Cried for 90 mins

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Last night my little one woke and was creaming at 4.15am. I thought something was wrong but he just wanted to go downstairs. I tried to comfort him in my arms but nothing was settling him. Took him in my bed which he rarely comes into and we watched my phone. Probably shouldn't have done that but I can't stand his crying.

He wasn't sleeping but it was nice to have him under the duvet with me.

After 10 mins I put him back in his cot and his room. Same issue occured again - crying to go downstairs.

I just left him in the cot until he eventually slept at 6am.

I did go in one or twice into the room but honestly I can't settle him when he wants to go downstairs and I told him it's dark outside.

I was watching him on the room camera so he wasn't in any danger.

Did I do the wrong thing? Next door is hard of hearing so won't wake him. I live just with toddler.

...are you saying that anyone who has their own children inevitably learns that leaving a child to cry alone for extended periods is fine? Bit of a weird comment.

Many people have to get up earlier than 7 in order to fit in school runs and work commutes and other morning tasks. But that’s beside the point. Nothing wrong with an adult getting up at whatever time they like but why should they enforce that time on a child? It would be perfectly normal biologically for a child to wake at, say, 6AM but you want that child to stare quietly at the ceiling for an hour? I wake naturally at around 6AM and it would drive me insane if someone made me lie in bed for an hour with nothing to do. 100x worse for a 2 year old to cope with that. By all means encourage them to wait but if they start getting distressed I think it’s pretty lazy parenting to just ignore them.

I have two children, including a two year old, and two step children.

I think being firm on wake time and not going downstairs is absolutely fine at age 2. As is not having him in your bed - unless you want to make a rod for your own back.

Don’t use the phone next time. Hopefully there won’t be a next time as you did not take him downstairs and start the day at 4am!

I would probably pop in and check every so often but I don’t think you did anything wrong. His basic needs were met and he was having a tantrum as he wanted to get up. If you let him - he either cries every night at 4 am which is worse than one night or that’s your new wake time.

Like others, we agreed an acceptable wake time - 7am. Anything earlier than that is treated as the middle of the night. No talking, no attention, no lights, back to bed. It works. Unless you fancy getting up at ridiculous O’clock for years!

This is why you did the right thing. The minute you give in to letting him downstairs, is the minute you lose control. It's awful and heartbreaking but you need to stay strong. It doesn't take children long to learn. You're doing ok, don't let it get you down.

Did he say why he wanted to go downstairs? I know sometimes they ask for totally irrational things(My three year old demanded a green door she saw in a garden wall at Hampton court). Good to take him into your bed but I wouldn’t have let him watch a screen which can be stimulating and keep him awake. Maybe a story or just talk to him till he falls asleep next time.

Well he knew you were there for him. That time is too early to go downstairs and you/he needed sleep.

Sounds like he was crying because he was frustrated, not lonely or frightened. I would have left him too but gone back to check just like you did. You need sleep and he needs to learn when it is and isn't okay to go downstairs (has he got a groclock or something else to let him know when getting up time is?)

You think a child alone, in the dark, trapped in a cot is simply having a tantrum? If your child was having a tantrum during the day, would you think it was ok to put them in their cot and leave them there to cry for 90mins? If your child was crying and calling for you during the day would you ignore them?

If my child is crying and it’s not an appropriate time to get up, then you can be as sure as hell I’m going to sit with that child to give them comfort. If they get back to sleep then great. If not, then it’s cuddles. Anything else is just lazy.

The OP doesn’t give a shit about giving in to tantrums - her first tactic was to stick the toddler infront of her phone ffs.

You sound like you’ve swallowed a Gina Ford book. Some children will naturally wake earlier than 7AM and that’s ok. Some will occasionally wake earlier because they feel cold / wet nappy / heard a noise etc. It’s a rare child that can go back to sleep at this time because the ‘wake-up hormone’ cortisol is circulating now.

He might just be getting to the age where he can have some sort of visual clue as to when it is ok to be downstairs, and rewarded for it. We used to have one of those sunshine clocks that lit up at whatever time we had set as being ok to be up. So 6am/6.30am/7am depending on the child and our knowledge of their night sleep patterns.

I never got up with mine if they woke up at 5am, as it's an unacceptable time for us to get up in the morning, and I certainly didn't want to allow their body clocks to set to that time with us both having to get up and go to work an hour or two later - we needed that extra sleep, thanks.

We would just keep cuddling and quietly settling them, lying down in their room, keeping the lights off, reading a bit, creeping out of the room, Calpol/Teetha if their teeth were hurting...a bit of reassurance and comfort but not a daytime routine/start to the day and a difference between day and night. We quickly learned that "being firm" or "leaving them to cry" was instinctively wrong in most cases, no matter what Gina Ford or Supernanny thought about it.

DD1 would be hysterical at about the age of two and a bit sometimes when we settled her back down, really scared and had probably had a nightmare, probably a developmental stage and because she had started pre-school and felt a bit less secure.

This was different from her being just slightly unsettled after being settled back down, and in fact becoming calmer and going to sleep- then it's counterproductive to pick them up them up again.

That said I think leaving them to cry and going off for a cry yourself for a bit just to try and recover, is perfectly acceptable and normal. It's really hard and please do take both of you to a sympathetic GP and ask for more help if you need to.

Also don't try and be perfect or beat yourself up about it. We ALL make mistakes as parents, and I've no idea whether we got it right, we just did what we thought at the time, and you will get through this stage and out the other side.

Personally yeah I wouldn’t go on my phone at that time with them coz it overstimulates their brain/blue light etc so you made it very very hard for them to go back to sleep.

id have worked through a checklist which you haven’t mentioned if you did eg nappy leak, calpol for pain, hungry, thirsty, cold. They are the reasons I normally wake up. I’d be livid if I was any of those and was shut in a room.

i also have a child of similar age. If I can’t settle them I actually start my day then and try for an earlier nap/bed time. Personally I don’t agree with your approach for the reason that cry it out has been scientifically debunked now (even popping in every so often it’s still cry it out).
also because a 2 year old isn’t capable of understanding or amusing themselves for that period of time, developmentally, so it wasn’t really ever going to go well.

I have two children and I completely agree with that poster.

Being a parent doesn’t make you someone who decides it’s best to leave children to cry… What a strange comment.

Why not take him down? Snuggle on sofa? Read a story, then take him back to bed! Leaving him to cry for hours and half is mean! My baby is only 1 and sometimes that’s what she wants.. go downstairs. Keep the lights low and read a story, maybe a feed or cup of warm water; she’s usually ready to sleep again within 30 minutes!

I agree with the others though that I stay in the room for as long as possible, dim lights etc, say it’s still night time.
i say I’m sleeping but they are welcome to read books or do quiet play, but I’ll stay in the room with them. Attempting sleep!

they go through so many developments at this age so I think their sleep can be a bit disturbed. It’s really hard for the parents!

5 minutes of crying is a tantrum, an hour and a half is genuine distress.

Did you check if he was hungry or thirsty?

Did you check his ears this morning?
If my DS screamed for hours during the night it usually meant an ear infection the next day.

Agreed. You made a very different call to the one I would have made.

You did the right thing! You don’t want to start things you don’t wish to continue. Doing that once is making a rod your own back. Eventually when he wakes in the night, he’ll just go back to sleep - as there’s nothing to get up for when it’s dark.

Yes, you're right, it was easier for me as I only had the one child to worry about. It would be awful to have a toddler behaving like this and waking your newborn! (But it was still a difficult period)

No I never left her to cry for extended periods. But there's crying and crying isn't there? I mean you can normally tell from the tone when they are in real distress. The OP did say that she checked on him at intervals.

It's hard, but I think she needs to learn to trust her own judgement. If his behaviour the next day still shows signs of distress, then yes, she probably left him too long. If he's like it night after night then she needs a different approach. Lots of people have shared what worked for them, hopefully that'll give her some ideas to try.

No, allowing your child to cry for 90 minutes alone is not ok.

Have you considered if he was having a night terror? My daughter used to wake up screaming and would appear to be awake but couldn’t be settled and was very irrational. Would fight me off when I tried to cuddle her. Turned out she wasn’t properly awake. Had no memory of it later.

I think at 4/5am I would have just got up. I learnt that if my kids woke after 2am they were unlikely to go back to sleep so it was best to just get up, stick something in the tv for them and lie half awake in the sofa. I have a dc who has always woken at 5am…..she’s now 19 and still wakes at 5am. Yes it’s not ideal when you have to get up and care for them but at that time it’s unlikely they will go back to sleep.

They are also all different. DD1 had phases of difficult sleep problems, one at about 2.5 and one at about 4/5 when she started school. DD2 slept like a log at night as a baby and toddler, very laid back, never went through what DD1 did- but was always a long/ tall, physically strong and able baby and toddler and could climb out of her cot, whatever we did.

So we changed it into a cot bed, as this was actually safer (after climbing and falling and bumping her head) we put cushions on the floor as we'd often find her asleep down there, she hardly ever cried if she fell out of bed - most of the time she didn't even wake up.

This worked until she was about eighteen months and we found her at 7am one morning downstairs asleep on a chair, covered in a baby blanket with one of the cats sitting on her, having got through the stair gate, having eaten several fairy cakes which were on a high shelf in a box (she had climbed up to get them). It wasn't that she cried and we ignored her, she just thought she'd go on a little adventure and had no instinct to wake us up at all!

She is 16 now, 5'10", slim and strong, plays in defence for the local women's football team, still a good eater and of course now getting her out of bed is more the issue.

Here’s a novel idea- there can be more than one reason for a course of action?

Sometimes they wake very early and that's it, they're awake for the day. Those days are pretty tough. I would probably have gone downstairs with him, myself, and tried to doze on the sofa whilst he watched some TV.