely not fun.
Making him feel involved seemed to help quite a bit. I think it gave him some built-in accountability and ownership, even if he was too young to recognize it for what it was.
Lesson Three: Patience Pays Off
This is something that helped tremendously, but it was also one of the hardest parts. Bedtime issues are frustrating for everybody involved, but it's important to stay positive and try to keep things as low-pressure as possible.
Anything short of that just adds anxiety into an already bad situation.
End Results: Slow but Steady Progress
In the end our son was able to overcome his sleep issues. Looking back to what I consider the root cause, I think he just had to get fully comfortable in his new setting to be able to relax at bedtime.
But I truly believe that, by getting everybody on the same page and sticking to a routine, we helped accelerate that process.
I can definitely tell you that our nights are now much more low-stress because bedtime isn't a major ordeal every night.
Things that Helped Along the Way
One of the biggest things we did was bring a comfortable chair into his room. This made it easier to spend the time in there that was necessary during the process.
A nightlight was also key in our situation. We didn't go with anything too bright or distracting, just enough to make our son feel comfortable.
Finally, we put a digital clock in his room so he could easily check to see what time it was. In our case, this helped to calm him down a bit because he could see what time it was and know exactly when we would be checking on him.
Conclusion
That was, overall, how we helped work through our son's sleep issues. While the entire process did take a while, it wasn't long (maybe a week or so) before we started seeing noticeable differences that made a huge impact on our quality of life.