just recieved this email from Dr rachel Lancaster about a sleep group starting up in february, please leave any thoughts you may have about this.

cheers

neil

Hi all

I wanted to send out an email to let people know that in February I am hoping to run a sleep psychoeducational group for parents of young people up to the age of ten years, and I am asking for you to refer families to this group.

A large number of people have talked to me about families of children outside of my normal age range (i.e. over the age of 5) who are having problems with their son / daughter's sleep and I hope to provide this group in order to help them in some way.

The first group will be a pilot group, I will obviously have a few ideas of what I think will be heplful to families, but also I hope to get feedback from families around what was helpful for them, in order that I might run the group more regularly in the future.

So, I am expecting that the group is going to be weekly for about 5 weeks and will cover many aspects of sleep, i.e. what we would expect for normal sleep; nighttime/settling routines and sleep associations; sleep difficulties including: night time waking, settling difficulties, fears and phobias, sleep walking, nightmares, separation issues; then sleep interventions. We will then explore issues experienced by particular families and encourage families to record their child's sleep patterns/difficulties in order that we can, on a weekly basis do some more general trouble shooting around particular families' needs

if you want to have a chat to me about the group, then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

best wishes

Rachel

Dr. Rachel Lancaster

Chartered Clinical Psychologist

Integrated Services for Children with Additional Needs (ISCAN)

Rowan House

Grange Road South

Hyde

Cheshire

SK14 5NY

Tel: 0161 3662050

Hi

That's sounds like a great idea, I already record my sons sleep patterns,  he has problems sleeping sometimes , and this can sometimes go on for a week, I would be interested

Hello,

I'm curious as to whether our Son - Reuben - falls into the category of sleep issues. We've always kept a tight bedtime regime since we were able to implement one. Reuben is 6 now, and has recently (over the last few months) been slowly developing a later and later sleeping pattern. This is partly down to him having very little concept of what time is, and him knowing how long say - 20 minutes is.

He's a fantastic reader, in the top 98 centile and adores reading, which we have always strongly encouraged. The issue is, we read him a story, then allow him to continue reading himself. We have tried putting a marker on the clock in his room, tried using a timer as another trigger for him to know when it is time to stop. We're getting mixed results with these methods though, and recently, I have found him wide awake at between 2 - 3 a.m. in the morning, face buried in a book, or magazine.

We're lucky in the respect that he's very quiet when he is doing this, and isn't playing loudly or causing any issues, but obviously, the next day he is really knackered and this can and does impact on his day at school - being ratty, irritable and generally not having a great day.

Anyone have any similar experiences or ideas which we haven't tried? I realise the info i've given here is on the slim side, but still...

Cheers

Jason

that sounds like a great idea i would be very interested