Bedtime!

Bedtime is becoming a bit of a swear word in our house at the moment.  Trying to a) get Katie to bed and b) keeping her in bed once she is there. As bedtime approaches every evening I start to dread it.

This is an issue we've certainly traversed before, many times. With every change in Katie's life (except when she moved in with us interestingly) bedtime is effected.  This is the worst period we've ever had though because it's not just the getting out of bed that is the issue.  There is an underlying hyper-activeness and aggression at not getting her own way that is making the issue harder to manage this time around. The house move and the hot weather is exacerbating the situation as she struggles to settle and gets hotter and hotter.  She just seems to be buzzing. Totally unable to settle herself at all.  Trying to physically tire her out doesn't seem to make any difference neither does limiting sugary products.  It's like she's decided she is staying awake.  She's up and down like a yo-yo which then prevents her from settling and getting to sleep.  She regularly holds out until 10pm and it was nearly 11pm a few nights ago because I was out. In fact she is noticeabley worse on the evenings that I am out. As I'm typing this she is banging about upstairs, thumping up and down her cabin bed and has just appeared downstairs again and I'm starting to feel my stomach knot up in sheer frustration. 

When we go up to her room we are met with aggression and rudeness. She is experimenting with verbally threatening me with violence i.e. "if you don't give me my light back I'm going to pull your eyes out". My response was a simple stare. No words required. Eye to eye contact Iearned from many years of dealing with aggressive teens. It says "I'm not afraid of you".  Inside though I'm worrying if this means my child is heading towards becoming one of those teens and that terrifies me. I'm hoping that she's just testing. Her response to my stare was to say she didn't mean it. I hope she didn't.

I discussed this with my counsellor and she congratulated me for not doing the obvious thing that many parents would do and not go out.  To be honest at the moment, with how things are for me personally, I need that time out.  I need to be able to laugh and relax a bit.  I need a little time (without becoming a Beautiful South song) to try and rekindle the person that I used to be because the "me" inside feels tired and heavy.  It feels like I'm having to force internal calmness on a moment by moment basis so that I don't constantly blow my top  in sheer frustration at everything with Katie being a battle. I said in my last post "Moving House" that I feel shell-shocked.  I'm naturally a very peace-loving and positive person.  I generally see the good in most things and love to help and support other people.  At the moment I just want to disappear inside myself and seem to have nothing to give myself, let alone anyone else.  I'm burnt out, not depressed.

I'm not a sit back and let it happen sort of person so as well as continuing to go to my Reiki healing share I often attend talks at our local Holistic group.  We have been blessed with some incredibly inspirational speakers over the past few weeks and I was particularly inspired this week by a man called Ian Tucker.  His message is very simple and the same as many other spiritual authors.  He suggests approaching life from a place of love and the positive impact on the self that this will have.  I hear that message and really, really, really want to embrace it.  In fact I floated home and managed to maintain it, for nearly 24 hours, until I couldn't handle the relentlessness of my daughter for another moment.  I could feel that anger and frustration rising and feel like Phil Berquist in City Slickers.  Now, I don't personally hate anyone but the outburst that Phil has in the film feels like the turmoil going on inside me and I will honestly say I find it hard to like my daughter and hold onto a loving feeling when she is behaving this way because it feels like a personal attack. 

I think I understand why Katie is behaving the way that she is.  There is so much in her life that is out of her control so she has regressed to an emotional time in her life when she moved in with us.  Maybe there is healing from that time that needs to happen so that she can move forward again.  Maybe Pip joining us has rekindled all those feelings again.  Maybe moving house has exacerbated all of that. Maybe my current emotional distance as I manage my illness and Katie's behaviour is making Katie feel unsafe and has become a Catch 22 situation? It it also the summer term at school which is well known for being a time of general horrendousness.  The nights are light and warm so children aren't sleeping well. Katie has said she wants to come down and watch the programmes that TCM and I watch (Banshee? No way on this earth missy!).  So if she can't watch them then neither can we because we are spending all our evening putting her back to bed or are terrified she'll walk in on an unacceptable programme for her so we're not getting our wind-down time.  

There is a big change coming up as the children head into a new school year.  What will be expected of them? Why do they yet again have to leave what is familiar and safe?  Emotional rugs are being pulled from under children all over the country so much of Katie's behaviour might also be related to that. The difficulty as a parent is that you never really know.  I'm hoping that the summer holidays might bring some healing for us all.  I am going to hold on to the message that Ian Tucker gave and I do believe he's right.  I can see how overloaded I have become whilst dealing with a lot of emotional things.  I don't like feeling negative or seeing only problems. It's tiring and it's a waste of time.  I don't want to feel this way and I have nothing to gain from it.  Katie and I may well be on the same page with how we are feeling perhaps?

On so many levels I feel like I'm in a holding pattern, waiting.  Waiting for an essence of myself to return so that I can engage with life and my family in the way I want to.  Waiting for this phase with Katie to pass.  I know we will sort out the bedtime issue, we always have in the past.  I hope the summer holidays will help.  It's been a long term and we're all exhausted.  For Katie, being tired brings hyperactiveness not sleep. She's always been the same.  Thankfully she's sleeping in until about 7am so she's at least getting some sleep but she's emotionally on a knife edge, melting down in the manner of a two year old.  I'm waiting for my Vitamin D levels to rise so that hopefully I no longer feel so tired and in pain and I can be the parent and person that I know I am.  I look back to this time last year and feel that we have been emotionally up in the air since then.  I'm not dreading the summer holidays this year though so I can see that there are some shifts. Katie is often much better with Pip now and I can see moments of real love between them.  Pip utterly adores Katie and there are times when you can see she feels the same but there are also times when she looks at him with a look that contains enormous anger and I worry she wants to hurt him.  Now that Pip is more mobile I think the holidays will be easier.  Although it's taking it's toll currently I am coping/ticking over with Katie's behaviour and I think that she needs more time with me.  There's a part of me that feels like I don't want more time in a war zone but the therapeutic parent part of me suspects that we need to pull everything back to basics for a while and the holidays are a great opportunity to do just that.

From a parenting perspective we are trying to be consistent.  TCM and I have acknowledged that we are often not quite on the same page.  TCM definitely wears the "Good Cop" badge more than I do and we've agreed our boundaries over bedtime so as not to give a mixed message to Katie.  The routine of bathtime then bedtime is agreed and clear.  Coming down for a bit of TV is something that Katie cannot cope with because she gets too upset when it's bedtime.  We're both keeping tight boundaries over unacceptable behaviour and trying very, very, very, very hard to ignore a lot of the rude behaviour (I find this part incredibly difficult and is probably my biggest anger trigger!). We're letting her read until she's sleepy with her nightlight on because she'll just turn her bedroom light on or sit in the hallway. Short of locking her in her bedroom, which we will obviously not do, I'm at a loss to know what else to do. She used to go to bed and sleep beautifully after a story and kiss and cuddle and her musical dog. Now she is constantly looking for an argument. I just don't know what to do. Reward systems aren't working nor are penalties. I try to just ignore all the banging about and not give it any attention but that's often easier said than done.  I internally worry about Pip being disturbed but rarely let on to Katie that I am concerned so as not to give her more ammunition. She doesn't care about anything and that's even more sad to see. I can't imagine what is going on in her head.

I'm sure I'm not alone in these experiences. Please come and share your stories with me. How did/do you cope? What strategies do you use?