I'm at my wit's end. Please help me troubleshoot this.
Jan 24, 2015 7:53:07 GMT -5
Post by spooko on Jan 24, 2015 7:53:07 GMT -5
DS is 7.5. ADHD, began Ritalin a month ago. Even before medication, he's always gone through periods of insomnia in the middle of the night. We've done what we can to minimize this by taking the lights out of his room so he can't easily play in the night and giving him a set time that he needs to be in bed until (6AM). With some reminders on occasional nights, this was previously working.
NOW: He hasn't slept through the night in several weeks. I know the medication doesn't help this, but we've asked that he still stay in his room until 6AM. We did have to take the clock out because he was fooling around with it in the night, but when he does venture downstairs, he can see other clocks and I also often wake up to send him back. When this hasn't helped, I told him I would open his door at 6 so he knows when he can come out easily. We've given him the option of earning the clock back by following the rules and we've had 0 success.
We have the Xbox set up in the living room and he comes down and tries to play with it in the night. This is despite the fact that he's both 1)supposed to have prior permission to touch it, and 2)grounded from it ATM.
Every night I hear/see the light when he gets up and usher him back to bed. Sometimes I catch him right away, sometimes he gets into the Xbox. Either way, back to bed, with additional consequences for breaking the house rules. He ends up getting defiant and I have to stay up until morning to keep putting him back because he just sits by his door and waits until I go to my room in order to sneak back out. He's taken to waking his sister up to play with in the night, either so that he can take her iPod (also grounded from) or so that he has someone to play with since everything is gone.
I've run out of consequences and nothing is even making a dent in this. I'm exhausted, having not been able to sleep myself as a result, and my patience is waning. Heck, it's outright gone. I have no more patience for this bullshit and even if I take away something huge like the opportunity for him to go to a wrestling tournament or something, I know that it isn't going to actually click for him to make a change. It never does.
So barring locking him in his room (DH's brilliant plan when I finally tried to get him up in the night to deal with one of these times), WWYD? I'm very torn between being super pissed at his outright and blatant disrespect of my rules and being slightly sympathetic because insomnia sucks. I don't think 6AM is too much to ask and I don't think having him stay in his room is out of line, though. I don't expect him to sleep on demand, but I don't want to give him a preferred activity as an option because he won't ever sleep then. He will literally stay up for the majority of the time for days on end, all while his behavior tanks, and then he will crash in some random place at an inconvenient time.
NOW: He hasn't slept through the night in several weeks. I know the medication doesn't help this, but we've asked that he still stay in his room until 6AM. We did have to take the clock out because he was fooling around with it in the night, but when he does venture downstairs, he can see other clocks and I also often wake up to send him back. When this hasn't helped, I told him I would open his door at 6 so he knows when he can come out easily. We've given him the option of earning the clock back by following the rules and we've had 0 success.
We have the Xbox set up in the living room and he comes down and tries to play with it in the night. This is despite the fact that he's both 1)supposed to have prior permission to touch it, and 2)grounded from it ATM.
Every night I hear/see the light when he gets up and usher him back to bed. Sometimes I catch him right away, sometimes he gets into the Xbox. Either way, back to bed, with additional consequences for breaking the house rules. He ends up getting defiant and I have to stay up until morning to keep putting him back because he just sits by his door and waits until I go to my room in order to sneak back out. He's taken to waking his sister up to play with in the night, either so that he can take her iPod (also grounded from) or so that he has someone to play with since everything is gone.
I've run out of consequences and nothing is even making a dent in this. I'm exhausted, having not been able to sleep myself as a result, and my patience is waning. Heck, it's outright gone. I have no more patience for this bullshit and even if I take away something huge like the opportunity for him to go to a wrestling tournament or something, I know that it isn't going to actually click for him to make a change. It never does.
So barring locking him in his room (DH's brilliant plan when I finally tried to get him up in the night to deal with one of these times), WWYD? I'm very torn between being super pissed at his outright and blatant disrespect of my rules and being slightly sympathetic because insomnia sucks. I don't think 6AM is too much to ask and I don't think having him stay in his room is out of line, though. I don't expect him to sleep on demand, but I don't want to give him a preferred activity as an option because he won't ever sleep then. He will literally stay up for the majority of the time for days on end, all while his behavior tanks, and then he will crash in some random place at an inconvenient time.