My 2.5yr old wants me to hold her hand when she does to sleep

[ZRH]

I must admit I let this go on for too long since we moved house! It has progressed into me trying to get her to sleep for approx 2hrs every night and is causing a great amount of stress. For the last few nights I have not stayed with her and continued to go back in to reassure, tell her I love her and that I'm just in the other room and then walk out. But she really, really gets upset and says things like 'I need you with me to go to sleep' and 'it makes me sad that you're not with me'. Her speech is good and I think it is making this harder. Is anyone else still battling with sleep seperation at this age? I feel like I've left it too late and I'm wrapped around her little finger to be honest!

That was meant to say ' when she goes to sleep' ! See what sleep deprevation does? ;-)

I have a thread on almost exactly the same thing, although my dd is a little older than yours.

give her something of yours to hold/cuddle - tell her it's special for her

story tapes

tell her she's briiliant for managing to not call you while you clean the toilet/clean the bath/fo;d the washing etc etc

ZRH, our 2.5 year old will only go to sleep if dh or, at a push, me is in her bed with her, we used to have to sit by her cot and hold her hand, but that doesn't seem to work now she is in a bed.

We have tried lots of stuff (story tapes, trying to leave gradually, etc) but she gets so hysterical (it doesn't help that she has asthma, which creates sleep isues of it's own, with night coughing).

I'm afraid I have absolutely no advice, I just wanted you to know, your not the only one!

Struggling with this at the moment as well. The disruption of the holidays seemes to have unsettled him.
DH sits by his bed and holds his hand, I find I can get away with sitting on the spare bed and going 'shush' occasionally.
Cuddling Mummy's teddy bear seems to help (the scraggier and grubbier a teddy, the better).
I'm planning on gradually moving towards the door and then out of it by the end of the summer ..... we'll see!

DD's sleep went completely wrong at this age, and the thing that finally worked was telling her we'd be back in five minutes, and going back as promised (sometimes extending it to ten minutes if there were a lot of visits) until she was asleep. It was an unlikely success (all the conventional stuff like gradual retreat did NOT work) but was amazingly efficient at getting her to calm down from near hysteria to lying quietly and trying to sleep.

We still have to do it now and she's 4, but it's a lot less bother than sitting in her room (and for some reason she doesn't make babysitters do it ).

Yes, the going away for 5 mins worked for me too.
I said things like 'Mummy needs a wee, i'll be back soon' then going back in 5 or 10 mins
or 'I need to get a tissue' etc

Ended up with me putting him to bed one night, him immediately saying 'Mummy need a wee?', I said 'yes, good night', went off and that was it!

Thanks for the messages! Reassuring to know. I guess it stresses me out because she has never been a good sleeper and often wakes in the night and is awake for up to three hours!! She always wants me to sit with her if she wakes in the night and when I say I'm going back to my bed she screams SO LOUD (basically a tantrum) but when its going on for so long in the night its such a battle! We all end up exhausted and grumpy the next day. Hey, I guess it will get easier the stronger I am about letting her go to sleep by herself in the evening. I'm going to give the story tape idea a go