Step son waking us up every single night
Hi, I am new here so I'm sorry if this is in the wrong place.
I'm having issues with one of my step sons sleeping habits. I moved to be here with my wife about 7 months ago, we got married a few months after I moved out here and for the most part we are happy. She has two sons from her last marriage, they are 9&11 year old boys. The issue is with the 11 yr old, after he has been put to bed and both kids are asleep it's usually about time for us (me and their mother) to go to sleep aswell, I generally wake up earlier so I am usually ready to sleep almost straight away and regularly fall asleep with half an hour of going to bed. The problem is that every single night the kids are here the 11 yr old comes knocking at our door and wakes me up saying he misses his mom. She gets up and goes and lays with him for a while then comes back and invariably it just happens again half an hour later. I told my wife that I was not happy with this and don't really see why a kid that is almost 12 and going into high school next year needs to be waking us up every night for no real good reason. I understand that it must be difficult for the kid as this is a new house for him and I'm a new person taking time with his mom so I know there will be some adjusting for everyone. My wife did take this on board and spoke to him about it and we seem to have it down to him only waking us once or twice a night, my problem is that my wife and step son see this as a reasonable compromise and therefore I am stuck with being woke up still every night but less often. I was raised to know that it was disrespectful to wake my parents up a lot if they were sleeping and to only do it if I really needed to. They see doing it every night but not 5-6 times as reasonable and I just don't. I have trouble getting back to sleep once I'm woken and would really like it if I could just be left to sleep once we have all said our goodnights unless there is a reasonable reason to do so. My wife says she won't do anything further because she doesn't want her kids to feel that they can't come and get her if they want her. I'm not asking her to say he can't ever come of he needs his mom, I'm not saying that at all, if he has a bad dream or something then by all means knock and get her but I just feel that every single night is not okay and I feel disrespected that she won't take it further and explain that doing it every night without any real reason and waking us up is in fact disrespectful even if he doesn't mean it to be. Am I being too harsh and expecting too much? Am I being horrible wanting to have an uninterrupted nights sleep? I just didn't expect this of a kid that old but maybe that's just the way I was raised. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you, Andy
An 11 year old boy should be
An 11 year old boy should be successful in his own bed. Period. A 4 year old boy should be successful in his own bed! My 11SD tried this also when I married DH. I point blank told him it was unacceptable for a father to be sleeping in bed with an adolecent daughter. Nothing creepy going on, just a guilty Disney daddy who never set boundries with her. A teacher friend of mine told me that if she went to school and told anybody that she slept with her dad, they would be required to contact CPS.
A good parent teaches their children to become self sufficient. A bad parent doesn't. Plain and simple.
My SS was around 10 when he
My SS was around 10 when he was still doing that. He was constantly waking us up because of something:
"It's too dark"
"I hear a noise"
"I just remembered I need XYZ for tomorrow at school"
"I'm hungry"
"I'm thirsty"
"I saw a bug crawl on my ceiling"
"My band-aid came off"
"My pajamas are itching me."
"My pillow fell off the bed and now it's dirty"
"I can't sleep."
Anything just to make his mother lay down with him and cuddle him.
I had just about enough. I managed to get my SS to stop cold turkey when I roared at the top of my lungs "NEXT TIME YOU WAKE ME UP, THE HOUSE BETTER BE ON FIRE!!!".
He hasn't woke me up since.
I know, I know...Not the best solution, but the way I see it, an awoken Drac0 is scarier than the imaginary monsters in the closet.
IMO, the earlier you ween kids of co-sleeping, the easier it is in the long run. The longer you encourage co-sleeping, the longer and harder it is to get the kid to sleep on his own.
My SS is 14 and still wants his mother to kiss and tuck him in at night. All because my DW was never firm with him on enforcing good bedtime habits.
I'm sorry. I laughed long and
I'm sorry. I laughed long and hard at all the excuses he came up with. I pictured him doing this all in one night every few moments and it cracked me up!
Thank you all for responding!
Thank you all for responding! I feel better knowing I'm not just being too harsh and expecting too much! Problem is that he slept with his mom for the last few years since she split with their dad, so it is a big change for him and my wife sees only knocking on the door as a lot of work on his part but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks this is nuts to be having this issue with a kid so old! We already have 3 dogs so a cat isn't an option haha! My wife it seems would be happy to go and sleep with him sometimes but to me sleeping apart isn't the way to start a marriage and I just think to myself wtf this kid is almost 12 just go to sleep on your own, I always did. I guess all I can do is hope it improves further as the kid realizes that this isn't okay, you never know though I may just take a page from drac0s book and tell him myself that it's not okay
Like I said, my approach may
Like I said, my approach may not be the *best* approach. SS stopped waking me up but he still continued to call out for his mother (still does actually) in the middle of the night. The thing is, your wife created this problem, so she has to fix it. She had the best intention at first and it is totally understandable why she used to lay down with him, but now she has to correct it and the only way this can be done is by employing bucket-loads of patience and ease this kid out of his night-time dependency.
My wife would lay down with my SS, then she would just sit with him, then she would sit in a chair beside the bed, then she would stand in the doorway,....You see what I mean? She gradually "moved out" of his bedroom and into our bedroom. And like I said, even now, SS still needs to be babied a little at night time. In my experience, it takes between 6 months to a year for children your step-son's age to be weened of of co-sleeping entirely and even then, the results are not definitive. The kid is still going to cry out "Mommy!" now and then.
But don't worry. You will get your wife back! So long as you are both on the same page on this issue.
Exactly. The kid is almost a
Exactly. The kid is almost a teenager. I'd be tempted to ask her when he will be able to get his masturbation episodes in if she goes to lay with him so much!
I don't want to discount this
I don't want to discount this opinion, because it is a valid one, but trust me when I say that coddled pre-teen boys are not motivated by cock-blocking their mother's new mate. I've known boys who do that and their parents are still married! They have no reason to cock-block their own father! Their reason for wanting Mommy to sleep with them is simple...Mommy did not ween them off co-sleeping early enough. It's the same principal that applies to using diapers VS toilet training, breast feeding VS drinking milk out of a cup, etc. If you don't teach the child early enough to grow out of these "baby activities" it just takes longer to ween the child.
Bring a 3-year-old and a 10-year-old who have never swam in the water before to a public pool and convince them to jump in and you'll see what I mean. The 10-year-old will need A LOT more convincing and will clutch on to his parent a lot longer than the 3-year-old
she won't fix the problem
she won't fix the problem tell her she can sleep on the couch when the Skids are in your home. She will either fix it then or she won't but you have to sleep and this is her problem to fix.
Or ..... you can fix it which SS11 nor DW will like. Tell DW what her choices are but give her absolute clarity that this crap ends now and if SS-11 wakes you up again you will deal with it and she will not say a word about it. She can step up and get it done before you have too or she can bite her tongue and support you as you deal with it.
IMHO of course.
Good luck.