My daughter can't sleep...help

[Quicksylver]

Hello Everyone,

Brief back story for reference: my partner's ex is undiagnosed BPD. They used to share 50/50 custody and parenting time of our daughter (my step) but that was very dysfunctional (on just about every level), eventually resulting in the physical, emotional and verbal abuse of our daughter. We filed for sole custody and majority parenting time, winning in July of last year. BPD fluctuates between raving about how wonderful this change has been for our daughter ("she's thriving!") and repeatedly asking for more time with her (inventing medical emergencies, detailing conversations with our daughter that never actually happened, and then dropping off / picking her up late and canceling dates at the last minute..).

It's been a while since I've posted in here but my daughter has spent almost every night this month having terrible sleep disturbances. I am at a loss as to what to do. We've tried everything my partner and I can think of: sound machines, night lights, weighted blankets, putting a cot in our room that she can come in and sleep on...the list goes on and on. We're taking her to a counselor a few times each month and he's working on addressing it as well but she's so young that the sessions are mainly "play therapy" at this point.

Essentially what's happening is ...well awful. She'll fall asleep and then SHOOT up and out of bed in a massive panic. Sometimes she's crying before she wakes up and yelling for "Mom!", other times she start wailing shortly after waking up. Sometimes we'll be able to get her to sleep for one or two hours before these nightmares take place. This week it's escalated to waking up every 5-10 minutes until about 1am (she did just come back from another weekend with BPD). We had a family talk last night and decided that my partner and I would help her go back to sleep in her own bed one time after her original bedtime cuddles and story -and then she is to just move into the cot in our room. We agreed that if she was crying, she would come to me (my partner is SO frustrated right now -they aren't able to handle it patiently anymore) and we would talk about what was going on for her. If she was calm enough to tuck herself into the cot by herself, fantastic -but if not she'll get me and I'll tuck her in.

These talks with me do seem to calm her down (she's able to sleep through the night afterwards) BUT she is barely saying anything. It's basically just me saying whatever is coming to mind ("[BPD] sometimes says really mean things when they're having big feelings. That's not okay but it doesn't mean she doesn't love you very much." etc.). We're trying to get her to talk to us but she is really having a hard time opening up. It's pretty clear to me that it's due to something that happened at her BPD parents house. While they typically only have every other weekend together, they had more time over the holidays and all of this madness started right after she returned in January. So far she has only managed to squeeze out two sentences to describe what she is upset about: "I feel left out when I see you and [my partner] cuddling." and "sometimes I think about other people (her BPD mom?) getting snuggles without me...but I get cuddles when I'm here to so..."

I'm looking for feedback. At this point I don't think anything physical happened (though who can really say), but I think it's more based on something BPD is saying to her during their time together. I don't know how to address it. It's clear something needs to be done though as my family and I are unable to sleep through the night anymore.

What should we do? Anyone? Please help!
Thanks in advance!

[kells76]

Hey again Quicksylver! I think you had the issue with the smartwatch? Am I remembering right?

Remind me how old your SD is?

We're taking her to a counselor a few times each month

  good stuff.

Sometimes she's crying before she wakes up and yelling for "Mom!"

Just to make sure I'm not leaping to any conclusions, she's yelling for your partner, right?

One quick piece of feedback before diving in for more:

It's great that the talks with her seem to help her calm down. More good stuff. We are all skillbuilding here, so one of the skills I've learned on the boards is that when we say "XXXXX, but YYYYY", that doesn't always work well. The YYYYY invalidates all the XXXXX.

"[BPD] sometimes says really mean things when they're having big feelings. That's not okay but it doesn't mean she doesn't love you very much." etc.

So, one new thing you could try would be this:

"[BPD] sometimes says really mean things when they're having big feelings. That's not okay but it doesn't mean she doesn't love you very much. How do you feel when that happens?"

I think we want to be "good" stepparents so we, in our efforts to not disparage the other parent in the kid's life, say "Other parent loves you!" This could be confusing to a kid: Someone I trust says that my parent loves me, but I feel so awful with other parent.

When we ask validating questions like "How are you doing with that?", it opens up room for our stepkids to feel truly heard. It shows them that we make space for their feelings.

What do you think?

With much support;

kells76

[GaGrl]

Had the doctor or therapist classified this as "night terrors"? Because that is different than trouble sleeping.

[worriedStepmom]

We filed for sole custody and majority parenting time, winning in July of last year. BPD fluctuates between raving about how wonderful this change has been for our daughter ("she's thriving!") and repeatedly asking for more time with her

This is exactly what we experienced when we first got majority parenting time.  In our case, though, she asked for lots more time but often brought SD12 back early or dysregulated and invented reasons not to pick SD up.

It's hard to watch the kids we love suffer.  I second Kells - the construct of "<bad>, but <good>" can be confusing or invalidating for children.

Does her therapist have any advice or insight into the causes?  If the night terrors aren't because of something her other parent said/did, then your responding about her other parent might be confusing her.  She might just need reassurance that your family is her safe space.

Are you documenting the timing of the terrors? SD was with her other parent from X until Y, then had night terrors on a, B, and C days, Z number of times.

That will help you if you need to try for more custody.  A year after H got primary custody, we were back in court for more.  My SD12 now sees her mom only 10 am - 6 pm about 4 days a month.   It's worked a lot better for her.

[kells76]

And just one more question -- so does she struggle with going to sleep, too? Any kind of anticipatory worry, like "I'm afraid that I won't be able to fall asleep tonight"?

Waking every 5-10 minutes, after briefly falling asleep, is concerning. Can you have her doctor check things out?

Sleep stuff is so hard. If the kids don't sleep, everyone is wrecked. I know how that goes. I think it's a great idea you have to not create a battle around "you have to sleep in your own bed". Looking back, I wish I'd been more flexible right off the bat to "if you want to sleep near us here's the cot".

[Quicksylver]

Thank you all for your responses. Wow what an exhausting week. Of course as my partner and I are battling these sleep issues with our daughter, BPD has invented two different medical crises and pitched two different schedule change requests. Nothing we can't handle (so grateful for our current custody agreement) but I am so tired. This weekend cannot come soon enough.

Okay let's see. To answer the questions that came up:

• Our daughter is 6 almost 7 years old.
• When she's crying out for "Mom" -honestly it could be for/about any of us (con of all three parents being women). It's most likely not me, as she most often refers to me by my first name but she's called me Mom here and there as well.
• I am absolutely documenting everything. To an almost creepy level. I've got color-coded charts, the whole 9 yards. Sidenote: how weird is it that the BPD will almost exactly repeat their patterns every year? I mean right down to stressing out about our daughter's shoes around February 3rd every year...(and that's just a recent example). Creeps me out every time.
• **At this point we are not trying to take away any additional parenting time from BPD...though we shall see how the rest of this year goes. Everyone is still adjusting to this new world order (us included). It's definitely taking time for us to get used to being able to use BIFF and just say no to her ridiculous demands. That is settling down though, we've definitely made it out of the initial extinction burst -thank god.
  
• Our daughter has had sleep issues like this in the past, but never this many nights in a row and never this intense. Her counselor has not provided any kind of official diagnosis or classified them as "night terrors." So far he has not been able to provide much insight, as our daughter is SUPER shut down when it comes to the goings-on with BPD. (**I don't really blame her, she's been involved in 3 different abuse investigations, this is her 3rd counselor in 3 years, and when she opened up to my partner in the past (before she came to terms with the BPD diagnosis) my partner would talk to BPD about whatever our daughter said in an effort to fix whatever issue was happening...which resulted in our daughter getting abused/punished upon returning to BPD).
• We did consult with her primary care physician as well (also to rule out the long list of health concerns BPD was worried about) and we were informed that there was nothing physically wrong with her. He did say that she was on the older side to be going through this kind of sleep training and that regressions like this were normal, especially when the other parent continues to co-sleep with the child during their nights together.
• **I only half-way agree with the PCP's assessment about the co-sleeping issue. While I am definitely not thrilled with the arrangement over at BPD's house, our daughter was able to sleep in her own bed perfectly fine in her bed just a short month ago. She'd have a bad night here and there but that was easily traced back to whatever manic mood swing BPD was currently going through. The intensity of this last month has me completely thrown.

Okay, on to the good news! She has slept in her own bed for the past TWO nights! I really got creative and reached out to everyone I could think of for ideas. I wanted to post in case this helps anyone else (and who knows if this pattern will hold). After talking about the comments she made about cuddles (feeling left out, picturing people cuddling without her), my friend suggested setting up a "Sleepover Sunday" as her reward for sleeping the whole week in her own bed. Every Sunday (if she successfully sleeps in her own bed through out the week) she'll get to have a "sleepover" in our bed with my partner and I. We were both desperate enough to pitch this idea to our daughter -AND SHE LOVED IT! She has slept the last two nights in her own room with ZERO issues. At this point I don't really care if this is considered a regression or whatever -it's working! And it seems to address whatever it is that traumatized her in the first place.

To be fair, we are also now using a weighted blanket, a sound machine, a night light, setting up special quiet time activities for if she does wake up but is calm enough to stay in her room, rubbing essential oils onto her feet before bed, giving her the option of sleeping on the cot in our room, AND giving her 2.5mg of Melatonin a night...so who knows if it's really a combination of all these crazy ideas or not. We'll see if any of this proves to be a long-term solution. Here's hoping!

[worriedStepmom]

Way to problem solve!  I love the creativity, and that you're letting SD take ownership of some of it (choosing where to sleep).

[livednlearned]

I can imagine BPD mom instilling very subtle fear in a child about being alone, sleeping alone, not having someone to cuddle with at night when it's so scary, etc.

"QuickSylver and bio mom get to snuggle together at night, but we don't have anyone so we have to snuggle together. I don't like being along, do you? I'm so glad we're here together, not alone and scared."

 

My ex apparently said something like that to (then) S12 after I started to date my now husband. "Your mom has somebody she loves more than us. You and I have each other's back, we're a team. We'll get through this."

I wonder if something like that is going on in the subtext with your daughter.

[Quicksylver]

I can imagine BPD mom instilling very subtle fear in a child about being alone, sleeping alone, not having someone to cuddle with at night when it's so scary, etc.

"QuickSylver and bio mom get to snuggle together at night, but we don't have anyone so we have to snuggle together. I don't like being along, do you? I'm so glad we're here together, not alone and scared."

 

My ex apparently said something like that to (then) S12 after I started to date my now husband. "Your mom has somebody she loves more than us. You and I have each other's back, we're a team. We'll get through this."

I wonder if something like that is going on in the subtext with your daughter.

I totally agree with your assessment. Thank you so much for sharing your experience! I couldn't quite put my finger on what was going on, but this rings really true. I am so grateful for this site -I have never spent more than maybe a scattered 15 minutes at a time with BPD, so I truly don't know her well enough to really be able to hone in on the finer details of what she's telling our daughter. Come to think of it, our daughter even said something weird to me recently -something along the lines of "[my partner] met you and you two love each other and ...[BPD] likes to be by herself soo it all worked out!" My daughter said all that while we were dancing around the kitchen and blasting music and putting away dishes -so it ended up getting dropped from there. She was grinning and in a great mood so it didn't raise any flags for me at the time, but it totally fits with the conversation you described.

The "Sleepover Sunday" has continued to work for the past two weeks! It's turned her behavior completely around -which really cements my belief that BPD said something almost verbatim to what your ex said. Getting to co-sleep with us as a reward at the end of the week even cut down on how many nightmares she's had (she only had 1 this past week, as opposed to 3 or 4 a night). She still won't really tell us what they're about, but my partner and I have agreed to not push her on that.

Thank you all again for all of your feedback! I really appreciate it.

[Grady]

This sounds familiar.  When SS is with BPD mom, they share a twin-sized air mattress at her parent's house.  She uses SS to comfort her when he's upset.  I think that's what is making it so hard for my H to get SS to sleep alone.  He knows he needs to be there for her and he's just turning 4.  It's crazy to put that responsibility on a little guy.  And by doing this, BPD can work her magic to try to make sure H and I aren't able to sleep together.  Last week he told H that they were married now so that would mean H would always have to sleep with him. 

Unfortunately, these BPD are always working some angle and the poor kids become collateral damage.  I'm glad the sleepover Sunday is working.  I'll talk to H to see if we can come up with something that may work for SS.