Bedtime.  The time of day many parents look forward to, even if they don’t want to admit it, and sometimes dread depending on the type of sleeper your child is.  For us, although we do look forward to the moment our kids are asleep so we can sit down and enjoy some peace, after doing all of the pre-bedtime chores that need to be done that is, bedtime is also the most challenging time of day.  We have spent the whole day trying to be calm and patient, trying to follow through on what we say, trying to be the ‘best we can be’ as parents and then bedtime comes and by that time, we have nothing left to give!!  It is like I have an internal clock and after 8:30, I lose it.  I am no longer the calm, patient and caring mom.  I am done!  Sometimes, I just tell my husband I have to go and I go for a walk for an hour to ‘de-stress’, but half of the month he is out of town and that just isn’t an option, so I am forever looking for ways to make bedtime smoother for all of us. Sometimes a glass of wine or tequila and lime helps take the edge off (for me, not the kids!) and locking yourself in the bathroom with the iPad is also a great option!

Bedtime has always been a struggle around here.  I remember going through a month of sitting in a chair outside my daughter’s door trying to keep her in her bed when she moved to her ‘big girl’ bed.  Then we had peace for a few months and the dreaded nightmares began.  That was months of her waking up, screaming in the middle of the night and once she realized we weren’t going to let her sleep in our room every night she started sneaking into our bed hoping we wouldn’t notice.  Often we didn’t.  Over time, El went to sleep okay, but she often struggles to stay asleep.  We are still working on this and she is 7!

JP on the other hand never wants to go to sleep.  He just can’t shut down.  When he was 3 he was climbing his dresser, bookshelf and window sill and running out of his room down to the fridge to get food or a drink.  One day we woke up in the morning to find Spider-Man stickers on his ceiling.  We still have no idea how he got them up there!  As he has aged he has learned to do quieter activities, such as colouring, playing Lego, looking at books and cleaning his room (his new favourite pre-bedtime ritual, which is a great one!).  Occasionally he has a dance party, where he turns off all of the lights, puts on his lamp directed at the empty space in front of his bed, and dances with his baseball hat and PJ bottoms. He has some pretty sweet moves, but at 10pm, it is a little frustrating to say the least.

When he was 4 and up until 10-12 almost nightly the paediatrician suggested melatonin, which was somewhat effective and would have him asleep by 8:30 when he took it.  This isn’t something we wanted to do longterm but he needed sleep and so did we, so we used it a few times per week.  When he started Biphentin in June of this year the melatonin stopped working.  Suddenly we were dealing with a child who was taking a stimulant medication and just couldn’t get to sleep at all!  If we got into a power struggle with him, right during his ‘rebound phase’ (the time when the medication is leaving the body and for some kids leads to an increase in ADHD symptoms) it would turn into room destruction, trying to run out the front door and anger.  If we left him alone, he would choose relatively quiet activities until 1am, occasionally going downstairs to watch TV when we fell asleep, which led to us hiding the remote and eventually, one of us sleeping downstairs on the couch for fear he would leave the house in the middle of the night.  Neither of these were a good option.

We weren’t sure whether we should continue with the Biphentin, which was really helping him a lot in the daytime, or try another medication to see if it would have less of a negative effect on his sleep, so we called the Psychiatrist for advice and went back to the Paediatrican.  Before making any ADHD medication changes we decided to try Clonadine on  the recommendation of our doctor and it has made some difference, but at times we have to give him that and melatonin just to get him to sleep before 9:30pm.  9:30 is better than midnight, so I guess it is a success, but nonetheless it is not the perfect solution.  We do find that the Clonadine helps him have less of a rebound effect though and he chooses much calmer, relaxing activities to wind down enough for sleep, so that is much easier to deal with.

It is so hard to figure out the right thing to do.  At the moment, he takes the Clonadine at 6:30 (which is supposed to work in 45 minutes,  but takes 2 hours for him) and he falls asleep occasionally at 8:30, but typically closer to 9:30.  We are hoping this improves once school starts, when he is up earlier and it isn’t so hot out.  Some other strategies that are working are allowing him to choose some calm down activities and realizing that as long as he is not climbing and leaving the house, if he chooses to sit in his ‘office’, which is a small table and chair he put in his closet, and colour, we just need to let him.  The power struggle isn’t worth it and clearly he needs that time to shut down.  He doesn’t seem to be overtired in the daytime either, so maybe he just doesn’t need as much sleep as other kids.  This is tough to handle though because I think I need more down time myself and more sleep, so it isn’t ideal, but for now, it is the best option we have.  We will see the doctor again mid-October, which gives us time to see how the medication helps him at school and if the bedtime improves.  If not, we may have to start the medication process again.

A combination of medication, trial and error, accepting that sometimes things just aren’t going to go the way we want them to and letting go are all of the strategies we have at the moment.  Now if we could just get our daughter to sleep through the night, we may actually get more than 4 hours of sleep at a time.   Now I completely understand why that book, ‘Go the F*** to sleep!’ by Adam Mansbach (Book on amazon.ca) was so popular when it came out!  I always thought the newborn stage would be the most challenging for sleep issues, but apparently, this is ongoing and I imagine when they are teenagers we won’t sleep due to worry when they are out at night, so maybe when they go to college I will sleep again!

** If anyone has any strategies, ideas or suggestions for helping with the sleep side effect of stimulant medication, please comment below!