My DS is 4 in Jan so he's just gone 3.5.
Previously he has been a really good sleeper. Since birth we've never had any issues really. He slept through the night earlyish on and we were v lucky. He was very straightforward.
In the past 2 months his sleep has really regressed. He is having periods of maybe 1-2 weeks where he is waking up crying several times a night.
When he wakes we obviously go straight to him and he is generally barely awake, sometimes he's saying weird random things. Always though he's crying and bear hysterical despite not being properly awake. He is quite easy to settle most of the time which is good but the waking several times a night is obviously less than ideal. Sometimes we have to properly wake him up and rouse him to get him to stop crying.
It's also started waking his brother who shares a room with him. He got quite upset this evening and said "I'm just sick of this". So I think we need to try and combat it, if we can. We've always just thought oh it's a phase but it has been going on a while now. We get a week or so of him sleeping through and then it starts up again.
Has anyone else had this and dealt with it?
I'm wondering if it's night terrors?
I know with younger children that cry it out can be helpful and encourage children to self settle but I've not heard of it being used in a 3.5 year old.
We thought about trying a sticker chart but he's not really awake enough to make a choice about how he reacts. He just wakes and automatically cries for whatever reason.
We have tried co sleeping and it works in that he gets comfort asap when he wakes and nobody has to get out of bed so we all sleep better. I'm not totally against this as a shortish term solution but I don't want it to just be a sticking plaster and avoid dealing with the actual problem, whatever that may be.
Any advice v gratefully recieved.