Published on 12, July, 2020
My 14 year is really struggling with sleep. She takes melatonin, has a sleepy tea and has good sleep hygiene but it isn’t enough. She is highly anxious about school, is barely there, CAMHS have so far refused to see her. She was awake last night for the whole night. I went into her on/off. She is now asleep but I won’t leave her to sleep in for too long for fear of it effecting tonight. I think she needs anti anxiety meds which she can only access through CAMHS. I gather she has to have tried to take her own life before they will even put her on a waiting list… any suggestions? It is so heartbreaking to be in this position… Like so many others
she has a bath, listens to audiobooks which she likes, we use aromatherapy, she can use a weighted blanket… I am so worried about the lack of sleep and then the lack of education.
I "had good sleep hygene" forced upon me ever since I was a child (not accusing, just relating my own similar but slightly different experience) and since I did not have parents working the problem with me, they just insisted that I go to bed at a certain time, I would read, or (at the age of 14) listen to my shortwave radio long into the night and I'd fall aseep when I fell asleep usualy about 10-12 at night, for a 7:30 start the next morning.
Practcally this just meant I could do my day at school, but an hour or so of kip was sometimes required after I got home...
Recently I've had the opportunity and circumstances to just experiment and find out what happens when I just sleep when I want to and wake when I do...
I end up going to sleep around 4 and waking between 10 and 2, and later in the day I might take a 1.5 hour kip at the end of the afternoon. some days however (not many, but maybe on average 1 a week, I need to get up "early" say 7:30 so I go to bed before 2, get up at 7:30 have my day which can go as far as 6 or 8 pm before I get home, and sometimes I'll then need a short (hour and a half = 1 sleep cycle) before I can get back up and go my thing until the wee hours again.
Today, I feel like a relatively early bed time...