Intro

Tina and her partner have two sons Ashley aged 5 and Kieran aged 4. When Kieran was 18 months old he started waking up very early in the morning and staying awake for very long periods of the night. At 3 he was diagnosed with ADHD.

The Problem

The problem started when Kieran began waking up and crying. We didn’t feel able to leave

him to get on with it so we would go into him. From here it progressed to him wanting to

play for long periods during the night and no matter what we did he seemed totally unable

to relax and fall back to sleep.

Sleep deprivation meant Kieran would be either very grumpy and difficult throwing

spectacular temper tantrums if the slightest thing didn’t suit or he would be completely hyperactive and out of control – hardly surprising as he had only had around 7 – 8 hours

sleep! I was also really tired I found this behaviour very challenging, exhausting and

difficult to deal with.

I saw my health visitor about it and she suggested we tried the controlled crying

technique, but it was never totally successful. By the time Kieran was 3 the sleep situation

was getting worse and his nursery had told me his development was not “age appropriate”.

I decided we needed to see a paediatrician. I described Kieran’s behaviour to the

Paediatrician. In her opinion he had ADHD. She prescribed Melatonin supplements to help

with his sleeping. While I was not entirely happy with him being on the Melatonin I went

along with it because I was so desperate for us all to get some sleep. However it didn’t

work and we still were having the same problems. I contacted the Paediatrician again and

she told me to increase the dosage of Melatonin and prescribed Ritalin. I was completely

at my wits end. I took the prescription and started him on the medication. After a couple

of weeks of being on the Ritalin and higher dose of Melatonin, it still wasn’t working, if any

thing the nighttime waking had become worse.

At this point I began to question his ADHD diagnoses. If he truly had ADHD then all of this medication he was on would be having some effect surely? I stopped giving him the Ritalin

and I started doing some internet research on sleep deprivation and the effects of it and I

found quite a lot of evidence which suggests that the symptoms of ADHD are very similar to

that of lack of sleep.

I found Millpond Children’s Sleep.

The Solution

We started a sleep programme with Millpond and Kieran responded immediately to it.

The plan was to use a late sleep phase programme. We were to establish a relaxing

bedtime routine with very clear boundaries. The “new rules” were explained to Kieran

and he was rewarded if he went to sleep nicely at bedtime and back to sleep nicely in

the night. Part of the programme also involved gradually lowering his Melatonin dosage

in order to eventually wean him off. Over the next couple of weeks he responded well.

By the end of the third week he was completely off the Melatonin and sleeping soundly

through the night.

Seven weeks on, I am delighted to say that all is still going well and he is sleeping right

through the night. Nursery reports that Kieran is a different child. He is now calm and sits

and listens and concentrates, his behaviour is so much better and they are very pleased

at how well he is doing. When I look back at the situation now I think it’s really scary how

he was prescribed a cocktail of drugs, which he didn’t really need at all, the only thing

Kieran needed was a good 11-12 hours sleep every night!

“My maternal instinct was right; lack of sleep was causing a lot of Kieran’s behaviour

problems and development delay. I just wish that I had gone to Millpond sooner and

not waited so long until things became desperate before we got help. I would recommend Millpond to anyone and cannot praise them enough”.