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I read that when children who have suffered a serious loss (e.g., in foster care) cry, it triggers a grief reaction that is about their loss. I believe it is true because my daughter would miss her bparents anytime she cried about anything.
I also read that the parent should stay with the tantruming grieving child, because they are frightened by their feeling of being out of control of themselves.
So, my guess would be that there was a lot more going on than being hungry. Maybe after two hours of crying and yelling she was very hungry (it would make me hungry!), but that might not have been either the original cause or the reason it was so bad for so long.
I was reading a book on grief last week and problems at bedtime was one of the typical symptoms of grief in children. And of course, if there has been sexual abuse in the past, your child may also react to bedtime with other fears.
My dd is so bad about bedtime, that I usually just stay with her and read (first a book she likes, then one that I like that bores her right off to sleep). For a while she got so good that I could leave the room while she was still awake as long as I promised to return to check on her every two minutes (she was usually asleep by the second check), but this time of year is the anniversary of her being taken into foster care, and she has been a mess at bedtime this week. Now that she has been with me a long time, she is confortable at telling me her fears. This week she has expressed a fear that bad guys will come in the windows and touch her privates. She has said she sees a fight going on when she closes her eyes, that people are hitting each other and bleeding, she says she has a feeling that something bad is going to happen, etc. So I just stay with her and hold her hand, and give her a hot water bottle (actually a microwavable hot bead bag thing). I read that children are reassured by telling them what they feel is normal, so I told her yesterday morning that it was not surprising for her to feel like something bad is going to happen, since two years ago at this time she underwent a shocking change in her life by going into foster care. I think it helped because last night she was much less anxious.
Anyway, I think breaking the snack rule for your daughter was okay (since after two hours of crying and yelling her blood sugar was probably low and who can sleep like that), but I think she needed more help with her feelings during her upset time. Sometimes in the past during upset times I tell my dd I will stay with her and read as long as she is quiet and tries to sleep, and if she doesn't I'll go out of her room for 1 minute to give her time to quiet down (if I said I'd leave for the night she'd get hysterical, so 1 minute was enough for her to feel seriously punished but not so much that she couldn't handle it).
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