My Middle Schooler Can’t Fall Asleep by Herself – What Can I Do?

(soft piano music) - Lemonade. - At night time, all that put togetherness kind of like just melts away. And she has incredible anxiety about being alone, sleeping, and like there's a big disjointedness or like a schism in our understanding of like how she could be so put together 23 and a half hours of the day or whatever. And then for this last half hour, completely fall apart to just go to bed. - I'm Dr. Susan Swick and this is Talk About A Ball. We all know as parents that one of the things we think about the most is sleep. Especially when our kids are babies, when to put them to sleep, how to keep them asleep, making sure they get enough sleep so we can get enough sleep. But the struggle can continue even as our kids get older. Today's guest is a father of two. And as his daughter starts middle school, he's still thinking about sleep. Together, we're gonna try to sort out what is causing his daughter's sleep anxiety and how he can help her untangle her worries. This is a conversation about what can keep our kids up at night, even when they seem put together during the daytime. Here's our chat. - Hi, it's nice to meet you. - Hi, nice to meet you. - Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. And I actually really like to start with a first question of who lives at home with you? - It is me and then my wife. And we've been married 12 years, 12, yeah. And then we have two kids, an 11-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy and two dogs who you may hear in the background because they are troublemakers often. - And the other question that I really love to start with is to ask you if you could tell me sort of in sequence about each of your children, but tell me what you think each child's special gift or superpower or sort of great talent is, maybe through a story about it or just your description of it? - Yes, they have many superpowers, I feel. My younger boy is also like quite literally obsessed with superpowers, so he's very into lore and superheroes, the various spider verses that are happening. And literally every day is what would you make in Tony Stark's mansion or what's your superpower or create a new character? Like I'm sort of like his own chat GPT or something to just kind of like formulate a hero on the spot. And then our daughter, she came out of the womb and she just always knew what she was doing. She's always been very mature for her age and they're both very verbal. And she just is kind of a natural born leader and she makes other people feel comfortable and good. She's always quick to make a friend and make others feel comfortable. - What grade is she starting? - She entered sixth grade, which is middle school where we are. - Okay, so is she in a new building? - She's in a new building and two elementary schools have combined, so they're new social cliques and the whole locker drama, just figuring out how to operate a lock. - Middle school is huge, it's huge. - Yeah, yeah, so it's been a change. - Writing down some notes because my superpower is not remembering details sometimes. Tell me a little bit about the work you and your wife do. Who's at home with the kids, who's working? Sounds like your son is super creative and he expects you to be his chat GPT. Does he, do you do writing or creative work? - My wife runs a company and is often busy and sometimes out of town. And then for decades or yeah, for a long, long time I was working as well, primarily in design. I would say managing the house, I don't know how well I'm doing at that, but I'm definitely driving kids to appointments and trying my best to manage the house. - Okay, great, wonderfully described. Let's jump right in and share with me the area that's been giving you heartburn or keeping you up at night. Maybe in this case, literally. - The joy of parenting is that the heartburn always shifts. It's like the whack-a-mole of like, if you knock out an issue with a kid surely then something in the other child pops up that's totally different. So I think our most persistent stress and issue with both kids, but more dramatically with our daughter asleep. Like I mentioned, she's incredibly self-assured, incredibly mature like she wanted to babysit. So she signed herself up for a CPR class and wanted me to make her business cards. And she arranged for herself to volunteer at a daycare center and all that. So she is a caretaker, she knows what she wants, et cetera, et cetera. But at nighttime, all that put togetherness kind of like just melts away. And she has incredible anxiety about being alone, sleeping. And like there's a big disjointedness or like a schism in our understanding of like how she could be so put together 23 and a half hours of the day or whatever. And then for this last half hour, completely fall apart to just go to bed. And so like she loses her cool, we lose our cool, everyone's not at their best. And then eventually it ends and we go to bed and then the next night it happens again. - Got it, got it. If you could play me a little bit of the movie of let's say the last, just the last few weeks, does she go to bed and then pop out a lot? Is she, do you wake up in the morning and she's at the foot of your bed? Is she waking up a lot during the night? How does the actual movie go? - Historically, she wouldn't even fall asleep without someone in the bed with her or in the bedroom or sleeping on the stairs. There were various levels and attempts to our negotiation about how far we could go from her. And then we'd have to check every five minutes, every seven minutes, every 10 minutes, kind of like that sort of progressive thing. But if she heard like a creak, she'd get up and be like, what's that? What's that? So that was like on the good nights. And then on the very worst nights, she would just kind of get literally hysterical and start crying about the thought of sleeping. And then for a variety of reasons, it's sort of changed recently. And sort of like the whack-a-mole thing of something else always going on with your kids. I feel like I want to knock on wood, but the very worst stress seems to have passed, at least for the last couple of weeks or a month or so. - And I have a question about the fear, the fearfulness. Does she describe concrete fears, specific fears? Or is it just that, what's that noise? Is it fear of not being able to sleep, or is it a little more specific? - Like, yes. It's like, it's anxiety. And then it's also like, have also gone through periods of like doing monster checks and double checking the doors downstairs and that sort of thing. So it is a true general fear of everything. - Yep, yep. - Or everything that is, I don't know. It's a general fear of something. - Yeah, it's a state of anxiety that kind of lands on different objects, but it sounds like it's a sustained state. Would you describe her as an anxious kid in other settings? For example, first day of school, for some kids like transitions, new school, if you moved, first day of school, a play date, party, does she get very anxious and worried, anticipating? - No, she doesn't get anxious like that. I think with switching to middle school, there is a little more anxiety. She does have anxiety though. She has anxiety when alone. She has a real dependency on people which is worrisome for like being a teenager or dating, but when she's just operating with her friends and that sort of thing, no, she doesn't really have anxiety. - It's interesting she wants to be a babysitter. - Yeah, sure as, at night, you know. - Yeah, yeah, her big plan is to take care of somebody else. - Yeah. - Yeah, I'm struck. So in my experience, a lot of kids who are among the most competent, capable of sort of organizing, planning, executing on a plan and ambitious, she sounds like she's ambitious, can surprise us as parents, as adults, as teachers by also having this sort of soft underbelly of worry that in a way, they're supposed to be perfect at things, that they're supposed to get it all right. And transitional moments can really highlight it for them. So I have four kids, one of my kids was like this, not the other three. And there was panic around getting up on time for school when middle school started. And it took me a while to figure out what was going on, but there were tears at night. And it was panic about not being up on time to get ready for school and pack a backpack, 'cause it was a different walk to catch a bus rather than just being able to walk to school. So timeliness all of a sudden was tighter. And so in a way, the story isn't quite as divergent maybe as it feels to you, that she can be so super competent in so many ways, and then really struggle around sleep. But it also sounds a little bit, and I'm glad to hear it's been getting better, but like whack-a-mole usually goes, it sounds like it may come out someplace else. We'll be right back after this break. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. October 10th is World Mental Health Day, and this year, BetterHelp is shining a spotlight on therapists who are doing their part to make the world a better place each and every day. Think about all the stories you've heard about success, love, personal growth. 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So shop early, have fun, and cross some names off your list today. To get 15% off your next gift, go to UncommonGoods.com/talkaboutable. That's UncommonGoods.com/talkaboutable for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon Goods, we're all out of the ordinary. (upbeat music) - What are your favorite things to do with her? She sounds like she's a lot of fun in some ways. Like she's super capable. Like what do you love doing with her? - Yeah, so whatever I like to do with her, she doesn't like to do with us right now because she is a twin. So for those last few weeks or months when she was having trouble sleeping, I had sort of made peace with it because there's like, this is the only thing that she needs me for or wants to spend time with me during. So I will take this time, you know? But in general, it's always fun to go on a bike ride. It's fun to go to the movies. We are kind of homebodies. So we like watching TV together and Great British Bake Off and that sort of thing. And then we have like, you know, weekly Scrabble Night, that sort of thing. We just hang and go tide pooling, that sort of thing. - Are there times where she's most likely to chat in a curious sort of open-ended way? She sounds very busy. Does she? - Yeah, I mean, she's most willing and ready to talk, you know, at bedtime, without the tablet, you know, without, you know, from 7.30 on. That's when she's, okay, I can't do anything else. I'll talk with you. - Well, it may be a little piece of the struggle that, you know, that she's a little ambivalent about not having you during the, now it goes to, you know, it's probably four or five hours that she gets you for what's supposed to be one hour before bedtime. But I'm hearing that you do a lot of driving with her or maybe accompanying her to things and just paying a little extra attention to being curious without being relentless about all the changes, whether it's middle school teacher, middle school locker, being response, I mean, middle school feels like a whole new universe to kids. Suddenly, you know, they go from having one teacher whose classroom houses everything they need to having to get themselves around a building over the course of a day and follow the bells and much less all the new social scene, new kids, new social rules, and then puberty. Oh my gosh, that when you're with her, being able to say, ask those open-ended but slightly targeted questions of like, of like, you know, such as like, what's your homeroom teacher like? You can't just say, how's school? This is when it will start to leak. Maybe in third or fourth grade, you'd get a full presentation about what happened at school that day and who won at wall ball or what happened at the, on the playground or, but in middle school, it's almost like they're processing too much. So starting with some more precise questions, like, tell me about your homeroom teacher. Tell me what happens at lunchtime. Like, where is lunch? What's the cafeteria like? What was for lunch today? And where'd you sit? Did you sit inside or outside? Who'd you sit with? But to see if she can start playing you her movie because the parts of the movie that are a little bit harder, she'll get to start to process. And for a kid who's a bit of a, who likes to prepare and control everything, there's a lot happening right now that she has no control over. And being able to kind of ride next to her as she gets to find words to describe those things can be really organizing for her. And it might make it a little easier for her to surrender at bedtime. Does that sound possible? Do you feel like, I mean, I think being a dad of a teenage daughter who's entering puberty is, it can feel really like all of a sudden you're on the moon and you're trying to find out, yeah, you're trying to figure out like, oh my gosh, where is everything? How do we walk on the moon and my suit is weird and everything is different? And yet kind of being curious with her and keeping her company in it could be so comforting and organizing and empowering to her. - Yeah, those questions that have come about that are more specific or targeted, I feel like, like after the most recent bike ride, we went to Starbucks to get a drink or whatever. And so then we just talked about a broad range of things because it was like our head was kind of clear. There wasn't a pressure to have any answers, but we just talked kind of, you know, - Open-ended. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - Do you remember what you talked about? - No, but I know that it was, I know that it was, she's again in middle school. So like when she's in the house or when her and her friends are in the house, I'd say like 80% of what she's talking about, I have no idea what, like she's using weird words or just like singing at the top of her lungs. So I know that during that conversation, it was none of that. And that was like so comforting and nice, you know? So it was a real conversation. - Yeah, you felt connected. You felt really connected to her. It wasn't just a transactional conversation and it wasn't pleading with her to go to bed or to do something that she said she would do. It was connecting. - Yeah, exactly. - And we'd love for her to have her time with you that is not around just important transactions, be a little easier to connect. And you'll find what works. You know, whether it's biking, I actually think exercise is awesome because having a physical, like meditation works for some people who are anxious and for others, it's terrible. They get very restless. They need a physical activity to get their heart rate up and then get their heart rate down and they're physically calmer and they're clear, but they're not wrapped up in a worry in their heads. And it can be an amazing time to then just, to maybe talk about something at school, something going on inside of her or maybe something in the world, you know? Or something that happened in the British Bake Off. I'm not familiar with the contestants this season, but there's always one that you'll connect with or that you worry about or who feels slightly villainous. Although that show really doesn't have villains. No villains. There's just varying degrees of delightful. (laughing) But being able to point out anyone even on that show has made probably 10,000 failed loaves of bread and 200 successful loaves of bread. That's how they got good enough to even be on the show. And that's the person that makes mediocre bread. You know, the superstar breadmaker did more or has a particular gift for smelling the amount of yeast that's needed. And sometimes maybe the pain of loving something where your talent is middling and finding a way to still love it and delight in it and appreciate it without being the winner. Maybe that's the central story. And being able to talk about that without it being esoteric, it doesn't need to be an abstract professorial discussion. It's more, you know, talking about a character and how it might feel and it can spark other conversations. - Yeah, that's an excellent idea. Yeah, and that is analogous to kind of some of the challenges she's facing now because like just this week, she kind of had a breakdown about math, which all of us, she's an advanced math and you know, for the first time ever, she was confused about something that she was learning, you know, and it's a good thing to be in control and so sure of yourself, but she's had so few chances where she's had to overcome a challenge where it's so foreign. So seeing people kind of not even win, but have their troubles and then be okay is your, it's right, you know, it's helpful. - It's so powerful. It's a great story about math that doesn't surprise me 'cause she's this, I mean, it happens to really smart, ambitious kids at some point. They come up against the first math problem or writing assignment or social situation that they can't master easily and it really rattles them. It's really stressful. It's scary even 'cause they worry, I'm not gonna be able to do this. That fear of failure, it doesn't have to be frank, obvious fear, but these really ambitious smart kids often feel fragile too. We have to help our smart, anxious, perfectionistic kids learn that actually you get to be best friends with failure, which it sounds tidy, but it's not. It's uncomfortable and you have to figure out what are the things that keep you going forward and usually it's learning, it's paying attention, what was the piece that I couldn't do or I didn't understand and like leaning in tighter to that. But I love setting things up so that she has the unstructured time with you when she's a little bit out of her planning head or her worrying head and not letting it be just bedtime. So that bedtime maybe she has a chance to get a little better at the surrender of bedtime. It sounds like you guys have tried everything. There's clearly not just a recipe for how to sleep. The same as there probably isn't a recipe for how to babysit, although she's definitely got some of the basic ingredients and then she's gonna get out there and let's assume she does it. You get into a house with a couple of kids, all bets are off. Like those kids are gonna show up and deliver the problem she didn't expect and she's probably gonna call you. You know, it's like there's going to be unexpected scenarios. Even chat GPT couldn't generate what a child will actually generate. - So true. The beauty of being a human. - Yeah. - You never know. - Thank goodness, thank goodness. It's still unique. But maybe talking about other things she holds tight too, like math, math perfection. - Yes. - Yeah. But in trying things you learn what you love and what she gets to do in the next decade is figure out what she loves, what she's good at and how she learns, how to stick with something when it's hard. - Yeah. - After this quick break, I'll ask this father about something that really struck me and we talk it out. - Well, hi everybody. It's Julia Louis-Dreyfus from the Wiser Than Me podcast and I'm not going to talk about food waste this time. I'm going to talk about food resources. All that uneaten food rotting in the landfill, it could be enriching our soil or feeding our chickens because it's still food. And the easiest and frankly, way coolest way to put all its nutrients to work is with the mill food recycler. It looks like an art house garbage can. You can just toss your scraps in it like a garbage can but it is definitely not a garbage can. I mean, it's true, I'm pretty obsessed with this thing. I even invested in this thing. But I'm not alone. Any mill owner just might corner you at a party and raps an eyes about how it's completely odorless and it's fully automated and how you can keep filling it for weeks. But the clincher is that you can depend on it for years. Mill is a serious machine. Think about a dishwasher, not a toaster. It's built by hand in North America and it's engineered by the guy who did your iPhone. But you have to kind of live with Mill to understand all the love. That's why they offer a risk-free trial. Go to mill.com/wiser for an exclusive offer. (upbeat music) - Has she ever had a sleepover? - Yeah, so she used to do weekly sleepovers at her grandma's and then kind of the anxiety got worse. And so we kind of put the kibosh in that. And then she's successfully done a few sleepovers but she's gone to many others and then we've had to pick her up. - You had to go. - Yeah, and so like this kind of reckoning with like, you want these sleepovers, you kind of have to figure this out is sort of one of the main drivers with getting her finally on board with being independent at night too. - Yeah, one of the things that can happen with kids and adults who are very competent. So they're used to being able to think about something that they want, plan for it and execute. And I'm gonna keep going back to this description of her getting ready to become a babysitter and lining up all of the skills that she needs. I can't wait to see how she handles getting her driver's license or she is detail oriented. I am impressed. - Yeah, there's a certain caveat to that, but yes. - What's the caveat? - Well, part of the drama or the conflict with her and I specifically is like, we are incredibly similar. And so I also have big plans and like do the details before the things. Like she did the CPR, she made me make the business cards. We printed the business cards. And that was a few months ago and she hasn't really done the thing. - Yeah. - You know, and that so I see my, you know, everyone sees myself in her as well. Like you do all the steps but then you kind of like there's this not following through exactly but you definitely have a plan of how it should go. - Do you think that she's actually anxious? It's anxiety that she's afraid it won't work. So she doesn't do that last step. It's kind of procrastinating or does she just drop the ball? - It's not even a dropping the ball. It's like setting the ball off to the corner and it's still being there. Like she still wants to babysit but like she's had a lot of opportunity and like not really moved on it, you know? - She's not quite there yet. - Yeah. - One of the things that can be hard for kids like this and going to sleep is that sleep is a kind of surrender. It's, yeah, instead of it being something that you prepare for and then you execute. In fact, that's the opposite. That when you're paying attention to all the details and tracking how it's going, you're not falling asleep. And it can create that cycle of vigilance for like, is my body relaxing yet? What time is it now? Where's dad? Where's mom? Or whatever the version of it may be. Whereas falling asleep more quickly usually is associated with essentially being able to get out of your head, right? And whether we do that with tracing something with our fingers or listening to music or listening to a story or listening to our parents tell us a story. And as we get older, we internalize that skill of kind of release, kind of like your hands up and you let go. But that surrender is not intuitive for a lot of us and a lot of kids. And for some, it can feel especially unnerving. Is there anything that she does where she can kind of surrender? Whether it's-- No, no, she's very comfortable being in control and like knowing the deal. And like you said, you don't know what you're going to dream about. You don't know when exactly you're going to bed. So yeah, that is a big kind of spiral that she goes down about surrendering. Does she have bad dreams? No, not really. I mean, she just worries about the possibility of having bad dreams, I suppose. Right, yeah, it's on the list. Well, but you mentioned that you like to go tide pooling with her. So tide pooling is actually maybe a good example of a mindset without it being meditation. But tide pooling is something you do where you can't quite know how it's going to end. You're not just going to get your driver's license or your babysitting gig or get paid for the job you just did. It's walking around, getting your feet wet, maybe getting your pants wet if a wave hits you, and seeing what you find. And I wonder if there's a way to bring maybe her-- to harness her ambition to explore, or maybe there's a feeling she enjoys when she's exploring with you, that might be something she could do. If she's like you, I'm struck that she's going to want to master the sleep thing, provided she knows she still gets lots of time and attention with you and with her mom, especially if mom is on business trips a lot and some kids hold tighter to some of the dependency needs as things change. But I wonder if making sure there's reliable snuggly times. Like really fun, childish snuggly times. And she'll know when she wants out of the bed. It'll happen. But whether it's Sunday bed snuggles, watching the Great British Bake Off is an amazing opportunity to feel snuggled on the couch and watching people make cake and listening to their truly delectable accents. And being curious with her about how-- I wonder if the talking about sleep could be a little more of a sitting next to her with a shrug of like, well, I know you're going to get this because she is. And I know you want to because you want to be a babysitter. You want to help other kids go to sleep. You want to someday probably live on your own and not have to have us come and show up at bedtime to help you go to sleep. And we're going to get there. And then to kind of imagine with her. See, I was thinking about how for you to imagine tide pooling and just try to close your eyes and think about what it would be like to start poking around in the pool and what you're looking for and what you're seeing. Let her go on an adventure. Sounds like she has a pretty amazing brain. And see if that helps her do a softer surrender, without it being that struggle. And say whether or not you fall asleep, we'll see. I don't say, you're going to figure this out. I know you are. But I'm just trying to help you maybe feel like you don't have to struggle so much. Because it does sound like it feels like such a struggle between you and her or mom and her and now. But for her, it's internal. And we want to help her sort of say, well, fall asleep or not. Your body needs rest. It knows what to do. So let's help your brain sort of just relax a little and let your body do what it knows how to do. If we figure out how to get out of the way, it will just happen. It will just happen. And so your job as her thoughtful dad is to help her get out of her way. And maybe you know something about it if you guys are similar. Yeah, yeah, good points, good ideas too for the next time. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your daughter's story with us. No, thank you for bringing up these other tools too. We'll definitely use them. It's good to have more in the arsenal of ways to deal with situations. So I loved some of the tools that you gave us or gave me for us to use. And if you need a babysitter, people, give her a call. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now is the perfect time. You can listen to Talk Aboutable completely ad-free. Plus, you'll unlock exclusive content like a special meditation from me that'll help you find peace through some of your biggest parenting challenges. Just tap the Subscribe button on Apple Podcasts. Head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app or listen ad-free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. That's lemonadapremium.com. Don't miss out. Talk Aboutable is produced by Lemonada Media in partnership with the Ohana Center for Child and Family Mental Health at Montage Health and made possible through funding from the Montage Health Foundation. Together, we are committed to helping families talk about the issues that children, teens, and young adults are facing today. We believe that when these conversations happen at home, even the most challenging subjects, children build the skills they need to flourish. Because when families are connected, the hard moments become more bearable, the good moments become even better, and it all becomes Talk Aboutable. This show is produced by Ariya Brachi, Mixing and Sound Design by Brian Castillo. Kristen LePore is Senior Director of New Content, and Jackie Danziger is Vice President of Narrative and Production. Maggie Krauschor is our Managing Director of Partnerships. Executive Producers include myself, Jessica Cordova-Cramer, and Stephanie Whittles-Wax. And a very special thanks to Kelsey Talley and Maya Smith. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week.