5 Ways to Handle Bedtime Battles Without Dividing Your Parenting Team - Weekend Wisdom

Bedtime can be especially challenging for children who have experienced trauma, loss, or disrupted attachment—and even harder when parents disagree about how to respond. In this episode of Weekend Wisdom from Creating a Family, we share practical ways to approach bedtime as a team, divide the parenting load more fairly, support your child’s need for connection and regulation, and protect your relationship from exhaustion and resentment.

Resources:

• When Parenting Feels Uneven: Helping Your Partner Step In
• Sleep Issues in Adopted, Foster, and Kinship Children
• Focus on Father Involvement and Co-parenting: Why It Matters

Transcript

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Tracy Whitney 0:01

Hi, listeners, and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. My name is Tracy Whitney. I am the content director here at Creating a Family. I am happy to welcome you to this short podcast that offers some practical tips and solutions for real life dilemmas that our listeners have written in to us about. But I hope that you'll also consider catching our other weekly podcast that is about an hour long and it's with an expert in the field. Every week we talk to someone in the field of adoption, foster care, kinship care, or related fields to give us expert wisdom and evidence-based information that helps strengthen the families that listen to our podcasts. So let's jump into this anonymous listener's question. My husband and I are struggling over bedtime issues with our adopted child. Bedtime has become long and drawn out. It is emotional and exhausting. Our child gets dysregulated quite easily, fights sleep, and often needs a lot of reassurance and connection at night. I feel like I'm carrying almost all of it alone because my partner either disappears, says they don't know what to do, or thinks I'm overcomplicating things by using trauma-informed parenting strategies. He just wants our child to learn how to go to bed, stay in bed, and fall asleep on their own until morning. I'm starting to feel resentful and overwhelmed. We barely have time together as a couple anymore. And honestly, I don't even have time to take care of myself. I know my partner loves our child, but it still feels very uneven and I don't know how to ask for more without starting another argument. How do we get on the same page about bedtime and share the load better? So, listener, first I want to say you are not alone in this struggle. Bedtime challenges are so common in adoptive, foster, and kinship families, especially when parents are raising kids who have experienced trauma, loss, unpredictability, and disrupted attachment. So the challenge of one parent carrying a greater share of the bedtime routine is quite common. The complication comes when bedtime and not being on the same page with parenting converge with your exhaustion and your frustration over the complications that are going on in your home. For many of our kids from hard places, bedtime can feel particularly vulnerable. Their hard stuff may have kind of been kept at bay all day long, but the quiet and the dark of night can bring up a lot of anxiety for our kids. Separation can feel really scary, transitions can feel dysregulating, bad memories from other things that happened in the dark in other placements can happen. So what might look like stalling or defiance is often our child's nervous system saying, I don't feel safe yet. So when one caregiver ends up carrying most of that emotional load, burnout can happen faster. And I think what you're describing is a little bit of burnout for both you and your partner. One thing that I appreciated from a previous conversation that I had with Dr. Josh Davis was the reminder that most couples are not alone in fighting over bedtime and that they're not actually fighting about bedtime. They're fighting about feeling alone, they're fighting about feeling unseen or criticized or exhausted or overwhelmed with what they are carrying. And it's important to note that because that can change the goal from how do I force my partner to do bedtime my way to how do we become teammates again, even over this issue of bedtime. Honestly, that shift might make a huge difference for your situation. A lot of partners pull back from these hard, complex situations because they feel unsure or ineffective or criticized or overwhelmed themselves. It's not because they don't care, because quite frequently they do care very much. They just feel unsure of what to do with this complexity. Trauma-responsive parenting can feel very unfamiliar and complex to implement, especially if someone in the partnership was raised with a more traditional idea about discipline or independence. We often hear from the couples that we support that one parent has done more of the trauma training, so to speak, more of the reading, more of the listening, more of the self-educating, and the other one feels behind in that growing knowledge before they even start. And that's why open communication between the two of you matters so much. It's also why Dr. Davis said they're not actually fighting about bedtime, they're fighting about feeling unseen or unprepared or uneducated. And it's super important to remember that the best conversations about our parenting do not happen in the heat of the moment or in the middle of a bedtime crisis. So it's important to find a calmer moment and approach this conversation as a us versus the problem, not a me versus you. So instead of saying something like, you never help, you can try saying, I'm feeling overwhelmed and I miss feeling like we are doing this together. Or you could say, I really hate it when you quit in the middle of bedtime, and instead try saying something like, How do we plan to reset our bedroom bedtime routine in a way that feels manageable for both of us? Those ways of saying things will land differently between you. One of them is you versus me, the other of them is us versus the problem. You can also be very specific with your partner, especially if you're trying to create a reset or an opportunity for a reset. Sometimes our partners genuinely do better with very concrete requests rather than just broad frustration. For example, you could say, Can you take over bath time and pajamas while I handle the calming and connection piece of rubbing Johnny's back while he falls asleep? Or you could say, can we please alternate nights? You could also say, would you please sit with us during bedtime so that our child gets used to both of us being part of this routine. Small shared responsibilities often work better than expecting an immediate 50-50 split on the spot. Another important piece to this whole conversation is learning together. If one parent is carrying the bulk of the trauma responsive parenting style, it can accidentally create a parent-child dynamic inside the relationship too, whereby one person becomes the expert and the other feels corrected all the time. And that's not good for either of you. So instead of one parent teaching the other, try becoming learners together. So you would maybe consider listening to a podcast together while you're driving somewhere, or attending a support group together, or watching a short training video together. You can find tons of them on YouTube, ours and many other organizations that offer great training videos on YouTube. You could take a workshop or a webinar together. You can read one article and then pass it to your partner and ask them to read it and then say, hey, let's let's go out for coffee later and talk about it. The point isn't to arrive at perfect agreement about how you do the bedtime routine. It's more about building a shared language and a shared understanding for how you're going to handle the bedtime routine and why you're choosing to handle it that way. This matters because trauma-responsive parenting is emotionally demanding work. And your question indicates that. You know that. Kids impacted by trauma, prenatal substance exposure, disrupted attachment, neglect, chronic stress, et cetera, need more co-regulation, more predictability, and more connection than most of us expected when we were jumping into this journey. And that can stretch any relationship, which is why creating a parenting plan that you can both be on the same page for will help. You're not looking for a rigid chart or a 50-50 split or, you know, this is your day and this is my day. You're looking for a plan that reflects your commitment to understanding each other's capacity and each other's understanding of the situation that you're dealing with. So you want to ask questions for a plan around bedtime that asks things like what helps your child settle? What are the things that might escalate our child? Who handles what? What phrases do you both want to use consistently? Scripts that will signal to you and your partner and your child what the next steps are and how we're going to handle it. How do you support each other if bedtime goes sideways? And then how are we going to celebrate our progress in this plan? Because celebrating even the smallest win between you is incredibly important. Um, there were times when my kids were little and bedtime would go awry and we would, you know, rein it back in and get things back on track, and we would literally just give each other a high five, you know, passing in the hallway. Hey, five, we did it. High five, we did it. If you are looking for more practical strategies and support like sleep issues or parenting from the same page or any other trauma-related, neurodiversity related challenges in your home, you should check out our free monthly newsletter. Go to creating afamily.org slash newsletter. Choose the free downloadable guide that best meets your family's needs or challenges, and then subscribe to that monthly newsletter. You get the free monthly newsletter delivered right to your inbox every month, and you'll get one of those free guides as our thank you for subscribing. Thanks for listening and have a great day. Our consistency helps our kids feel safer, but it also helps us feel less divided and less isolated in our relationship. One thing I want to also note is that we cannot underestimate the power of bonding activities that can occur between our partner and our child outside of bedtime. And again, if one of you is carrying more of the load of parenting this child than the other, then outside activities that create an opportunity to bond and build attachment are crucial. Bedtime is often when the hardest stuff comes out. So the parent who feels less connected or less involved may actually at bedtime feel totally disconnected to this child. They need opportunities throughout the course of the day when there is no crisis, when there is no chaos to create and build on some connection. So that could look like playing basketball in the driveway together, just a dad and son date out for ice cream, reading comic books together, building Legos together, a regular walk after dinner every night to get the dogs some exercise. Anytimes that they can capture those connection-building moments during calm can show up later during chaos. Just kind of look for those and build them into your routines. I also want to say something really important about resentment and how to handle it. Resentment usually grows in the spaces where needs go unnamed for too long. So if you are the exhausted, emotionally tapped out, or carrying too much parent, that matters and you deserve support also. You need to be able to name it and be able to express exactly what you think will help you lower that resentment level. You both need self-care, you both need support, and you need not just survival level breaks from the moment, but also actual restoration, actual refueling. So intentionally trading responsibilities can help each of you get some downtime. Maybe one person handles bedtime while the other person gets an hour alone and then you switch a night. It could also mean that you're handling the nighttime routine, but your partner is handling the get up and get dressed and breakfast routine. Whatever works for you and your partner so that both of you are feeling periods of refreshment and refueling, that's what you need to pursue. And it's a lot to take in, I know, but don't forget that your couple care matters as much as your self-care. So when you're parenting kids with big needs, it feels impossible to add self-care and couple care on top of all of that. But your relationship is kind of the foundation for your home's stability. Sometimes date night is unrealistic. We get that. But connection doesn't have to be some grand gesture that cares for your relationship. It can be just 10 minutes on the couch together after bedtime. It can be taking a walk, just the two of you, after you get the kids off to school. It can be watching one show together that you both love without multitasking, just sitting, present, watching the show, being together. And it also means checking in emotionally with each other, not just about the logistics of running your home, not just about the most current crisis that erupted, but also checking in to see how he's doing, how she's doing. Those small moments of connection matter significantly for your whole home's health. So I want to normalize that your family's progress is going to look uneven. Sometimes you're going to be nailing it with the trauma-responsive parenting skills. And sometimes you're going to be nailing it with the couple care. Sometimes you're going to be nailing it with the self-care. You may not be kind of nailing all the things all at once, and that's okay. You should be celebrating the wins where you have them. So if you notice that your partner's doing a great job at self-care this week, high-five them. Tell them that they're doing a great job. If you notice that the bedtime routine went better tonight, say, hey, thanks for your help. I really feel like tonight's bedtime routine went much better. Say what is the win. Say it out loud to each other. And even if it's really small and it feels silly to say it out loud, hey, I noticed that you stayed calm when Johnny was escalating. Or wow, she really responded well to you reading that book to her tonight. Or I loved the funny voices you did in tonight's bedtime story. Any of those wins, celebrate them. Call them out, name them so that you're building each other up rather than tearing each other down. These moments matter because they reinforce that teamwork, us versus the problem mentality. And finally, if you are really stuck and if every conversation becomes conflict, it might be time to bring in some outside help. A neutral third party that would be like a trauma-informed therapist or a support group, a parent coach, a caseworker if you're fostering, other kinship caregivers or other foster or adoptive parents in your community that can kind of help you see what's really going on. Anyone who understands what you're going through and will speak life and encouragement and support into that situation. I'll add some additional notes, additional resources in the show notes for you to help you find a good path forward. We did an episode over the winter about sleep and sleep challenges that adoptive, foster, and kinship families often face with Dr. Chris Winter that you might find really helpful. And bottom line, remember, you were never meant to do this alone, and your partner wasn't either. The healthiest families are those who ask for help. The healthiest families are those who recognize their challenges and go looking for the support and help they need to build those challenges up. So keep learning, keep repairing, and keep trying to move forward together instead of separately and move towards each other instead of away from each other. Bedtime challenges can be so divisive and so challenging. So I say all of that from years of experience of bedtime challenges with our kids. And these are some of the things we've learned, and these are some of the things that we've been able to hear from the experts that we interact with here at Creating a Family. So hang in there, keep working on it, and go ahead and take some time to care for yourself and care for your partnership so that you can be on the same page for nighttime routines. Thanks for listening, and I hope that that was helpful and I hope that resonated with you listeners. I'm looking forward to talking to you again next week. I hope you have a great week in the interim.