Sleeping - that old chestnut!

[tor74]

I have an otherwise lovely 2.5 year old boy who has slept through the night 8pm-7am since he was 3 months old.

However five weeks ago he was poorly with a cold and temperature and was up a few times in the night for around a week.

You've guessed it, since then we've had major problems. It can anything from screaming for 2 hours at 3am or sleeping until 5am but then not going back to sleep at all. There's no pattern to it, it just seems to be as soon as he stirs in his sleep his immediate reaction is to cry out.

He tries every trick in the book: too cold, too hot, too dark, and last nights classic, my drink is in the wrong place!!

Our technique is to go in when he first starts crying, tuck him in, a bit of reassurance for a less than a minute then back out again. Leave him for 10 minutes then repeat, leave him for 20 minutes then repeat.

We've been doing this for four weeks and it's not working!!! We are at our wits end with him.

My questions is, can we just leave him to cry and will this work? ie not go in at all, not even once. Will he eventually get the message that night time is for sleeping and crying out isn't going to get any reward? Or is that just cruel?

We've also tried bribery, sticker charts and fairy lights on a timer ie no getting up until fairy lights come on at 7am. Nothing works.

Or can someone at least reassure me that they've been through it and it's just a phase? I'm sooooooo tired!!!

I have 2 dds - 5 and 21 months. DD1 is a great sleeper but when she goes through a phase, we wish for the Bedtime Fairy to come. The Bedtime Fairy leaves her a note telling her how well she's done under her pillow in the morning after breakfast if she's stayed in bed till waking up time. If she gets 3 notes in a row, the BF leaves her a little treat (a nice hankie, bookmark, pen, that kind of thing). Once she gets a treat, the BF goes away. We've been doing this on and off since she was about 4. Before that we used sticker charts but she got bored of them.

With DD2, she 95% of the time will sleep through but if she wakes up, I can't just go in, soothe her a bit then go back to bed. She's a screamer and just wants to be up and play. I broke the back of this by going in one night with a beaker of warm milk. Didn't say a word, just handed it to her and left again. She doesn't normally get warm milk in the night BTW. She then shouted on and off for an hour. I went in again and gave her a cuddle, etc and she shouted on and off for another hour but then went to sleep. She's not been as bad since. Now, I do go in if it sounds like genuine upset crying, but not if it is just shouty crying.

It is a phase and you need to stick to your guns

Thanks for the words of support. It's good to hear hear that it's ok to leave him crying for extended periods of time.

20 minutes seems like an eternity already but
tonight I'm just going to go in once to make sure he's ok and then leave him to it for however long it takes. It's shouty/angry crying that he's doing, it's like he's having a full on tantrum really. I know he's going to be horrified that I'm not going to be dropping everything to come him to tonight but I guess it's time for tough love!

Anyone else got any tips/postive outcomes?

I am actually going through the same scenario as you - it is horrible, I sympathise.

I have been told that if you let the child take control of where they want to sleep ie) which end of the bed, then they sleep better - this work for two nights for us - but then last night the pattern was broken as we had to use a child minder - so when I got home, I asked if he would like to sleep on the floor as a camp, lying on pillows with a duvet etc, which he loved and slept through.

Don't know if it will work in the long term, but so far so good.

I am also doing sticker charts and lots of praise and if by the end of the week he sleeps all night he gets a reward (toy)

I hope it gets better