Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Sleep! A favorite topic!

Yikes! Your Post made me smile as I thought about last night. DS woke up at 11:30pm and 1:00am. He would call out to me "Mom, I want to show you something!" If that ploy doesn't work he'll try to convince me he needs his diaper changed.

DS is a high energy kid, so he's usually fine after a night or 2 of missing a couple hours of sleep. At that point, we put him in bed REALLY early and threaten to take away his books and/or his computer time. DH for some reason usually wakes up and finds him first if he's up in the middle of the night! So I usually get to miss the whole episode.

He's actually much easier than DD3 in terms of sleeping, even though he's become a bit of a night owl. That one is still driving us crazy.

The Buddha manga series is very good. DH actually bought the series for me a couple years ago. I've done a lot of reading on eastern religion/philosophy. And DH loves good manga! So whether it's really for him or me is a mystery.

I was a religion minor in college (philosophy minor, too, actually), so I love this kind of stuff!

Ann-

I'm glad that my suffering is amusing! Just kidding- I actually laugh about it all the time with my friends. Humor is a great way to deflect pain.

This week has been a tough one. I think dd is getting new molars. I am starting to drop the ball on things. I missed responding to a friend's email in time for something to go into our homeschool group newsletter, and I also forgot to bring ds to his book club meeting. My brain is like a sieve...

DS3 is a relatively good sleeper, and I was spoiled.

DD7mo wakes up at least every 2 hours at night, and she is killing me.

Sigh, I love my sleep.

This made me laugh. The reason my girls are 23 months apart was with DD#1 I figured it couldn't be any worse because neither of us was sleeping anyway....so I figured I would get the second baby out of the way. They both started sleeping through the night at the same time at ages 4 and 2....

Sleep has been an issue here as well. DD7 was an excellent sleeper. She was sleeping through the night at 8 weeks, 12hrs a night and napped great until 18m. At that point she refused naps and refused the crib.

DD3 didn't sleep through the night until 10m. This may have been because she got tubes at this time or coincidence. Before she was sleeping through she would wake a good 3x a night. We were exhausted to say the least. She will still wonder in our room on occasion, sometimes sleep walks and we will find her in the hall, sleeping on stairs or the floor in our room. She'll on occasion cry for what appears to be no reason but she has an expressive speech delay so I'm sure there is a reason but she doesn't have the words to express it. She also has a very hard time settling down to fall asleep. It will take her at least 30+ minutes. It is so bad that we send her to bed earlier than DD7 or separate the girls until she falls asleep so she doesn't bother DD7.

DS1 has been the most exhausting baby I know! lol From the day he was born family, friends and the nurses commented on how alert and observant he was and how little he slept. He would only sleep on me or while nursing. This was our life for many many months. He is the only baby we co slept with and this lasted for 9m until he fell out of the bed and I was too scared to continue in fear he would get hurt. We tried cry it out despite not really agreeing with it but we were desperate. He would cry for at least an hour. Not sure how long he would've gone but he never calmed down just escalated. It was awful. Finally at a year we decided to try CIO again and it was better. Now he sleeps through the night but still refuses naps. Most people think I'm crazy when I say he refuses naps. I often times will drive somewhere during "nap time" and get 30-60m of peace. If he falls asleep I hang out in the car until he wakes up. It's rather pathetic lol. He is definitely a "high needs" baby. It was his high needs and sleep issues that someone suggested I look up GT characteristics of infants.

Yeah, sleep, though it’s been many years since lack of it has been an issue, it brings back some very trying and sometimes scary thoughts. I’ve two GT sons, the sleep situation with the first one had DW and I seriously pondering whether it was wise to try for child #2.

For starters, DS #1 was a month premature at birth, that didn’t help matters any, certain systems in the body just aren’t as developed. The next item, being newb parents, we failed to recognize that DS #1 was having trouble digesting the formula product we were feeding him, vomiting up about every other bottle. Then, the ear infections kicked in for about 3 years. I swear if I would have invested in Amoxicillin and Pampers I’d have been a rich man by my own hand! I remember many nights being up 45 min. / down 45 min. all night long from about age 2 years to 4 ½ years, in all seriousness, there were many a morning when I was literally afraid in the morning to drive to work because I didn’t know if I’d be able to stay awake making the commute, luckily, I always pulled to the right and stay in the right hand lane, the zip strip on the shoulder of the highway woke me up more than a couple of times. I was probably foolish on numerous occasions to even attempt to drive but the need to put food on the table for a young family was encouragement to take unnecessary and not very bright risks. You know it’s not right when in the morning you’re physically sick to your stomach from lack of sleep. Then finally the doctor giving up on anti-biotics and putting tubes in his ears, that was a HUGE difference, however, not the end of the story by any means.

Next came what I’m sure many of you are familiar with, the active mind that simply will not rest, not even past midnight, the gears simply cannot stop turning! I felt so sorry for the poor guy….but there were so many questions in his mind at the end of each day, so many things to explore, so much to ponder! It didn’t help at all that at day care the daily routine included a nap, which DS #1 did NOT need, hell, it only made it that much HARDER to get him to sleep at night. Of course the day care insisted he take a nap like everyone else, it took a couple of meetings and a threat to pull him from the day care for them to shift his nap time to play time with the older kids. (This was the start of me learning to advocate for my kids, you know what is best for them even though it may appear to be against common practice and logic) We also taught DS #1 to meditate, this helped him not only to calm his mind before bed but also calm himself when he wasn’t able to move about freely for extended periods of time like on family vacation care trips over many hundreds of miles. It was a practice he began taking upon himself as he enjoyed the mental peace which he rarely experienced.

What ended the sleep problem all together though was pretty straight forward, partially growing out of it and partially us learning to wear him out with whatever it took, swimming was great for that, jumping on a trampoline, very long walks, whatever it took. In teen years, soccer, cross country team (for a while both soccer AND cross country team in the same day), and finally a gym membership where he was free to lift / stretch / swim until his mind was completely calm….and that continues to be his refuge and stress release while he’s in college…..and now, I’ll add, he LOVES naps! Suuuuuure, NOW it happens!

I've been complaining about DD's sleep schedule forever but I forgot to update that she now sleeps 11 hours straight at night. We start our bedtime routine around 8:00 PM and she is in bed by 9:00 PM. We read about 5 picture books and one chapter book together then she falls asleep around 10:00 PM and then stays asleep until 9:00 AM.

No change in routines, diet, or anything else that I could think of except for eliminating her naps altogether but even then, it took some time for her to settle into a schedule.

The play-based preschool we finally found insists that she takes a nap with everyone else from 12:30 to 2:30. I'd be picking her up at 12:30. There is no way I'm going to stay up with her until 3:00 AM.

Old Dad, yes, I am quite familiar with being too afraid to drive from sleep deprivation. I wouldn't wish this upon anyone and I don't understand why anyone would want to have more than one child. I cannot do this all over again. We have other reasons for not having a second child but even without them, I cannot put myself through 3 more years of no real sleep while parenting DD and a newborn. Not possible.

Both my kids' preschools insisted too - except after a few weeks of putting up with them kicking back and happily blab blab blabbing interesting things to the captive audience of sleepy kids, while some poor teacher helplessly shushed and patted them on the back, they finally allowed them to just stay up!