Q&A: How to deal with a demanding almost-5-year-old when you're chronically sleep deprived

Amy writes:

I'm a 38 year old mom of a nearly five year old girl and 10.5 month fraternal twins. The twins wake at least two times a night each (to nurse), sometimes more. So I am not getting my REM sleep and besides being plain tired, I am clinically chronically sleep deprived. This is what my doctor told me when I was fishing around for him to give me something to help me with my proneness to feel depressed, my irritability, my short temper, my poor memory, etc.

I think I could cope with all this if it weren't for the fact that I have to parent my very demanding nearly-five year old daughter. While she isn't outright jealous of her baby siblings (she is very happy to have them, having asked for baby sister/brother for ages, and she is very loving to them, "helps" me with them, cuddles & kisses them, plays with them etc.) she is extremely demanding of me, my energy, attention and time. I have to do everything--fix her meals, help her get ready for school/dance class/etc., read her bedtime stories, give her a bath (so it has to be ME, not her father, not the sitter). And she is constantly demanding my attention. She whines. She calls for me every minute. Every little bump and scratch is a crisis. She doesn't do what I tell her unless I threaten to punish her (I really can't stand that.) You get the picture.

Our relationship has devolved to a situation where she gets me angry, I shout at her, then I feel guilty, and say to her something like, "Mommy doesn't want to shout but she gets upset when you don't listen, etc." And she says, "I don't like it when you shout at me." And I say, "well why do I shout?" And she says, "because I don't listen." And we kiss and make up and then the same thing happens all over again a few minutes later.

I am tired of being so angry at her all the time. I feel like a rotten parent because I am so impatient with her. I feel guilty that she is getting the short end of my chronic sleep deprivation. (I know I would be a much calmer more patient person if I wasn't about to short circuit all the time.)

Is there anything you can suggest to help me get through this with my sanity intact, and without irreparably damaging her and our relationship."

Wow, what a rough situation. 10 months is a horrible time for a lot of kids, and almost-5 seems to be really hard, too.

Did any of the rest of you notice an increase in clinginess and neediness in the 3-5 months right before your child turned 5? I didn't notice it with my first, but I also had a 19-month-old and had just asked my husband for a divorce, so I wasn't in any frame of mind to be making big-picture observations. With my younger son, though, there was a very distinct period in the months before he turned 5 in which he seemed to want to be inside my skin with me.

At the time it felt like one last hurrah of neediness and babyhood before her turned 5 and became a kid, independent from me. And that is what happened. Over the course of about two days within a few weeks of turning 5 he just got fluid and independent and competent. And he still wants to interact with me, but it's not a constant need to be with me and only me.

So I'm hoping that when your daughter turns 5 her intense need for you to be physically present at all times (and only you) diminishes.

I will also bet cash money that when your younger children turn a year things will start to ease and that by the time the turn 15 months they'll be completley different kids, sleepwise.

So at this point it's just survival for a few months, and knowing that everyone's doing appropriate things developmentally and you haven't done anything wrong. But that you do need some help help help.

Is it possible for you to get a break from the nighttime duty for a few days in a row? If you could get 2-3 nights of decent sleep you'd be fortified for the next few months. If your partner or a relative or friend could take an overnight shift with them it would make an enormous difference. Honestly, your doctor's kind of an ass for not taking this more seriously and suggesting HELP for you so you can make it through this really tough period without losing it completely. You need sleep.

I also wonder if you could get some help during the day for a few hours a couple of times a week so that you could get some more intense time in with your daughter or just feel like you can catch up with yourself a little.

We are NOT meant to be doing this all alone, on duty all the time, no respite. And giving our kids what they need developmentally doesn't mean that we stand back and watch while we sink into PPD because it's just not physically or emotionally viable.

Maybe your partner could read this, or your mom or friend, and the seriousness of the situation would hit and they'd offer to give you the support you need to make it through the nextx few months until your kids need (a little) less from you. I hope that's the case. I'm betting many of us reading this remember that feeling of thinking we were about to break. we're here with you.

Support? Especially from twin moms? (I can't even imagine. One at a time almost did me in at 10 months.)

Comments

[Heather Raab]

Katherine, wow! Your comment really hit home for me. I feel like I have had a real problem with yelling at my daughter (who is now 3.5) since my son was born 14 months ago. It was awful in the first 6 months and has decreased tremendously, but it still happens and I always feel ashamed after. I always swear to myself that I won't to do it again, but it inevitably always happens again. I feel like you really just made me aware of how my daughter must feel and I have never put myself in her shoes in that way. I have blamed her for my yelling on several occasions even though I know deep down I shouldn't have to yell-I need to find a way to be patient. If it were someone else's child I were babysitting or something, I would never yell like that...so why do I do it to my own daughter? And now she has started yelling at me in the same exact tone and I know she has learned it from me. It's just awful. I am definitely going to take your advice about apologizing without placing blame and hopefully eliminating the yelling altogether.

Recently someone suggested putting marbles in a jar for good behavior and taking them out for bad. Then earning a very special prize for filling the jar. I felt like my daughter had no incentive for doing what I asked of her other than to avoid the eventual yelling. So, I give her marbles for doing something the first time, like letting me get her dressed, her teeth brushed, her hair brushed, her shoes on, etc. Also, for acts of kindness, like sharing with her brother or being very polite to me or another adult and saying please instead of just demanding something. I have been trying to find A LOT of positive behaviors lately because I want to really make her WANT to behave well and to make her feel better about herself. I have just felt like we were in a downward spiral much like the OP. Katherine, thanks again for your insight!!

[Matarij]

Your daughter sounds like she is feeling left out, which of course she is in comparison to before. So, offer your daughter a space once a week that is hers alone - for example, on a Tuesday night you take her out for something to eat, just you and her and she tells you all her news. And stick to it. I think you will then find that she feels special and cuts out the attention seeking. Good luck.

["Amy"]

I wanted to write a follow up to my question and to all the amazing replies that I got. I read each and every suggestion, many of them quite a few times. In fact I have the page open on firefox and I go over to it all the time.

This was the best thing I ever did and the advice I got here has been invaluable and I have taken a lot of it to heart and made a lot of changes.

I also want to say that aside from the useful advice, I felt so much better hearing from others that they had/have similar issues. I had really been feeling very isolated, and the responses really ameliorated that fear and loneliness that were contributing to my darkness.

So here's the follow up:
I decided to night wean the babies and made arrangements for two weeks of night help. I also decided that since I was going to night wean them I'd start getting them used to formula so I stopped pumping for them so they no longer had BM if I went out in the days. At this point they were 11 months old. I had wanted to EBF them up until they turned one but I realized, in large part thanks to all your input, that I just could not do it. Not without having some sort of breakdown, which is where I was headed. I also accepted that 11 months of exclusive breast feeding for twins isn't exactly a failure, so I cut myself a little slack.

My little girl pretty much weaned herself from that point. She had never been a good nurser--she had a tiny mouth and a weak latch and pulled a couple of nursing strikes on me, but I had persisted (and she had thrived). But by this point she was so mobile and active (she walked the day after she turned 10 months) that she just refused to remain still to nurse unless I caught her as soon as she woke up or when she was really tired before a nap or going down for the night. (Which is the case now--she nurses once a day, when she wakes up.)

When the time came for the night person to start, my daughter was waking up 2-3 times a night (she would still nurse at night) and my son every 60-90 minutes, a habit he had formed when he had six teeth come in at once at 9.5 months and he just hadn't dropped it. I think it was that habit that actually drove me over the brink and led me to write to Moxie, because it meant I was waking up like every hour all night.

For the first week with night help, they continued like that. My daughter took a little water and/or formula when she woke up, while my son refused both most of the times they were offered to him. (He was and still is avidly nursing in the day, many times during the day.) When the night person asked me, incredulously, "he wakes up this often all the time?" I nearly broke down crying. I don't think I felt like anyone believed me up to that point.

I suggested she not pick him up right away to see if he'd settle back down on his own, but she said she tried that and he just fussed and fussed. (That had been my experience too.) And there was the risk of him waking his sister. (They sleep in the same room; we don't have space for them to do otherwise.)

By the way, I didn't try sleep training because I had tried it with my first child, and found it very stressful (for me), plus I wasn't convinced it worked. Also, between having my first and my twins I discovered the book "Our Babies, Ourselves" and Kellymom.com (which is how I found Moxie in the first place) and was pretty much converted, so philosophically sleep training is/was not an option for me.

By the end of week 2 my daughter was waking up once and having formula and my son was waking up once and not having anything.

So I decided to keep the night help for one more week and... the waking up once per night didn't stick and they reverted to waking up multiple times per night. By midway through the third week I was in a quandary. How would I go back to waking at night with them? I was feeling so much better, like a normal person again, and here they were, basically unchanged. I couldn't keep the night help forever (mainly because of cost) but I couldn't go back to how things were before.

I managed to convince my husband that, for the sake of my sanity, to keep on the night help for a while longer. We are now in week seven of night help and they sleep through once in a while, but most nights at least one baby wakes up at least once. If they get anything it's water. Sometimes they settle themselves back down, but sometimes they really holler (and I hear them and feel really guilty... but then go back to sleep, most of the time.) They're now coming up to 13 months old.

My nearly-5-year old is another story. Before I go into that, I just want to say to Katherine: thank you. You changed my life. You are absolutely right and I am so glad you came along and so politely and gently showed me that.

From the babies were born my older daughter got lots and lots of one-on-one time with me, and with my husband and me. Very few of the threesome activities that we used to do were affected by the twins' arrival. In fact my husband often says I cater to her demands too much, and that she should learn to share me more and learn that the babies' arrival means less time and attention for her.

She is a very demanding, very intense child. Sometimes I feel like she has sucked everything out of me. Around the time my letter was published, my sister was spending time with us and after two days she told me that understood why I was so exhausted (referring to my older daughter.) (Again, very welcome validation.) My daughter is very bright and very talkative and asks a million questions and wants to be a part of every conversation and always wants to do things and create things and go places and read stories... and most of the time I'm the one who has to be a part of it.

She actually will do things with other people, but the truth is that there just isn't any one out there who can be there for her the way that I, her mother, can and must be. I can "farm her out" to her aunt for a few hours, but then the aunt has her own life to live. Her father works very long hours (he has to, we have no choice; the recession hit his business BADLY, and I am not working now) and so his time and energy are very limited. When I have help in the days, the help is needed in many other areas--the twins, the dinner, the laundry, etc. And she is all consuming.

All this is to say that even though I am better rested--and after just a couple of nights, even though I wasn't sleeping very well at first (go figure), I felt so much more like a human being again, it was incredible--I am still having difficulty being patient and tolerant with her. And now I feel even guiltier because I no longer have the chronic sleep deprivation excuse to fall back on. I really have to catch myself from not blowing up at her over the tiniest thing. And I'm sure that most of the time she's not "being annoying", she's just being her little self. I really identified with Sarah and what she said about her relationship with her daughter after her twins came along. But Sarah's story also scared me a bit because I don't want our relationship to be one of emotional hurt, and I don't want her to bear the brunt of my exhaustion, be it physical or emotional.

My sister also said, at the end of our time together, that aside from/in spite of her being intense and emotionally draining, she is a very delightful child. So she doesn't deserve me being such an ogre. I'm no longer blaming her for my inability to control myself (thank you again Katherine), but I am still far from the calm, equanimous and loving mother that I would like to be, and that she deserves.

Now she is back in school with a routine, and after school activities and she is away from home for a few hours each day and mostly occupied in the afternoons, so I get a break. So things are better. I've also been able to squeeze some exercise for myself which is sure to put me in a better position to manage and control my mood, once I can get that going as a regular thing.

But I am still diffident about how I am raising her. I find that so much of getting her to do what I want requires threats of one sort or another. Sometimes it's just a general, "get here on the count of three or I'm going to punish you." Sometimes it's more specific, "you won't get any telly later if you don't go wash your hands now." But most of the time I have to repeat myself over and over again to get her to do something, and then I have to threaten. I hate that. I never wanted to be that parent. And I have no idea how to figure this out. I wish I could have someone I trusted spend the day with me, like an observer, and show me where I'm going wrong and how I can do things differently.

A lot, I know, and I could go on and on. But that's my story. Thank you all again, from the bottom of my heart. You might have just saved someone from going over the edge. In fact, not might; you did.

[Esther]

Michelle - Tara Thank you again for taking these puirctes. They are absolutely beautiful. I absolutely love the picture of Autumn on the bed and us blurred in the background. I am so excited to show these puirctes to the twins and I cannot wait for you to meet them. I cannot believe that they could be here as early as another 2 weeks.

[Harouna]

You don't know what he is like with his other kids. Do you stalk him? He has joined costudy of his other kids.All the bitter haters out in force. Lets pray karma doesn't bite you soon.