4yo DD keep waking us up in the middle of the night! What to do?

[tasjaSAmuminSA]

I'm getting a bit tired now. It has been a bit more than a week now that she wakes us up in the middle of the night. Then she wants to watch TV, then she wants to lie between myself and DH. Then she can't sleep. I don't know what to do anymore.

This morning DH shouted at her because we are both tired and just want a good nights rest but she keeps popping in!

Any ideas what I can do? We can't sleep all on one bed. she kicks us and doesn't lie still. And I will not move out of my bed. She has her own bed.

I have same problem, my 4 yr old didn't sleep through the night until she was 3 and then she goes through phases of getting up between 3 and 4. Whenever this happens I refuse to have conversation with her other than"sshhh", don't put any lights on or give any entertainment then the most powerful thing is a sticker chart, she loves to get stickers for 'going to bed nicely', 'staying in own bed', and anything else we are trying to achieve. X amount of stickers gets X prize and so on. This will work for a while so at the very least you may get to catch up a bit on some sleep. Good luck.

You could try one of these clocks. I have heard mixed reviews of whether they work and we have one for DS and he kind of gets it although it's still early days.

The idea is that they see the stars out when they go to bed and they have to stay in bed until the sun comes up - there is a book to go with it to encourage them.

Rachel, thanks, but DD knows when the sun is up she can get up, and when it is dark, she has to stay in bed....but this last few days it doesn't work!

Cheekymonkey - thanks, will try the chart thing. Will go buy one this weekend! We never had a problem with her. She slept through from 2 months old. Now that she is almost 5 (in may) she's giving us troubles.

My 3.5 year old did this for a few weeks and it drove us bonkers. The thing which worked in the end was sheer bribery: if you manage to stay in your bed all night you will get a (much wanted) toy at the end of the week. He had one slip up but every night we'd day "3 nights to go", "2 nights to go" etc and then he got his toy and now he's in the groove and it seems to have worked. Fingers crossed x

I'm like cheekey I don't have any conversation either.

i am evangelical about my groclock but it worked to move 'morning' back a bit. I think it's fairly clear what is the middle of the fricking night without a clock to show them....

After 3 years of no sleep I struggle with conversation at any time

once it is obvious this is a habit and not a one off, (it sounds like is becoming a habit)- get out of your bed- when you find your little one sneaking into your bed- and take her straight back to her room. After a few tears and a few heart strings being tugged at, this will resolve . There is no pay off for her if you take her back to bed and it won't take long for her to decide to just stay in bed when she comes into a light sleep- and nod back off again.

When my first dc was 4 this happened to us. I heard from a couple of sources that it's quite normal. Their brains go through a bit of development and it leads to night wakening and needing a bit of reassurance.
Sure enough, it happened with the others too.
What we did was we let them in for 10 minutes or so. They were so jiggly and chatty that it was never going to be an option to have them sleep with us. So we'd say 'hi there, what's made your brain whizz?' have a small chat, a good cuddle, and they KNEW that they'd be back in their own beds soon.
That worked for us. A few times dd got upset and we were as compassionate as at other times of the day but also quite firm.

It is a phase that did end for us, partly I think because we were told it was a phase and didn't get stressy about it. We were exhausted though while it was happening.