2 year old sleep regression ??

[sofasonmondays]

Is this a thing ?

My daughter is having huge difficulties settling at bed time. She sometimes stays awake until 10 pm. I usually put her down between 7:30 pm and 8 pm.

She's also waking in the night again, anywhere from 3,4 or 5 am. Sometimes she settles again and other times she'll literally just stay awake for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night m. She screams unless I put her in bed with me. But she doesn't sleep if she's with me either, she just stays awake and then eventually sleeps.

When she has nights where she's awake for ages or where she's had a very late night or both, she won't wake until 8-8:30 am.

She then goes for a nap between 12:00-1pm which lasts around 2 hours, sometimes she wants to sleep even longer, but I wake her after 2-2.5 hours.

She was pretty good, but recently she was ill so I slept with her every night for a while. She's also not too long ago moved home and moved out of our bedroom. Maybe all those factors are contributing.

Or I could just try shortening the lunch time nap fo an hour and see if things improve. I'm really tired !

My DD did this when she was ready to give up her nap. Shorten the daytime nap to 45mins ish (or at least no more than an hour). Now DD goes to sleep straight away.

This may be the solution. Tonight I've stayed in her room and she's dropped off to sleep. Thankfully ! No screaming. But that's not the solution either on a regular basis.

My two year old tends to settle best if I put him to bed earlier- seems counterintuitive but if I put him to bed later than 7 he wakes up a few times through the night. If shortening nap doesn’t work maybe try an earlier bedtime 🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

Look up the 3 day nanny back to bed method. Also I would get her up in the morning no later than 7am One hr max map before 1pm and she should be ready for bed at 7 pm. Good luck

@sofasonmondays

This may be the solution. Tonight I've stayed in her room and she's dropped off to sleep. Thankfully ! No screaming. But that's not the solution either on a regular basis.

I would shorten the nap to 45-1h. I always stayed in the room but I don't mind, he's asleep within 10 minutes and so is the baby now.

This could be a short lived phase but it is so hard when you're in it. I'll ask you how you're doing in 2 weeks and I'm pretty sure you'll be over this (not helpful when you're in it, I know but quite often very true) xx

Thanks for all the kind suggestions !

@gemloving it's so funny the staying in the room thing goes in phases for her.

Sometimes for a couple of months, I have to stay in the room or she won't sleep and then other times, I have to leave the room, or she won't sleep. Super random. Maybe at the moment we are going back to a phase where I need to stay in the room. She dropped off really quickly tonight. It usually takes an hour at least recently.

@sofasonmondays that's the same for mine actually but since he's been about 2, I always stayed in the room as his brother came aLong shortly after and I have no clue how to do bedtime on my own if they're not in the same room, so I now just always stay until everyone is asleep. This might change when baby is a bit older (he's 8 months now).

Everything got a lot easier when mine dropped his nap at 2 1/2. Both were asleep by 06:45 today.

At around 2 separation anxiety can kick in - it's when they really realise that when you aren't in the room with them, you aren't there. They don't all respond to it, but some do. DD1 was a nightmare between about 22 months and 2 - would go down fine, but would wake up at 2 or 3 am and be inconsolable unless someone was there. I ended up putting a mattress on the floor in her room so we could both get some sleep as I was heavily pregnant and still working. All I did was talk to her and tell her I was there and she'd go back down. After about 6 weeks she stopped waking up and I could move back to our bedroom.

DD2 didn't do it at all - they're all different. Weirdly, DD1 was a heavy napper who napped at nursery until age 4.5. DD2 dropped all naps well before 2 and was fine, not overtired at all.

My little boy has a hard time sleeping in his own room. All he wants is to sleep in my bed. Any ways I can get him to sleep all night