Nine-year-old Elsie was struggling with anxiety at night which was affecting her sleep and having a knock on effect at school. Mum Emma explains how our Sleep Advice Service helped.
“Elsie loves music, she has lots of energy and is very funny. She doesn’t like spiders, or any bugs for that matter. She is obsessed with New York and hopes one day to get there. She enjoys playing football, yoga, gymnastics and eating chocolate. She is a self-confessed chocoholic. Elsie’s favourite animal is an Axolotl, and she collects anything with them on at all.
Elsie’s favourite time of year is Halloween and she gets so excited decorating the house and talks about her costume plans months before. She enjoys the theatre, chips in a cone and riding her bike. She’s such an active child and is happiest when she’s upside down.
Elsie doesn’t sleep much at all, so it’s a quite hard as both myself and her dad work full time and take turns each night to sit with Elsie, as she won’t be left alone and gets very anxious. Elsie struggles to relax, she doesn’t like being alone and finds it very hard to get in to any kind of sleep routine. We’re very lucky if Elsie gets five or more hours sleep a night.
We try to keep Elsie busy during the day and after school to tire her out in the hope she will sleep better. But she really doesn’t enjoy bedtime or the run up to it at all. Which is a real struggle especially on the nights Elsie gets as little as two hours sleep. It’s a real struggle to function full time on such little sleep. Elsie masks a lot so when she’s in school although she is tired, she hides it well and is hitting all her targets so the school didn’t see it as an issue.
We were told by our local CAMHS that Cerebra’s Sleep Service may be able to help with Elsie. We had attended quite a few courses but none that specifically covered sleep – which is our main issue. Elsie’s anxiety stems from not wanting to sleep, which causes her to not want to even be in her bedroom alone and refusing to go upstairs in our home. She is terrified of waking up through the night and being alone in her room, which stops her from sleeping at all.
Our Cerebra Sleep Practitioner was amazing, so understanding, very informative and really helpful. He listened to everything I had to say and always had some really helpful suggestions. He advised us on techniques and back to basic routines, and it was so good to have someone to listen and make us realise that we weren’t alone.
He gave us so much of his time and made me realise that it was important to stand up for Elsie and I shouldn’t be worried about challenging the school on Elsie’s behalf. We began to understand the symptoms that lack of sleep can cause that weren’t really that obvious to us. He helped us to make the school realise that the lack of sleep was having an effect on Elsie in school.
Elsie’s school have really taken notice now, beforehand it was very much a case of Elsie seems fine in school, she doesn’t make any fuss and is hitting all her targets. However, Elsie was coming home from school quite distressed telling us that she was struggling to stay in her seat, she was feeling sick all the time, that she needed to move about but felt restricted.
The school have now provided Elsie with a wobble stool, and her teacher has noticed the masking (which wasn’t recognised before). They allow Elsie to move around more rather than being stuck in her seat and they seem to be on board with the fact that, although it seems like Elsie isn’t affected by no sleep, in actual fact there are signs to look for.
I can honestly say that of all the classes, courses and information sessions I’ve been to Cerebra has helped us the most. Elsie’s issue is very much sleep and the anxiety that surrounds it. It felt like it was the best organisation to help us as they knew what we are going through and were able to help”.
Find out about our Sleep Advice Service and discover our range of resources that can help you.
