Latest / Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist / S2E40 - When Kids Won't Sleep Alone: Helping Anxious Children Reclaim Their Room

Transcript

S2E40 - When Kids Won't Sleep Alone: Helping Anxious Children Reclaim Their Room · Play Therapy Parenting: Real Parenting Questions Answered by a Child Therapist

• 0:02
  You're listening to the
• 0:03
  Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
• 0:09
  Hi,
• 0:09
  I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks,
• 0:10
  The Kid Counselor.
• 0:11
  This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give you insight,
• 0:15
  awareness,
• 0:15
  and enlightenment about your parenting
• 0:17
  and your relationship with your kids.
• 0:19
  In today's episode,
• 0:20
  I am answering a question from Sunny in Australia.
• 0:24
  So hello to all of you down under.
• 0:26
  I was actually just in Australia in November of 2024,
• 0:29
  so
• 0:30
  it is one of my favorite places I've ever been,
• 0:33
  and I was so happy to have had a chance to spend 10 days with y'all.
• 0:37
  So.
• 0:38
  Thank you for listening on the other side of the world,
• 0:41
  and Sunny's question is about having her child
• 0:46
  sleep in her own bedroom again.
• 0:48
  So she actually was referencing one
• 0:50
  of my earlier bedtime battles episodes recently
• 0:54
  and she wanted to pose the scenario with her daughter and get some insight.
• 0:58
  Before we dive into that,
• 1:00
  I wanted to share a little bit of an update.
• 1:03
  So Deborah reached out a while back.
• 1:06
  And asked a question
• 1:08
  in the end of 2024
• 1:10
  and she gave me a follow up email and permission to share it with you all.
• 1:14
  So I wanted to encourage you a little bit
• 1:16
  and celebrate Deborah's success as well.
• 1:20
  So she said,
• 1:21
  Good morning,
• 1:21
  Brenna.
• 1:21
  I emailed you toward the end of last year and I so appreciate
• 1:24
  your insight on my boys and navigating the multi-household and the age gap.
• 1:30
  By intervention of God,
• 1:31
  my oldest phone stopped working and his dad and I were able to buy him a Gabb phone.
• 1:35
  My oldest does complain about his new phone saying
• 1:37
  it's boring and questions how it's keeping him safe,
• 1:40
  but I do feel better knowing there's one less device I have to worry about.
• 1:44
  Let me pause there.
• 1:45
  If you all are not familiar,
• 1:46
  I actually have an affiliate relationship with Gabb,
• 1:49
  and that's with two Bs,
• 1:50
  by the way.
• 1:51
  And if you use promo code PLAY.
• 1:53
  You will save money on either a watch or a phone,
• 1:57
  and they are internet free they are social media free and they
• 2:00
  are completely safe and they function as a basic phone for kids
• 2:05
  so you can call,
• 2:06
  you can text,
• 2:07
  you can take pictures,
• 2:08
  you can listen to music,
• 2:09
  but beyond that there's no internet access.
• 2:12
  So I just wanted to make you aware that's what she's referencing there
• 2:15
  and if you all are interested in a safe phone for your kids,
• 2:18
  I would check out Gabb and make sure you use promo code PLAY
• 2:22
  to save money.
• 2:23
  OK,
• 2:23
  so let me continue with her email.
• 2:25
  With my youngest,
• 2:26
  I started being more intentional about encouraging over praise and letting
• 2:30
  him do things that he can do all by himself.
• 2:32
  It has been such a joy listening to him tell me that
• 2:35
  he did it all by himself or that he figured it out.
• 2:38
  His favorite.
• 2:39
  phrase this week is to come tell me when he gets something that he didn't give up,
• 2:43
  and that warms my heart.
• 2:44
  I want to thank you for all you do to help us
• 2:46
  learn and grow and raise our kids to be happy and healthy.
• 2:49
  I've started listening to your therapist geared podcast as well,
• 2:52
  and I have found it just as motivating.
• 2:55
  So Deborah,
• 2:55
  thank you so much for reaching back out and giving me an
• 2:58
  update and letting me know that you found success in the skills,
• 3:02
  and thank you for giving me permission to share that,
• 3:04
  and I hope that encourages
• 3:05
  each and every one of you listening because
• 3:08
  it's always nice to know that when we implement strategies and we make changes that
• 3:13
  there is hope that things are going to be different moving forward.
• 3:17
  So Deborah,
• 3:17
  I really appreciate that.
• 3:19
  OK,
• 3:19
  so let me switch back to Sunny's email.
• 3:21
  And I want to kind of unpack this together because one of the most consistent issues
• 3:27
  that we
• 3:28
  deal with at our center
• 3:30
  is bedtime struggles.
• 3:32
  So this is a very common scenario and it's really helpful to
• 3:36
  kind of dive in and figure out how we can handle this.
• 3:39
  So Sunny's email
• 3:41
  says my daughter's in play therapy and we now follow your podcast to a T.
• 3:45
  We've tweaked a lot of language
• 3:47
  and seen endless improvements across the board with our 6.5 year old daughter.
• 3:51
  Absolutely love everything about this way of life.
• 3:54
  The tweaks have transformed so much for us already.
• 3:57
  Sunny,
• 3:57
  we're celebrating that with you.
• 3:58
  I'm so happy for you and your daughter and your family,
• 4:01
  just even hearing that much of this.
• 4:04
  We had the same scenario with my daughter,
• 4:06
  very intelligent,
• 4:06
  big feeler.
• 4:09
  Similar to the bedtime battles episode recently,
• 4:11
  she slept in her own room from 6 months until 4.5 years old.
• 4:15
  Then she began to suffer night terrors and got very frightened and very scared.
• 4:18
  Slowly but surely from 4.5 to 5.5,
• 4:21
  she consistently started to come into our room.
• 4:23
  By this time we had had our second child.
• 4:27
  Who slept through and it was killing us.
• 4:29
  Me and my partner were consistent,
• 4:30
  and we spent one year walking my daughter back to her room,
• 4:33
  validating and walking back to bed,
• 4:35
  rinse and repeat all night long.
• 4:38
  She would scream,
• 4:38
  kick,
• 4:38
  yell,
• 4:39
  not sleep,
• 4:39
  but we held out,
• 4:41
  because if there's one thing we are,
• 4:42
  it's consistent.
• 4:43
  We did it all night long for a year.
• 4:46
  She would struggle all day with tiredness and concentration at school,
• 4:49
  but nothing ever changed,
• 4:50
  and she never wavered,
• 4:51
  and neither did we.
• 4:53
  She would even hit us with the You don't sleep on your own,
• 4:55
  you sleep with Dad.
• 4:57
  As a last resort,
• 4:58
  after 12 months of no more than 1 hour of sleep at a time,
• 5:02
  we moved her into our room on an actual bed and bed frame.
• 5:05
  She slept through all night.
• 5:07
  Here we are a year later,
• 5:08
  and although she is sleeping all night,
• 5:10
  we want our room back.
• 5:11
  As I said earlier,
• 5:12
  she's a big feeler,
• 5:13
  worries a lot,
• 5:14
  and we're working on self-esteem building,
• 5:15
  which is working.
• 5:16
  My question is,
• 5:17
  how on earth do we do that?
• 5:19
  We were so consistent for a year and it made no difference to the point,
• 5:22
  my family mocked me for how stupidly consistent I was.
• 5:26
  Help.
• 5:27
  All right,
• 5:27
  Sunny,
• 5:28
  thank you so much for the question and I'm
• 5:30
  actually happy to cover another bedtime scenario because this,
• 5:34
  like I said,
• 5:34
  it's one of the most common struggles.
• 5:37
  So let's go back to understanding the why
• 5:40
  behind behavior
• 5:41
  because at this point you're a year in and you just see this as
• 5:45
  she won't sleep in her bed.
• 5:46
  But what we need to realize is
• 5:48
  probably the very first time that she had a night terror,
• 5:51
  it,
• 5:51
  no pun intended,
• 5:52
  terrified her.
• 5:54
  When a child wakes up in a night terror,
• 5:56
  that is overwhelmingly scary,
• 5:58
  and that's true for kids across the board,
• 6:00
  not just big feelers and super sensitive.
• 6:03
  So you have a big feeling intelligent,
• 6:05
  super sensitive daughter who has a night terror and it,
• 6:08
  it's no wonder that it completely unnerved her.
• 6:11
  So what happened as an organic natural response,
• 6:14
  which is I'm really horrified and scared and I need comfort,
• 6:19
  that is a natural instinctive response.
• 6:21
  I need to go see mom and dad because I'm really scared.
• 6:25
  Well,
• 6:25
  what happens is,
• 6:26
  then you start to fear the fear.
• 6:29
  So let me unpack that a little bit.
• 6:31
  I suspect what happened
• 6:33
  is she
• 6:35
  had that happen.
• 6:36
  She got really scared.
• 6:37
  She felt better in with you.
• 6:39
  Then the next night she went into her bed
• 6:41
  and she was fearing the fear.
• 6:43
  In other words,
• 6:43
  am I going to have that happen again?
• 6:45
  Am I going to wake up in that state again?
• 6:48
  Is this going to continue?
• 6:49
  Was that a one time thing or is this going to be every single night?
• 6:52
  And now all of a sudden she's fearing the fear.
• 6:55
  So the only way
• 6:57
  until play therapy
• 6:59
  equips children with coping and
• 7:00
  resilience and self-confidence and problem solving
• 7:04
  and all the things that we know child-centered play therapy provides
• 7:08
  until that happens,
• 7:10
  kids default to what they know,
• 7:12
  which is mom and dad
• 7:14
  make me feel better
• 7:15
  mom and dad are safe,
• 7:17
  mom and dad can keep me protected Mom and dad can be the crutch for me.
• 7:22
  And you also have to keep in mind there's another layer here.
• 7:25
  Highly anxious kids
• 7:27
  can be distracted throughout the day.
• 7:30
  But when they lay down in bed at night,
• 7:33
  there's nothing to distract them from their thoughts,
• 7:35
  from their worries,
• 7:37
  from their paranoia,
• 7:38
  from their concerns,
• 7:39
  from their
• 7:40
  things that swim around in their brain.
• 7:42
  So
• 7:43
  highly anxious kids almost always end up way more anxious at night in bed,
• 7:49
  and this is why we have so many sleeping issues,
• 7:52
  because when you are scared and when you're anxious,
• 7:55
  you want to be with someone or something that's going to make it better.
• 8:00
  So there's peace and comfort
• 8:02
  in having someone else in the room.
• 8:04
  So we also realized that just the nature of laying
• 8:07
  down at night alone in a quiet dark room,
• 8:10
  it usually spikes anxiety for kids.
• 8:14
  So all of this is understandable,
• 8:15
  right?
• 8:16
  We're always going back to the why,
• 8:17
  the why matters.
• 8:18
  So we know
• 8:19
  that these are natural byproducts of circumstances for your daughter,
• 8:23
  Sunny.
• 8:24
  Yet at the same time,
• 8:26
  she was so overwhelmed,
• 8:28
  she could not rein herself back in.
• 8:30
  And the way that we describe this is kids get stuck on one side of the pendulum.
• 8:35
  So she felt so powerless,
• 8:37
  she felt so out of control,
• 8:40
  she was so worried and scared.
• 8:42
  The only thing she knew to do was to grasp at control
• 8:46
  because control is the antidote to anxiety.
• 8:49
  So when kids feel anxious,
• 8:51
  they grasp at control.
• 8:53
  That's their natural way of handling
• 8:55
  really high elevated levels of anxiety.
• 8:58
  So her fighting being in her own bedroom,
• 9:01
  it was not just to be obstinate,
• 9:03
  it was not just to be
• 9:05
  cantankerous or contentious
• 9:07
  it was because that was the only measure of control that she had.
• 9:10
  She didn't have control over the fear.
• 9:12
  She didn't have control over the fact that she didn't feel safe sleeping alone.
• 9:16
  She didn't have control over the fact that she had night terrors.
• 9:18
  She didn't have control over the fact that she kept waking up,
• 9:22
  but she had control over refusing to be in her room by herself.
• 9:26
  So that's why it lasted for a year and I'll give all of you credit.
• 9:30
  You were all very tenacious and consistent.
• 9:33
  You were and she was,
• 9:35
  but eventually someone gives in.
• 9:37
  And so in that moment,
• 9:38
  out of,
• 9:38
  I'm sure pure fatigue and exhaustion and overwhelm for yourself,
• 9:43
  you probably just decided,
• 9:45
  OK,
• 9:45
  if she'll sleep on a different bed in our room,
• 9:47
  maybe that will help and sure enough that solves the problem.
• 9:51
  So now that brings us to,
• 9:52
  she's been in your room for a year on her own bed in in the room.
• 9:57
  Here's how we're going to
• 9:59
  work through this number one,
• 10:00
  she's been in play therapy
• 10:02
  so we know and you even indicated it in your email
• 10:06
  that she is working on self-esteem building and it's you're seeing changes
• 10:11
  so we know that as she feels better about herself as she trusts herself
• 10:15
  more as she accepts herself more as she believes herself to be more capable
• 10:20
  and competent and
• 10:22
  equipped to problem solve.
• 10:24
  She will naturally handle
• 10:26
  something like sleeping in her own room
• 10:28
  far better than she would have before.
• 10:31
  And this is what we know happens when we go
• 10:33
  through the wringer with a situation with our kids.
• 10:37
  And things get better,
• 10:38
  even if the circumstances are not ideal,
• 10:40
  which is what you're describing.
• 10:41
  Look,
• 10:41
  you don't want her in your room.
• 10:44
  So the circumstances are not ideal,
• 10:45
  but the fact that she's sleeping through the night
• 10:48
  was very much
• 10:49
  a desired respite.
• 10:51
  So what happens is
• 10:53
  we fear
• 10:54
  things going back to how bad they were before.
• 10:57
  So Sunny,
• 10:58
  I suspect,
• 10:59
  and many of you probably
• 11:01
  are in a better state than they were before.
• 11:04
  And so you're going,
• 11:05
  oh my gosh,
• 11:06
  I don't,
• 11:06
  uh,
• 11:06
  we can't go back there.
• 11:08
  Oh my gosh,
• 11:08
  we,
• 11:09
  we can't deal with that again.
• 11:10
  Oh my gosh,
• 11:11
  I can never live through that again.
• 11:13
  So then we make decisions based on the fear,
• 11:17
  rather than based on
• 11:18
  appropriate parenting strategies.
• 11:20
  So we know she is better equipped than she used to be
• 11:24
  to handle this #1.
• 11:26
  #2,
• 11:27
  play therapy is helping her develop an emotional
• 11:29
  vocabulary that will naturally reduce anxiety levels.
• 11:33
  So not only is she increasing self-esteem,
• 11:35
  she's decreasing anxiety.
• 11:37
  Both of those bode well
• 11:38
  for her to be able to handle the transition back into her room.
• 11:42
  However,
• 11:43
  it has to be gradual and purposeful.
• 11:46
  So you have to set
• 11:48
  a future date of when this is going to happen.
• 11:51
  You have to prepare her ahead of time
• 11:54
  for what is to come.
• 11:56
  On such and such day
• 11:58
  It's time for you to be back in your own room again.
• 12:02
  And there's going to be a preparation that she goes through
• 12:05
  to adjust to this new normal
• 12:08
  also
• 12:09
  because this has been a power and control grab
• 12:12
  and this has been motivated by low self-esteem,
• 12:14
  high anxiety,
• 12:15
  we want her to have as much ownership and responsibility and buy in as possible.
• 12:20
  So here's what that looks like.
• 12:23
  When you are going to start sleeping in your own room,
• 12:27
  you get to decide what you want in your room.
• 12:30
  You can choose to have a special night light,
• 12:32
  you can choose to have a special stuffed animal,
• 12:34
  you can choose to sleep with the dog,
• 12:36
  you can choose to get a new bed,
• 12:39
  you can choose to get a special bed.
• 12:41
  You can choose to have certain sheets or blankets or pillows.
• 12:46
  She gets to have a measure of control
• 12:50
  over what's going to alleviate some of the concern.
• 12:53
  And it will not be a perfect first time transition.
• 12:56
  It rarely if ever is.
• 12:58
  There will be a little bit of
• 13:01
  a shift.
• 13:02
  She may fight it for a little bit,
• 13:04
  but she's not in the same place that she was and she's not the same child that she was.
• 13:08
  We call this reverse Pandora's box.
• 13:11
  In other words,
• 13:13
  in the mythological story,
• 13:16
  when Pandora's box was opened,
• 13:18
  all the stuff came out and only the good remained inside.
• 13:22
  Well,
• 13:22
  reverse Pandora's box is all of the good that opens
• 13:26
  is out for good,
• 13:28
  and it can never be pushed back inside.
• 13:30
  OK,
• 13:31
  so all of the gains,
• 13:32
  all of the change,
• 13:33
  all of the growth
• 13:34
  that will still be there.
• 13:37
  We never go back to square one.
• 13:39
  And so you have to trust that she is better equipped,
• 13:44
  she has more resilience,
• 13:45
  she has more coping,
• 13:46
  she has an emotional vocabulary now she has higher levels of self-esteem,
• 13:50
  she has lower levels of anxiety,
• 13:52
  but she still needs control,
• 13:53
  so she needs to have some buy in.
• 13:55
  She gets to decide what goes into the room,
• 13:57
  what goes into the bed.
• 13:59
  She has choice,
• 14:00
  she has ownership
• 14:02
  and when there's buy in,
• 14:03
  children are more likely to abide by the choice that was made.
• 14:07
  We know that when we provide choices
• 14:09
  that there's likely adherence to the choice because the choice was made.
• 14:14
  So Sunny,
• 14:15
  I hope that's helpful for you.
• 14:16
  You're going to have to prep and you're going to have to involve her in the process,
• 14:19
  and you're going to have to know
• 14:21
  that for the first few days or maybe even upwards of a week,
• 14:25
  there may be resistance to this.
• 14:26
  But if she has enough time to adjust and prepare and plan.
• 14:31
  She is better capable of handling it this time and you can even say that to her
• 14:36
  you're older now and you're bigger now and you're braver now
• 14:40
  and you are more capable of all of these
• 14:42
  things now so you can actually paint the picture
• 14:46
  that she doesn't need to default to old
• 14:48
  behaviors because she's not that person anymore.
• 14:51
  So I hope that that's helpful for each and every one of you.
• 14:54
  Sunny,
• 14:54
  thank you so much for the email
• 14:56
  and if you'd like,
• 14:57
  please reach out and give me an update.
• 14:59
  I would love to hear about that
• 15:00
  as we get a little further down the road here.
• 15:03
  If you all have a question for me,
• 15:04
  I would love to answer that as well.
• 15:06
  brenna@thekidcounselor.com.
• 15:09
  You can also,
• 15:09
  if you're in the states,
• 15:10
  leave a voicemail at 813-812-5525.
• 15:15
  And as always,
• 15:15
  I'm so grateful for you all.
• 15:17
  Thank you for being so faithfully committed to
• 15:20
  your children and your family
• 15:22
  and working on yourself as a parent,
• 15:25
  as a caregiver,
• 15:26
  as a guardian
• 15:27
  because
• 15:28
  when we change,
• 15:30
  it changes
• 15:32
  everything.
• 15:33
  And that is a really special thing that we just make the choice to change something
• 15:38
  and the change continues as a ripple.
• 15:41
  So I'm super grateful that you spend time with me each week.
• 15:43
  We'll talk again soon.
• 15:44
  Bye.
• 15:45
  Thank you for listening to
• 15:46
  the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
• 15:50
  For more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter,
• 15:54
  please go to www.playtherapyparenting.com.