To ask for help with toddler sleeping

[Jaboody]

I will try to include everything so as not to drip feed.
DS is 2 and a half and has his own bedroom and now converted cot to a proper bed as he could climb out of it. There is a stair gate in his doorway.
He goes to sleep on his own relatively well, however will wake in the night and refuse to go back to bed and want to come into our bed. Eventually we give in and he will fall asleep in our bed. How do we stop this?
We have been laying on the floor with him in his room. I have bought an airbed this morning as its probably better than the floor.

Should we continue sleeping in his room or let him scream it out and every so often reassure thay we are nearby from our bed?
Sorry I'm a first time mum and would like to have another baby soon before I'm 40.

No advice, but solidarity- my 13 month old is the same. I just give in and let her come into bed with me (wife moves to spare room at this point as baby takes up so much bloody space for someone so tiny!). I've just accepted that this is what gets us all the most sleep at the moment.

I know it isn't what you want to hear, sorry!

I know right??? Double bed and yet he takes up the whole of it 🤣 oh bless you both I hope it gets better for you both.

Bump

Whats his routine like during the day? X

I did just go with it and let mine come in beside me in the middle of the night. Its better than the crying or 99 times up and down returning them to their own bed meaning no-one gets any sleep. Mind you, breaking it at the other end can be tough! I actually removed the bedding from my bed and slept on the couch for a couple of weeks, meaning they had to return to own bed - worked like a charm!

IME they only stop wanting to come in when you get firm about the boundary of them staying in their own room. You have to pick a run of a few nights and just be really strong with it. Get yourself set up with whatever you need - go for a wee first, bottle of water near their bed, warm dressing gown and slippers, comfy chair, fully charged phone with some silent, addictive game and/or a really gripping book on it. I don't leave mine crying, I just do whatever it takes to get them to go back to sleep in their own bed. I am still breastfeeding, so usually I breastfeed to sleep and then put them down in their bed, though now DC is getting older sometimes I just hold them on my lap instead of actually feeding. If they wake up immediately, just pick them up and try again. For DC1 I had put him into a single bed so I used to climb into his bed with him and then sneak out.

If they think that you will eventually take them to your bed, then they will keep trying. We all wake up slightly throughout the night. So when they wake up they instantly go "Mummy's bed" and cry for you. But once they are used to the idea they don't come into your bed, they slightly wake up, know where they are and just go back to sleep again.

Is he cold? Try an extra blanket

Does he still nap? If he does then drop the naps straight away.

Secondly stop laying on the floor- shhh him, cuddle him and keep putting him back in bed 'mummy will see you in the morning' etc.

Get a gro clock 'whilst the stars are on the clock it's sleepy time in your bed- when the sun comes up on the clock call mummy because its time to get up!' My kids used to find this exciting. When they were 2/3 I'd also reward them with a chocolate button in the morning if they'd slept through nicely and waited til the gro clock was sunny before calling us to get up. Desperate times call for Desperate measures! This all worked for us.

Our DS is almost 3.5yo and we've just taken the side off his cot. Since 6mo he's always been a good sleeper, he loves his cot and we've been having a lot of trouble getting him out of it in the morning and after a nap.
The first couple of days/nights went well but doesn't like the pillow and duvet. The cover is a bit rough so I'll get something softer... Egyptian cotton for the little Prince 😅 he's been up and down before bed and waking around 6am which is not like him.
He's back in his sleeping bag and sleeping better till 7am but last couple of days he's messed around before bed and nap and slept on the floor behind his door.
Our nanny thinks he's missing the smaller/safer space of the cot.

He's dropped his nap and he goes to nursery Mondays and Thursdays. Tuesday and Friday is relax day as he's usually tired still from nursery.

I know a lot of the problem is my husband. When he gets back from work and they've had their dinner, he wants to play with him and vice versa and ds gets so overexcited that doesn't help.

Are you noticing a difference between nights after he's been at nursery vs at home? If so I think I'd start writing everything down, date, number of night wakings and the times etc. See if you can get a handle on which nights are better, whether he needs more activity in the day, less activite just before bed, etc.

Why stop it?

In your child's eyes, Mummy and Daddy get cuddles and comfort from each other all night, while your child is literally locked in their bedroom.

I agree with @BertieBotts you need to be firm and consistent.

He's not locked in his bedroom. He can open the gate and his door is open. The way our flat is set out there is no door to our room from his. He could stand at the gate and see us

@Jaboody

Fair enough. That doesn't change the fact they still just want the same comfort you are giving each other.

Can you put the air bed in your room on the floor and if he wants to come into your room in the night he can sleep on that?

Giving him an option to come into your room might be enough to keep him in his own room after a while IYSWIM

I would look at why he’s consistently waking up.

Is he too cold or hot?
Does he eat enough in the day/before bedtime?

I don’t agree with groclocks, seems really unnatural for a piece of technology to prevent your tiny child from calling out to you or coming to you if they want you.

Maybe for an older child to teach them not to wake you up early but certainly not a 2 or 3 year old.

My three year old has a groclock, and that's not what it's about (preventing her from calling to us) - not for us anyway. It's to stop her from thinking it's morning and turning all the lights on, waking her siblings, playing with noisy toys etc - when it's 4am 😂

It's easy to get confused about the time at that age, especially with the changing seasons. The number of times I've said, "yes, I know it's dark, but it is morning!" so it sometimes helps persuade her to get out of bed at the right time rather than stay in it!

She knows she can always shout or come to us if she needs anything. It's just a tool to help her regulate.

I'd leave him to it. I've got a just-turned-two-year-old, and of all his 8 NCT friends, only one doesn't come in to their parent's bed at night. It's developmentally normal at this age.

I'm not sure that you'd be able to change it without sleep training; which seems ineffective most of the time, but also wasn't something I was willing to do. At any age, really, but now I think my toddler could probably out stubborn me and would scream the place down...

It'll stop in time. Half my NCT group have new babies too. It works.

Ours did this until he was 3. He'd come and join us in the early hours and hog the bed. We transitioned by one parent getting into his bed with him when he woke up and his communication getting better so he understood he'd be alone in his own bed all night.

We bought a bigger bed :)

Ds1 stopped coming into our bed just before he turned 4, he's 7.5 now still pops in on a morning when he wakes to say he's going downstairs to watch Tv but sleeps all night now. Ds2 is 3.5 and still comes in every night anytime after 2am, he just climbs in and goes back to sleep. We go with whatever works to get us all the most sleep - any buying a super king was the best thing we could have ever done

Hi OP

Have you looked at controlled crying at all?
My 2 year old DD used to be a fab sleeper until a few months ago when she would start waking in the night wanting to come through to my room - also coincided with a bout of croup she had or if she had the cold etc. Fine, but it became a bit of a habit and, even when nothing was wrong with her, she still wanted to come through to my room - again, not a problem...until she would roll off my bed in the night.
In December, I discovered controlled crying (NOT the same as cry it out) and it's been an absolute game changer! Steps are as follows:
Step 1 - put child to bed as usual
Step 2 - when you hear them cry, wait 2 minutes before checking on them. When you check on them, reassure them then put them back to bed, say goodnight and walk away
Step 3 - If they continue crying, wait 5 minutes before checking on them as in step 2. Say goodnight then walk away.
Continue this pattern but extend the length of time you're leaving them to cry by a couple of minutes each time - so 7 minutes, then 10, then 12, then 15 etc...until your child learns to self soothe.

I usually offer DD a drink at each reassurance as the crying makes her cough sometimes. She's been sleeping through the night the majority (if not all) of nights now, bar a couple of wee cries in her sleep now and again that last less than a minute.

Here's a link where I got all this information from. It's worked for me and I swear by it!
https://www.madeformums.com/baby/what-is-controlled-crying/

My kids didn’t do this, but a friend solved it by making a bed on the floor in her room. Just a quilt on the floor and a pillow and her little one could go there in the middle of the night, but not into parents bed. It didn’t last too long because it wasn’t all that attractive as an option. Little one decided her own bed was better!

Our angel of a health visitor advised us to do whatever was necessary to give everyone the most sleep.

Some active, excited playing before bed shouldn't be causing waking up at night - it might cause problems falling asleep but it sounds like it isn't causing a problem there for you. (Also some children do well with some active play and then the contrast to the calming, relaxing bedtime routine, it seems to "use up" the last of their energy).

It likely is just because it's nice to cuddle up and sleep with you. Which is perfectly natural as many people have said, and this is fine, if that's working for you. But if it's not, it's also totally fine to have a boundary and say no. (Agree with checking that the bedroom is comfortable enough in terms of temperature too).

Just pick one, rather than saying oh no he isn't allowed in the bed and then in the middle of the night it's ssssh ssssh back to sleep darling.....oh go on alright then. That's confusing - just let him come in or don't.

If you want to hold the boundary but are finding it too hard to resist the temptation in the middle of the night, a good idea is to set yourself a goal time to get to (e.g. until 2am in his bed) and then over time extend that to 3am, 4am, 5am. The purpose of this is to give you practice at doing it, because sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't, and if it's 1:40am and you have been trying to settle him for 30 mins already you can think "I just have to try for another 20 mins then I can give up" which helps you push through, rather than without this goal you'd be thinking "This is taking ages and it's not going to work". It often does work when you stick with it an extra 20 mins.