Parenting and loving a high needs toddler

Whenever I share with you all something about Sofia it's usually something cute or something I've made her. But this post is about the more frustrating side. I want to share this aspect with you so that if you have or know anyone who has a high needs or spirited toddler you might not feel so alone about it.
High needs is in no way a medical condition but an extreme personality trait. High needs kids need more of everything. They are really sensitive to their surroundings and the people in them. They are constantly active making you wonder if they ever stop moving and don't sleep well. They are extremely independent while being really clingy. Lastly they tend to be really smart and quick learners. This may sound like normal toddler behavior but believe me one day or even several hours in the roller coaster of emotion and energy that is a high needs toddlers and you'll be exhausted.

We knew Sofia was going to be a handful a month after she was born. She never wanted to be cuddled. She only wanted to be up high on our shoulders. She was constantly fidgety and cried for hours at night to the point where we thought she might be colic. And she never had, nor has now, a wake-sleep transition. She is either awake or asleep; no calm in between. She will wake from a deep sleep and jump out of her bed and run down the hall to our room. Or more commonly she will wake up screaming. Throughout her first year of life she was a cat napper at 30 minutes at a time. Now that she is older she takes one 1 hour nap a day. If I'm super lucky she will go for 2 hours. But she only sleeps nine hours at night. Needless to say I am tired but I have learned to accept the fact that I get to see the sun rise everyday.

The thing that brought me to write this post for you is her recent increase in sensitivity and sleep regression. Since May she's been hyper-sensitive and quick to pull out tears and tantrums for any little thing. This is extremely frustrating to deal with as a simple request for water is paired with tears. Little obsessions like wearing winter tights in August (as pictured above) can cause a 15 minute scream fest. We only have 4 pairs of tights and heaven help me if they are all dirty which they often are as she needs to change them all the time because this one isn't right.

Secondly her sleep regression is what really brought me to do some serious research about how to help a high needs kid. For eight months she had been sleeping as well as I could have hoped. Sometimes all the way through the night which for her is 8-5. But then in July she started night waking 3-5 times a night. I would go in sit with her and wait till she feel back as sleep. Only this would take 30 minutes at a time. Finally one night when she woke me up at 1 and would not allow me to leave or fall asleep or have her in my bed I finally said something has got to give. That is also when she learned she could get out of her bed. I became so tired that finally one night I went to bed before she did out of pure exhaustion.

The next day I read every Dr. Sears article about high needs toddlers and sleep. I dug through all of the Mothering forum threads about high needs kids and found so many other with the same problem. In one of the threads someone had suggested the book Raising Your Spirited Child. I read a sample chapter and immediately bought the book. It has helped me so much to understand where she is coming from and how I can change my outlook to help her, help herself. It also gave me a deeper insight into the kind of high spirited kid she is. As strange as it sounds, she is an introverted high needs kids. Meaning she needs a lot more personal space and down time to help her function well. Her day time behavior has changed quiet a bit since i figured this out. When it starts to get bad I know how to help her to bring her back to a calm place. It takes a huge amount of energy to parent a high needs child; it's like the terrible twos' on hyper drive. A lot of the time I can't keep up but I'm slowly learning how.

You may be still wondering about the night waking and getting out of bed; after much consultation with a close friend who knows Sofia well she suggested I take stronger stance on putting her back to sleep. With high needs kids "Crying it Out" is not an option and not one that I am comfortable with; Sofia would mostly likely cry until dawn if I went that route. The last thing she needs is added stress while trying to get back to sleep, so I tried a half-way approach, one that felt more gentle to me as I was still involved in the process. The first night went like this: every time she would get out of bed I would bring her back to bed with minimal talking. I would say to her "Mommy needs to sleep too, I love you good night." Then I would leave the room and close the door. Of course she immediately started to cry and ran right after me; I repeated this about ten times in a row and each time she came a little less far out of her room. Eventually she would see me and go right back into her bed. Her cries were not that of being scared but more annoyed that I wouldn't stay there. The last time she got out of bed she just opened the door, got back in bed, and went to sleep. That's when I realized she may just have needed the door open. Of course she slept through the night after that.

Since then she has slept through the night more or less for a week. I've only had to get up once or twice. She sleeps until 6am as well, which is more than I could hope for. I'm really happy for her as she is already an happier kid. We're still working on naps, but night time sleep is the most important thing right now.

For more on high needs babies and toddlers see the Dr. Sears series of articles. They help explain more thoroughly the "more" that I am talking about.