sleep help

[Deb2004]

My daughter has adhd and pdd nos , she is 8 years old and takes (2) 5 mg of ritalin during the morning and (1) 5 mg pill in the afternoon.
My problem is when Rose goes to sleep, she can not fall asleep.
She wakes up in the middle of the night, I have tried everything from her nightlights which by the way projects on the cieling, glow in the dark stars all over the room, " moon in my room" and her security blanket and stuffed animals.
I even tried music.
She would wake up in middle of the night and I tried to just put her back to bed and let her cry herself to sleep, if you were here, you would think she was getting murdered and she would just walk to my room and cry and say she cant sleep, I used to yell an dat times i tried to keep as calm as I could.
That didnt work, then I tried letting her sleep in the couch when she wakes up as she falls asleep to cartoons. At times she can stay asleep and times she will make up and id stay with her on the couch until she falls asleep.
The neurologist said to give her melatonin and whe n I called say it didnt work , she told me " it helps her fall asleep" I face palmed , and said she can fall asleep fine , it is staying asleep, she told me to give her half a melatonin when she wakes up.
I decided Id try it but still keep her on the couch, that didnt work and the doc says yo have to get her out of the habit, easier said than done doc.
Am I alone in this.?

[mommytriz]

You must be so tired. They're supposed to make us sleep deprived when they're babies aren't they? Not now. We use a calcium/magnesium supplement to help in getting a solid sleep. Google it and read up on the effects of the magnesium on calming the muscles.

[mcnay1]

You're certainly not alone in this! My son, almost 7, has always been a bad sleeper. He had a hard time falling asleep and still has a hard time staying asleep. When he was a baby (adopted and came home at 8 months old), he would get up 4-5 times a night and would not fall asleep by himself. Through a lot of hard work, we finally, by 4 YO almost 5, got him to fall asleep by himself. He still gets up in the middle of the night. The deal is, and he knows this, if he falls asleep in his own bed, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he can come to our bed and sleep. We don't even know when he comes in anymore. I realize that this is bad, but it works for us. He is slowly getting to the point that he doesn't come in every night. This wont work for everybody and some will think badly of it, but we were so tired and we felt like we had tried everything that we are actually ok with it.

So, my point is, you are certainly not alone...hang in there!

Forgot to mention that we do give him his melatonin and guanfacine at dinner time to allow it to get through his system and start working when he's ready to go to bed.

[CrazyLazyGal]

If she's waking up and crying, that suggests that it's more than sleep. Does she have severe anxieties or some traumatic stress symptoms?

[Deb2004]

Mcnay ... I used to do the same thing with sleeping with us, When i used to live with my mom before i got married, we slept in the same room because we had no room for another room, then when i got married to my husband(her step but who is counting) he wanted her to sleep with us once in a while... I tried used a star chart, i even said she can stay with us after 430 am...when my husband goes to work on work days and at nigh shiftst i used to cheat and let her sleep with me the whole night, Ever since she was a baby , she would wake up and would be hard to get her to sleep again.
I tried everything, the melatonin said an hour before bed but she still wont sleep the whole night. then I used to put her on the couch now... and it used to work the whole night , and sometimes it still down and sometimes it dont. she would tell me she cant sleep alone. It is funny that You mentioned that at times , u wouldnt feel him in the bed and You just wake up with him there, that used to happen to me. So the rule is only the bed room and the living room whole night to get a star, i took the chart down but the rules stay. It used to be an endless fight to get her into the bedroom alone, i would get frustrated and yell, she would cry , husband gets up at 4:30 am and it used to interrupt his sleep, no one was getting sleep and she needs to be fresh for school.

Its very tiring Mommytriz... I at times forget what my husband and my bed looks like lol.
I will keep the option of magnesium open, thank you very much.

Crazylazygal....no she doesnt wake up screaming and crying , just when i tell her to go to bed by herself in her room and such.

[happytexas]

Originally Posted by Deb2004

gist said to give her melatonin and whe n I called say it didnt work , she told me " it helps her fall asleep" I face palmed , and said she can fall asleep fine , it is staying asleep, she told me to give her half a melatonin when she wakes up.
I decided Id try it but still keep her on the couch, that didnt work and the doc says yo have to get her out of the habit, easier said than done doc.
Am I alone in this.?

Has she always had this difficulty? Before beginning ADHD medication? You could try time-release melatonin; it's usually easier to find online, I order through amazon.

Chronic lack of quality sleep isn't good for your health or her health and development; if this problem predates the ADHD medication it is likely aggravating her symptoms. I would consider having her seen by a pediatric sleep specialist. The neurologist seems to be assuming this is a behavior/parenting problem when it may actually be a sleep disorder. It may be that something is causing her to wake-up at a particular point in her sleep cycle.

I'm guessing you're in NJ so I did a search for "sleep specialist children new jersey".

[Divacai]

My son is now 7 and has a hard time going to sleep. Melatonin does work for him, as he can turn his brain off to get to sleep, but he doesn't stay asleep. We got so tired of him in our bed, no room, that I resorted to letting him sleep on the floor next to our bed. We all need sleep, I've had to learn to let it go and let him sleep where he will.

BTW, he was doing his turn of sleep out on the couch with toons on as well. It still wasn't stopping him from waking up and coming to our bed in the middle of the night.

[qanda]

I heard their is a type of slow release melatonin. Perhaps that would work.

[sarahsweets]

One thing that I read somewhere and my personal experience is that lower mg doses of melatonin seem to work better than higher. I was taking 3mg for awhile and thought 10mg would be better. Boy was I wrong, I had the worst trouble going to sleep and staying asleep and horrible daytime grogginess. I switched back to the 3mg and its all good in the hood now.

[LynneC]

Originally Posted by sarahsweets

One thing that I read somewhere and my personal experience is that lower mg doses of melatonin seem to work better than higher. I was taking 3mg for awhile and thought 10mg would be better. Boy was I wrong, I had the worst trouble going to sleep and staying asleep and horrible daytime grogginess. I switched back to the 3mg and its all good in the hood now.

Yes, I agree. With melatonin, more is not better! I also find that not taking it on a nightly basis seems to help its effectiveness.

[happytexas]

Like many things it's probably better to start with the lowest dose and add on on if that dose is ineffective; melatonin pills come in at least 4 dosages (1mg, 3mg, 5mg, and 10mg).

There is also time-release melatonin. It can be difficult to find in stores so I order it through Amazon. I only use the time-release for myself when I know I will get 8hrs sleep as even the 1mg will cause some morning grogginess for me otherwise.

[teadrinker7]

In Sweden we have chain blankets (it's a blanket with thin chains inside), it's expensive to buy though. They're heavy and the pressure calms the child. It sounds a bit weired, but they're not heavy enough to be annoying. I've tried them myself they're actually quite nice....

[Man w/ADD]

[quote=Am I alone in this.?[/quote]

You are definitely not alone. My youngest daughter(4 going on 20) is always the last person to sleep and the first one to get up in the morning. I don't know if she has slept through the night once in her 4 years. I know you said she falls asleep fine, so I assume you are not allowing her to have or do things close to bedtime that would interfere with sleep. How you described your daughter crying sounds exactly like mine when she does not want to be in bed. Something that we do that has had limited(but good) success is when putting her back to bed I stay with her and rub her back until she falls back asleep. Sometimes she doesn't fall back asleep for a while so I tell her that if she stays awake I will have to go back to my bed and she will have to go to sleep by herself. Most of the time that works to get her to sleep. We started off doing that until she did fall asleep and then gradually cut back the back rub time so she had to fall asleep on her own. Now when we use this method we only do it for a few minutes and we can get back to our beauty sleep. Nowadays most of the time she will go back to her bed on her own. I think for my daughter it was just a matter of her being scared to be alone. When she was younger she would get up in the middle of the night and start playing with her toys, like she was thinking hey I am awake it must be time to get up and start the day. I am glad that "phase" is over.

Hopefully you will find something that works. All the stress that goes into being a parent on a normal day only gets worse if you are sleep deprived.

[CheekyMonkey]

Originally Posted by teadrinker7

In Sweden we have chain blankets (it's a blanket with thin chains inside), it's expensive to buy though. They're heavy and the pressure calms the child. It sounds a bit weired, but they're not heavy enough to be annoying. I've tried them myself they're actually quite nice....

You can buy those online, they are called weighted blankets in the US. They are usually filled with beans of some sort.

http://www.beanblanket.com

[crystal8080]

My daugher has trouble sleeping too. (Now she doesn't have ADHD, I suspect she has some traits, but I don't think it qualifies as an impairment)

She wakes up screaming, and nothing will calm her, or she'll come into bed, she always wants to sleep with us. I tried making her room dark, nightlights, having a bed on the floor of our room that she can sleep in etc...I don't get a lot of sleep.

But I finally found something that works for her, and its something to consider. My husband sleeps with a fan. Ive always hated it but he gets fevers in his sleep from his Crohns. Well he finally told me that he started sleeping with it when he was a child because he has super hearing. Its been tested, its true.

So having the fan on him blocks out all the noise. So, we tried it on our daughter. Total and complete success! She has her own fan, she gets an extra blanket, and she is out until morning. She is even sleeping longer in the morning. Now I know WHY she loves sleeping with us so much...she can't hear anything.

Just my two cents, if it doesn't help you it might help someone!