What's happened to my toddler DD?

[BetteDavis01]

I'm really concerned about my DD, she is 2 years 9 months and i'm at the end of my tether and beginning to despair.

She hardly eats, just picks at food.

However, the main issue concerning me is her bedtime behaviour. Her bedtime used be 7.30pm but we can't get her to go to bed until 9pm/ 9.30pm. Then either myself or my DP
have to sit with her until she drops off. If we don't, she screams until she vomits.

Once she has fallen asleep, she often wakes up at. 2/3/4 am and demands to come into our bed, she wakes up screaming / hysterical.

What can be wrong with her? We are really getting concerned about her plus increasingly exhausted ourselves.

Grateful for any help you can offer.

Poor you, you must be shattered. Can't do links at the moment but have a look on amazon at My child won't eat and also sound sleep which I think is by Sarah Woodhouse.

Thank you, I'll try anything!

I feel upset, stressed, tired and fed up!

I also think she is a very highly strung child, everything seems to be a drama and she wants everything done NOW! She is currently obsessed with pressing buttons and switchesi.e light switches, car key fob buttons and lift buttons when we go out.

I'm so FED up!

I heard of toddlers going through a very picky phase around this age (mine was always 'food resistant') ... Also I think this is the age when they start having nightmares - have you tried talking to her, asking lots of questions to see if she may have nightmares?

Well, she has said the words 'ghosts' and 'spooky' recently quite a bit. She had never heard those words at home so it must have come from nursery. So yes, that is a possibility. But what can I do, if it is nightmares?

She vomited again tonight because I put her to bed and went downstairs ( I HAD to go to the toilet)

Selfishly, I can't live like this, it's driving me nuts.

Maybe they are doing Halloween stuff at nursery?

Does she nap in the day? Or could she be overtired?
My DS is nearly three, he will not go to sleep at bedtime if he has a daytime nap. I have found that he also has trouble getting to sleep if he is overtired. Our current routine is bath and pjs 1800, story then lights out about 1830. I used to have to sit by his bed but have gradually moved from the head of the bed, to the foot if the bed, to the door and now I lay on my bed reading until he is asleep.
We sometimes have visits from him overnight and it depends on how tired we are as to how we react, ideally I take him back to his bed and sometimes I have to stay until he is asleep, lots of times I let him crawl in our bed and go to sleep then move him back to his own bed once he is sound asleep.
Good luck hope you get it sorted, I always try to remember that this is such a short period of their lives and a full nights sleep will come eventually, there are so many phases they go through.

You could try sitting next to her bed, not talking, then gradually moving nearer the door, then eventually you sit just outside the door, it's called the disappearing chair technique I think.
Poor you, it must be very tiring and frustrating for all of you.

Think nightmares can kick in around now. My DD was awful with them. Still has them now at 6 but not as often. We did the nightlight, and dreamcatcher thing. Also have you been talking alot about christmas. I remember my health visitor saying lots of kids suffer this time of year because we tell them Father Christmas comes into the house without the need of a key in the middle of the night. Scary to a little one.

Terrible twos. She sounds overtired & probably is if she's up so late. Don't make routine too long then be really boring at bedtime, just keep saying night night and putting them back. Eventually they get bored too. It's hard to keep calm and persevere but it works surprisingly quickly. One of the worst phases I think - we had it just before dd2 was born at 2.7 (on holiday - I remember sobbing that I'd never have another evening ever again etc).

We had four months of this when we made the cot to bed transition at the age of two. Seemed to ruin bedtime and also coincided with serious terrible twos onslaught!! In the end it was playing around with nap time which really helped (and I'm afraid the dreaded supernanny techniques). First of all we dropped the nap - bloody nightmare as she was overtired and totally beside herself by bedtime, then shortened it to half an hour after lunch - not long enough and hated being woken up. Was at the end of my tether!! In the end we settled on 45-60 mins max anytime between 10.30 and 1.30 but never after this. Also got a gro-clock which she responded to quite well. Good luck - you have my sympathy.

For a start, she's not really a toddler any more, she's verging on a little girl, and struggling to take more control of her world (demonstrated by wanting to press buttons etc and actually influence events). Dismissing it as terrible twos is a missed opportunity to improve things.

I presume she's in a bed not a cot? Where are you with potty training? When are her mealtimes, when does she nap and for how long? There are all sorts of changes you could try to her routine to make life easier for both of you as she's clearly not happy with the way things are at the moment.

Yes yes to nightmares. Their imagination really kicks off and lying alone in the dark will scare them.

We've been going through this with DS.

What we had to do was reassure him that we would be there for him if he was scared, that we would come back if he was scared and that we would tell any ghosts etc to go away.

So I'd put her to bed as normal (or a bit earlier), lights out and sit with her until she falls asleep. Do this for two nights. Third night, tell her that you're going to the toilet and will be back in one minute. Leave and make sure you go back in one minute. Then sit with her until she sleeps. Next night, you'll be away for two mins, then work up to ten minutes over the nights. Always always go back in the allotted time as you're aim is to build up her trust and stop her getting scared.

The poor girl sounds terrified but doesn't quite know how to articulate it, hence the screams and vomiting.

We did this with ds and now he's happy for us to go (what we do is talk about his day in the dark for a bit and tell nice stories. This relaxes him in the dark and he can drift off easily that way).