Re: Melony (sleep)

[Guest guest]

Melony, we worked on it for years, even before we knew she had OCD. The

first thing we did was make a routine that was unbreakable. We got up at

the same time every single day and started bedtime at the same time every single

night. At bedtime, we would read to her and brush her teeth. She had some

music tapes to listen to and we would put one on and tell her she could look at

books for however long she wanted to. We told her that we were going to

leave and check on her in five minutes and we did. We checked on her every five

minutes for two to three hours every single night until she was okay about it.

Then we switched to every ten minutes. We also did that for hours and for

weeks. To be honest, this took over a year. We also gave her " happy thoughts "

to concentrate on. Being in Santa's workshop was a big one. We also rewarded

her for staying in bed with stickers that could be accrued and traded for fun

trinkets. Checking on her as promised was the key, I think. When ten

minutes was bearable, we stretched it more and more until we got it to the

length of

a tape. We would then turn the tape over and check one more time. Now she

doesn't even care. And what did we do when she refused to wait five minutes?

We would repeat, " I'll be up in five minutes " over and over again. When she

learned that we really were coming back and that we were determined to do this,

she became more calm and it started to work. When she became older, she

would stay in bed without being upset but would be unable to fall asleep.

That's

when we started giving her medication to help her out. It's a long process

but we did it so slowly she wasn't traumatized by it. She wasn't happy at first

but we really felt that we needed to do something about it. We were

exhausted and so was she. Good luck! Kelley in NV