Re: I'm so over it

In article <mv-dnTNamNgBpYLanZ2dnUVZ_tyknZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Sue <sburke9368@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi everyone,

Does anyone have any words of wisdom or ideas on how to get my 10-year-old
to stay in her bed at night. She claims she is scared, but nothing we have
done is getting us any sleep at night and I am so over it. Help!


I think that your first step is to figure out whether this is a "I'm just
looking for comfort in the middle of the night" or whether she is worried
about something specific. The former is along the lines of my tummy feels
funny, the house creaks at night, the shadows in my room are odd type of
fear. The latter is the more "grown up" I'm worried I'll be teased at
school tomorrow, I'm falling behind in math, I heard on the news about
terrorism, type fear. Unfortunately the second type can get described
as the first type if your child doesn't know how to bring up the topic.

For the first type of fear, we had good luck with keeping some of the
stuffed animals in our room and then handing them out as comfort in the
middle of the night as we tucked the child back into bed. The animal
seemed to be an extension of having the parents there with them. (Some
of the animals are, ahem, mine from childhood, and so those ones were
particularly prized for comfort.) After a while we just needed to hand
out an animal, or give one out before bedtime.

For older type fears, you are going to think of how you can have a
discussion at some time other than the middle of the night as to what
might be bothering your daughter. For us, the car, when it is only one
parent and one child, seem to be a good place to discuss the hard
questions of life. Although after school over a snack if the others are
busy elsewhere doe seem to work too. You might want to open with
conversation with things that you worried about as a child. At about
that age my oldest was suprised to learn that her parents didn't have
a perfect childhood :-O (We're past that stage. The ship has sailed.
Nothing we do or have done resembles perfection now....)

Carol
.

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