3yr old waking in the night.

[milkymill]

My dd usually has the lamp on to go to bed, and we turned off whne we went up. This last week she started waking up crying and asking for the lamp on. Problem is that once it's back on it stops her from getting back to sleep, so she was awake for hours the other night.

We decided that we weren't going to let her have it on at all, ans I told her I would leave the bathroom light on and her door open. She has no probs going to sleep like this, but is still waking every night crying. She gets up and come into our room, or just sits on the landing crying.

She says she's scared of the dark, or various other problems such as thirsty, itchy etc. I am being driven mad by it! I feel terrible because I can't help getting really angrty when she just won't go back to sleep; I'm just soo knackered.

Any suggestions as to how to handle this are appreciated, as it's making all of us very grumpy.

[michtenstein]

We have had this from time to time often after a scary movie or story, and then we have a difficult phase.

we did the same thing - only alowing passage light to be on. what helps when she is particuarly scared is to let her go to sleep with her pig torch - which we bought when she was about 2 and was getting scared at night. its gets brought out when necessary and really seems to help her feel more confident. its a huge pink pig torch which sleeps next to her pillow when she needs it.

we have also used one of those little plug in night lights on an extension cord under the bed, which helped.

hope it gets sorted out for you soon.

[cory]

My solution, I'm afraid, was to let the child come into our bed. Not very helpful I know, as this is not considered good childrearing in this country; my excuse is that it's considered normal in Sweden where I grew up. I recently saw a Swedish Ikea catalogue where the advertisement for pillows was based on the assumption that this is a natural and unavoidable part of parenting- their solution was to buy more of their pillows so there's enough to go round.

We occasionally still have the 7 yo climbing in in the middle of the night; if he gets too fidgety I might sneak out and take his bed instead. Nothing dreadful has resulted from this habit; he is a well adjusted outgoing little boy.

I'm sure somebody will be along soon with more culturally appropriate advice.

[milkymill]

Yes michenstein, was considering getting some sort of torch type thing ; don't want to 'feed' the fear though iyswim?

Cory, although it is quite tempting at times, I wouldn't want to go down that road, and I def wouldn't get any sort of quality sleep with little miss wriggle bottom, and would probably wake up with several bruises!