tips to help 3 yo sleep without waking several times a night

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Just wondering if anyone has any tips / advice for helping a nearly 3 year old to sleep through the night. Our daughter has previously been a good sleeper, but had a couple of illnesses in December (chicken pox included) and now wakes 3/4 times a night every night calling for Mummy and Daddy and it takes a while to settle her. It seems that she has just got into a habit of calling out whenever she wakes in the night of instead of settling herself back to sleep. I appreciate it's not the worst sleeping problem, but I know she is usually a good sleeper, but I can't seem to break this pattern she is now in. I have considered putting her younger brother(he is 18 months) in with her thinking she might settle if she had company but I am not sure if this is a recipe for disaster. Any thoughts etc if anyone has had anything similar would be appreciated.

I have twins who turned 3 a couple of weeks ago and for their birthday we bought a gro clock. They had also got into the habit of waking through the night and had paddies when not allowed into our bed (even they have never, ever slept in it!). They had also been really good sleepers.

Well, all I can say is in the space of 3 days they learnt not to get out of bed before the sun turns yellow. They were used to sleeping in the pitch black so I thought the (dim) blue night light would keep them awake but it hasn't at all. Instead, even though I can hear that they are awake before 7am sometimes, they will not get up! Bloody fantastic! And then as soon as it turns yellow, out they come singing 'the sun come up!' and we have to go and have a look. At the weekends it's set later so we even get a bit of a lie in!

You get a story book with the clock to read at bedtime so it really makes them feel part of the process of saying night night to the sun etc

It has worked in the night too, so no more disturbed nights for us. I would highly recommend these clocks, it has been a god send for us and I know of a few friends who rate them highly too.

hth and good luck

We have a similar thing in our children's bedroom - we use a timer (you can get them at Ikea) that turns the electric on and off at a certain time. We've connected a night light to it and it switches on at 7:00am. We have two sticker charts (I've dome them myself with an image of their favorite tv show The Octonauts and boxes where to put the stickers, and 10 little boxes underneath). They get stickers if they stay in bed and not call out during the night (only our 5 year old was doing that. The other one sleeps through anything). And when they get to 10 stickers they get a little present - a book or a little toy, or a little bag of sweets... It really worked, for our 5 year old.

Yes we've tried the gro clock - had limited results - at least it kept her in her room, not in our bed! But she still wakes even with the blue light on the clock and wants someone to go into her. Also tried the reward chart, but with not much success. Wondering if we are going to have to go cold turkey and try the rapid return technique of putting her back to bed....

I managed to 'cure' my 2 1/2 year old of the same problem just before Christmas by promising her a present in the morning if she didn't call out. It sort of helped that I had a stack of little Christmas presents from relatives/friends to pick from but it only took a couple of nights and she then slept through again and didn't keep expecting a present.

I've tried reward charts in the past but she always seems to get bored after one or two stickers (bit too young I guess). However, a bit of instant gratification seems to work accompanied by a bit of over the top praise!