What do I do?

[concernedmom]

As a frustrated mom, what do I do when:

- my son cries at night and keeps me up?
-when he cries through out the day in school and has to be removed from class For 30 min to an hour each day?
- what do his teachers do?
- when the school calls and tells me to come get him cause he won't calm down?

Do I give in and take his temp? Do I sit with him until he goes to sleep? Do I ignore him and brush him off? I have no clue what to do for him!

Concernedmom

[irish_grrl76]

I don't know what to do in most of those situations cus they have never happened to me. My son has always been really great at school. He's just a really sweet boy.

I have lots of experience with your first question though. I don't know if what I did is good for everyone but for me it was just easier to let him sleep in my bed. We bought a king size bed so we'd have room, though it didn't matter cus he always wanted to be right next to me. He had alot of health problems so I felt more comfortable with him in my bed anyway.

I think it's really up to you. Everyone has different parenting styles and some people are completely against letting their child sleep with them. It worked well for me though.

[concernedmom]

Thanks for the advice but my son is 12 yrs old so he can't sleep in our bed. Right now it's 1am. He was asleep and so was I. Now he has everyone up because he doesn't feel good. I am so frustrated. I don't want to stay up with him. If I go lay down then he will just yell for me over and over again. I just wanna go to sleep and I just want all this to stop..... I try to have empathy but it only lasts so long before I am back to throwing my hands in the air and asking 'what am I supposed to do?'. I just wanna cry....

[DJEskimo]

This might be a stupid question, but is your son the one with emetophobia, and that's why he's keeping you up?

I had this when I was twelve and did the same thing your son did. Eventually my mom just told me to suck it up.

At the time I thought that was the most abusive and neglectful parenting ever, but I did outgrow the phobia not long after she (and others) stopped enabling it.

Whenever I felt ill at school, I would always go to the health office and call my parents. At first I'd be picked up and be taken home, but eventually they either made me stay in the nurse's room the rest of the day or go back to class.

Once again, at the time I was really upset about it, and thought life was completely unfair, but the "suck it up" attitude prevailed in the end.

Make sure he goes out and does things - sports, clubs, social activities - whatever he can to distract himself. And whenever he has one of those anxiety attacks, ask him if the threw up the last time he felt ill (assuming he didn't).

I hope that's helpful, even though ignoring your kid can't be easy and he'll probably be pretty upset with you to start with. Just make sure he knows you love him, but he can't keep doing this.

[sage]

concernedmom - as a family counsellor I would suggest that the very fact you don't know what to do is the problem itself. (if that makes sense) Once you decide what to do and calmly do it, despite your son's emotional reaction, he will get better. That means you have to be calm, however. As long as you are upset and anxious about all this, your son's anxiety will escalate. That's because all the family anxiety is sky-high. If YOU calm down then there's less anxiety in the whole family system. This is the best thing to help your son.

I guess I'm basically saying the academic version of what Eskimo just said. And the same with the poster who took the child into her bed - she said everyone's parenting style is different. So I'm not telling you what to do....just to do something. Make up your mind, and stick to that. Perhaps that will be putting the boy to bed and saying "I'll talk with you in the morning, but if you wake up in the night please don't call me unless you want me to call 911." Or it could be something else.

Don't worry - this is a common family problem and you are not alone. It's frustrating not knowing what to do. But trust me, just making a decision and calming down will do wonders to help your son's healing.

Take care and I wish you all the best,
Sage

[kellybeth]

Your son sounds alot like me when I was his age. I could never sleep at night. I would lay in bed and cry for my Mom. Sometimes she would come to see what was going on sometimes she wouldn't. Often times I would sneak in her room and sleep on the foot of her bed. I cried every night before bed. I was so afraid I would get sick in the middle of the night. I slept with a trash can next to my bed. I also sleep propped up on pillows so if I vomited in my sleep I wouldn't choke and die. Crazy I know.

My parents then gave me a "sleep jar" I still think about it sometimes. I wish I still had it, but anyway, it was a plastic container that we wrapped in paper and cut a slit in the top. I decorated it with things I liked and wrote "Kelly's sleep jar" on it. Every night if I had gone to bed without a problem like crying or waking my Mom up in the night I would be given a reward. In the morning if I had done well the night before I was given a quarter for my sleep jar. I was so happy to get my quarter and put it in my jar the next morning.

Might sound silly but it did help me. Sounds funny that my Mom was "paying" me to go to bed!! But it worked.

[concernedmom]

Thank you all for your responses. They we all very helpful. I am going to email his teacher and school counsler the link to this site plus some of the information from this site so that they can have a better understanding of what hes going through. I am def going to put my foot down with them and tell them that he is not coming home from school. He can stay in the nurses office or go back to class, as eskimo suggested.
Thank you all again and pls, if anyone else has any other comments/suggestions I will take them.

concernedmom

[irish_grrl76]

Oh gosh, I didn't realize your son was that old! Yeah, sleeping in bed with you is not a good idea.

[vixki]

I was like that when I was his age.
My mum eventually one night got up, pulled me out of bed, shoved me in the car and drove me to A&E where they said there was nothing wrong with me just stress. I guess that helped me a little.
But you really need to get him some psychiatric help. He's not likely to just grow out of it or anything. Definitely speak to school counsellors or whoever is in charge of extra help at school - at my school when I was that age they had a 'learning support' room which I could go into and do set work there, without sitting in class with everyone, maybe something like that would help him?
Don't be too harsh on him though, remember to him this is as bad as a life-or-death situation - and it's not something he can just snap out of. It may be an idea to look into proffesional psychiatric help possibly.