Almost 4 & still waking in the night

[nicola1904]

Hi, my daughter will be 4 in April and probably 5 out of 7 nights she wakes during the night. She rarely has a reason to be up ( 2 out of 10 time will be for the toilet) the rest it just seems like she wakes up so comes into my room. Some nights she will go straight back to sleep but others she's awake and it's a few hours of up and down with the whole house awake! ( her sister is 8) does anyone have any advice or tips? I've pretty much run out of ideas thank you x

[minipie]

What time is her bedtime? Just wondering if a later bedtime (= more tired child) would help. Is she active in the day, does she go to nursery/walk a lot?

What do you do when she comes in to you in the night?

Maybe a reward system so she gets stickers or favourite breakfast if she doesn't disturb you in the night?

[juneau]

Has she always woken in the night? What do you do when she wakes you up?

I would just put her straight back to bed. I would keep any talking to a minimum, not put lights on (as this can wake you/her up even more), and during the day I would explain to her that if she wakes she needs to stay in bed and go back to sleep. But then I'm VERY intolerant of any night-time shenanigans and often shake my head in amazement at the nonsense other parents put up with regarding to night-waking, wandering around, sleeping in each other's beds, etc.

[Cataline]

I'm with you on this one Juneau!

[Lelivre]

I think at this age they can get frights and nightmares and things. If you think this. I would make a bed up in the floor in my room and let her use that and grow out of this.

But another nice suggestion in the no cry sleep solution for preschoolers is to write them a little story book about them, in the story...From memory your dc is the character they go to bed as normal and then, wake up and wonder where they are and where everyone is and notice it's the night time and time to sleep and they don't want to wake up everyone so they remember, everything is fine and they are safe and they snuggle down cosy as can be and go off to sleep.

Setting expectations in a assuring kind of way, haven't tried this as I'm cosleeping with my youngest anyway so I don't mind another really. But I thought it was a nice idea.

[Lelivre]

I also agree with no lights, talking except for saying I need to go to sleep quiet don't wake up the houS etc but I'm a whimp about cosleeping, I can't imagine it will go on that long but I could eat my words!

[PeachOwl]

My youngest is roughly the same age as your dd and has always been a bad sleeper. He wakes roughly 2 nights a week and once or twice on those nights (he isn't dry at night yet though). Things that help us are (sorry if I'm repeating stuff you know/do), calm slow bedtimes (he gets up more if he needs reassurance or misses his story etc), LOTS of exercise in the afternoon including jigsaws etc to tire his brain straight after tea, a slightly cold room and warm bed with a microwave hottie (he hates being cold ) and no lights, eye contact or chatting when he gets up. I just say sleep time and steer him back to bed. I never pick him up but will give a cuddle once he's tucked up and come back a minute later for another cuddle as an incentive to stay snuggled in bed (i pretend I need a wee and check on my way back to bed).

It's really hard getting up so much. Would it help to keep a diary? That's how we tackled ds' bad sleeping as it helped to see patterns and what worked etc.

[BeggarsCantBeChoosers]

My 4 yr old did this and we resorted to a sticker chart with reward after 10 days straight. Each time we got to 7 days and had a relapse the count began all over again.

It worked, but we found with the first cough, cold and sniffle they get there's often regression.