Apologies in advance for the long and rambling post.Some background info before I start: my daughter lives with me, and sees her dad every weekend and usually after school one day a week too. He usually takes her to his parents’ house for the weekend instead of staying local, as he finds it easier. I’m not entirely convinced this is the best idea, but that’s a different issue for a different time. My partner is often at my house, and she and my daughter get along very well, to the point where my daughter often asks when we’re going to get engaged/married. I have a disability (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) which was diagnosed a couple of years ago and means that I usually get around with a wheelchair or a crutch, and I suffer with chronic pain and fatigue even when well-rested. We live in the U.K.My 7yo is, as our local children’s mental health practitioner put it, “bright and strong willed.” I entirely agree with that assessment. At school, she is working on target for maths and is ahead at reading and writing. She is verbose, articulate and witty. She’s been attending a drama club at the local theatre for about a year now and her confidence has increased significantly in this time. On her good days, she amazes me and I practically forget she is “only 7”.But not every day is a good day, and I’m finding it really hard to stay positive.She is very quick-tempered, will often jump to extremes and exhibits other behaviour unbecoming of her age. The school think she could be autistic, and I’m inclined to agree - 3 of my 4 younger brothers have autism and I can see my daughter struggling with similar things as they did, albeit in slightly different ways. Despite being articulate, she will often speak in a “baby voice” for no apparent reason. She has a very strong sense of right and wrong and gets very upset when she feels something is unjust. She will start crying immediately when she is panicked or angry, but not in the way in which she cries if she is sad - it’s more of a screaming/shouting which she needs to be brought down from. She is highly emotional and my constant attempts to stop her from screaming as an instant reaction have so far failed.Bedtime is awful. There are nights when I feel like leaving the house and driving away because I am so frustrated and tired. (It should go without saying, but I would never actually do that.) Bedtime used to be 8pm, and now starts around 7pm in an attempt to let her get more sleep. We have a bedtime routine: go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, get PJs on, into bed, cuddles, reading, go to sleep. In theory, that’s how it should work. What tends to happen is slightly different. After reading (which she now usually does by herself, as she no longer wants me to read to her), she finds it impossible to stay still long enough to fall asleep. I know this because there have been nights where I have gotten into bed with her and had to practically hold her still, or tell her every two minutes to close her eyes, lie still, stop sitting up, stop chatting to herself, etc. When I’m not in her room with her, I can hear her moving around. She used to call me into her room constantly, which has recently changed to her getting out of bed and coming into the living room to tell me she can’t sleep after being in bed for 10 minutes, or that she is worried about something that didn’t seem to trouble her until bedtime, or that she is scared of monsters (I have practically banned the word “monsters” from the house, I’m sick of hearing it and she knows they are not real). Then it’s back to bed until the next problem. When I go to bed, often around 11pm or later by the time I’ve managed to get things ready for the morning amid all the interruptions, she is still awake. This of course leads to her being grumpy and highly strung the next day, and makes things even more difficult. Meanwhile, I’m so tired I can do pretty much nothing but get her to school the next morning. No matter how tired she is, she won’t sleep.Tonight, she fell asleep not long before midnight. She woke me up at 5am because she had a nightmare. This is the third time she’s woken up in the early hours this week. It’s not always because of a nightmare, sometimes she’ll throw my bedroom door open screaming that I didn’t tell her I was going to bed, or saying that she hasn’t slept yet, even though I checked she was asleep hours ago.I have tried everything I can think of; different sleep routines, calming camomile baths before bedtime, soft music, letting her read, not letting her read, different bedtimes, reward charts and incentives (she panics that she won’t get the incentive and it makes it harder for her to sleep). I’ve gotten to the point of telling her off for not doing as she’s told by staying in bed and trying to sleep, and that just makes things worse.The mental health practitioner we saw was an absolute waste of time and never actually met my daughter, instead she just went off on hour-long tangents every session without offering much help. All she really did was try to put us off trying to get an ASD assessment whenever we brought it up because “everyone’s on the spectrum” and “assessment takes a long time and you’re going to love her either way”.Her dad has his heart in the right place but can be a bit useless. He has OCD and often she comes back from a weekend at his with a head full of worries which I have to explain are essentially nonsense because “daddy tends to worry about silly things a bit too much sometimes”. Her behaviour is about the same for both of us. My partner tries very hard but has only known my daughter for about 9 months and obviously doesn’t have as much in-depth knowledge and experience of her as her father and I.I just feel like I’m at the end of my tether - I’m tired, I’m impatient, I’m grouchy and I don’t know what else to do. I’m lucky that the school are trying to help but other than that I’m feeling a lack of support from the services which I feel should be helping. There’s a shortage of funding and resources in my area and it’s showing.Sorry for the long post and any typos, I’ve been awake since 5am, I’ll be getting up to do the school run in a minute and I’m typing this on my phone. I just feel like everything is falling apart and I don’t know where else to turn. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2ndZuju
No comments:
Post a Comment