Episode Summary: "My Middle Schooler Can’t Fall Asleep by Herself – What Can I Do?"

Podcast: Talkaboutable with Dr. Susan Swick
Host: Dr. Susan Swick, Lemonada Media
Date: October 14, 2025

OVERVIEW OF THE EPISODE

In this episode, Dr. Susan Swick, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and mother of four, speaks with a father struggling with his 11-year-old daughter’s persistent sleep anxiety. Despite the child’s mature, outgoing, and competent daytime persona, bedtime triggers intense anxiety and a need for parental presence. Together, they unpack the possible causes of this paradox and explore practical ways to support anxious, perfectionistic kids—especially around sleep and major life transitions like starting middle school.

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS & INSIGHTS

1. Introducing the Guest and His Family

• Guest is a father of two: an 11-year-old daughter, a 7-year-old son, plus two energetic dogs.
• Wife runs a company and frequently travels; the father manages household duties.

2. Daughter's Strengths and Superpowers

• Daughter is “a natural born leader” and “incredibly mature.”
• She is very verbal, quick to make friends, and takes initiative (e.g., signing up for CPR to become a babysitter, arranging to volunteer).

“She makes other people feel comfortable and good.”—Father [02:26]

3. The Sleep Struggle

• Nighttime reveals a stark contrast: immense anxiety about being alone at bedtime, despite daytime confidence.
• Historical sleep pattern: Needed someone with her to fall asleep, frequent check-ins, hypervigilance to noises, sometimes “literally hysterical and start crying” about sleep.
• Some recent improvement, but the issue remains persistent and cyclical, like “whack-a-mole.”

“She can be so put together 23 and a half hours of the day or whatever and then for this last half hour completely fall apart to just go to bed.”—Father [00:06 and 06:13]

4. Nature of the Anxiety

• Generalized, sometimes focuses on monsters or safety.
• Not especially anxious in most other contexts (e.g., school, friends), but depends heavily on others when alone.

“It is a true general fear of everything… Or everything that is something.”—Father [09:20–09:47]

5. Competence + Soft Underbelly

• Dr. Swick connects this daughter’s challenges to a common pattern in high-achieving, ambitious kids: outward competence paired with hidden perfectionism and internal worry.
• Transitions (new schools, added responsibilities, puberty) often expose this vulnerability.

“A lot of kids who are among the most competent...can surprise us...by also having this sort of soft underbelly of worry that...they're supposed to be perfect at things.”—Dr. Swick [11:09]

6. Quality Time & Communication Strategies

• Father notes bedtime is often the only time his daughter wants to talk in depth.
• Activities they enjoy together: bike rides, movies, Scrabble, tide pooling, and watching the Great British Bake Off.
• Importance of creating connection outside of stressful bedtime routines.

“I had sort of made peace with it because I was like, this is the only thing that she needs me for or wants to spend time with me during. So I will take this time, you know…”—Father [16:23]

• Dr. Swick suggests using open-ended, targeted questions (e.g., “Tell me about your homeroom teacher,” “Where did you sit at lunch?”) to draw out conversation and help process the stress of new experiences.

“Starting with some more precise questions...the parts of the movie that are a little bit harder, she'll get to start to process.”—Dr. Swick [17:56–18:53]

7. Perfectionism and Learning to ‘Surrender’

• Father mentions his daughter’s distress about not immediately understanding advanced math for the first time.
• Dr. Swick frames sleep as a kind of surrender: letting go of control, which perfectionist kids often resist.

“One of the things that can be hard for kids like this and going to sleep is that sleep is a kind of surrender...when you're paying attention to all the details and tracking how it's going, you're not falling asleep.”—Dr. Swick [33:51]

• Discussed the importance of helping kids find comfort with imperfection and learning from failure.

8. Possible Solutions & Tools

• Encourage non-bedtime opportunities for connection and unstructured time: exercise, shared activities, open conversations.
• Use metaphors (like tide pooling) to illustrate uncertainty and exploration, helping the child get comfortable with not always knowing the outcome.
• Build bedtime routines that allow for “soft surrender,” using audio stories, music, or gentle guided imagery.
• Normalize the challenge, communicate confidence in the child's eventual mastery, and avoid making sleep another “performance” to perfect.

“Let her go on an adventure. Sounds like she has a pretty amazing brain and see if that helps her do a softer surrender without it being that struggle…”—Dr. Swick [38:06]

MEMORABLE QUOTES & KEY MOMENTS WITH TIMESTAMPS

• “The joy of parenting is that the heartburn always shifts. It's like the whack a mole..." — Father [05:20]
• “We have to help our smart, anxious, Perfectionistic kids learn that actually you get to be best friends with failure…you have to figure out what are the things that keep you going forward. And usually it's learning.” — Dr. Swick [26:16]
• “Sleep is a kind of surrender… when you're paying attention to all the details and tracking how it's going, you're not falling asleep.” — Dr. Swick [33:51]
• “If you knock out an issue with a kid, surely then something in the other child pops up that's totally different.” — Father [05:20]
• “She still wants to babysit, but, like, had a lot of opportunity and, like, not really moved on it.” — Father [33:33]
• “Tide pooling is something you do where you can't quite know how it's going to end...and I wonder if there's a way...to harness her ambition to explore.” — Dr. Swick [35:53]

TIMESTAMPS FOR IMPORTANT SEGMENTS

• [00:06] Father's description of sleep anxiety and daughter's split persona
• [02:26] Describing children's superpowers
• [06:13] The disconnect between daytime confidence and nighttime anxiety
• [09:20] Exploring the nature of daughter’s anxiety
• [11:09] Dr. Swick connects competence and perfectionism
• [16:23] Father on using bedtime as a point of connection
• [17:56] Dr. Swick suggests specific, open-ended questions
• [26:16] Discussion about how perfectionist kids learn from failure
• [33:51] Dr. Swick’s insight: Sleep as surrender, challenge for perfectionists
• [35:53] Using metaphors like tide pooling to teach comfort with uncertainty
• [38:06] Encouraging relaxed, imaginative bedtime routines

CONCLUSION/THEMES

This episode provides comfort and tangible tactics for parents navigating the paradox of highly capable children who unravel at night. Dr. Swick offers empathetic insight into why competent, ambitious, perfectionistic kids are uniquely challenged by sleep, and how parents can shift the focus from micromanaging bedtime to embracing open communication, imperfection, exploration, and gentle surrender in daily life.

The father departs with new tools and a sense of validation, as Dr. Swick reminds listeners: Most anxious kids will, in time, figure it out—with support, love, and patient presence.

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