DS (2.5) suddenly scared at night

[TeaCrawledOutFromUnderRocks]

In the past week DS has suddenly started waking up at night screaming. On quite a few occasions he has mentioned 'spiders' and a 'spider in cot' - but there is no spider to be seen. During the day, he now tells me he doesn't like spiders, whereas he used to like them a lot.

I've got no idea where this has come from, but it seems to be stopping him going to sleep at night, waking him up in the night, stopping him going back to sleep AND waking him up early. I hate the idea of him being scared of something and I don't want to make things worse.

We're thinking of putting him a bed soon - would a change of scenery like this help, do you think? He does have a nasty cough at the moment, which really isn't helping.

Selfishly, I'm in a really bad mood today and feeling rough, so I really, really want a half decent night's sleep tonight.

Does anyone have any experience or tips to share? Thanks!

Does he have a nightlight? My DC suddenly started needing one at that age.

I find that a Spider Out Ceremony before bedtime works well in a phase like this. Big brush, sweep under bed, shake out bedclothes. Make a big production of shouting OUT OUT OUT SPIDERS OUT.

Oh yes - my DD (2.9) has been waking in the night for months now.... sometimes screaming, sometimes just shouting for us. It seems to be every night now - and we dont know the solution either!!!!

She has never been one for going to bed quietly, and when she wakes in the night i think she finds it hard to settle herself.

She has a night light too which I think helps..but sometimes she wants the lamp on as well - then is awake at 5 cause she thinks it morningtime!!!

Hopefully it is just a phase.... Deffo think it would be a good idea to try a bed. Make him feel like he is a big boy now. Like you said, change of scenery too.

I like the idea of the Spider Out Ceremony!! Brill idea!

Thanks for these comments, ladies. I had a quick look earlier and didn't have time to respond but tonight we did have a Spider Out ceremony and introduced a night light. I still had a grobag egg from the early, neurotic days of motherhood and I told him it was a special night light for keeping spiders away.

I think we will go for the big bed soon, as well.

Thanks again!

Hello

DD is almost 12 yrs now and she went through a phase at around the same age where she suddenly hated sleeping in the dark.

We put it down to her becoming more aware of fairy stories, eg. the wicked witch or the big bad wolf weren't just words but became a character in her imagination. So we wondered if her imagination was kicking in strongly and she was having nightmares.

We used a nightlight and ensured there was nothing that was giving a scary shadow. We also got into the habit of reading a bad/ugly/evil-free story to her and stopped her from watching a cartoon that came on occasionally - Mona the Vampire? Harmless enough but with an imaginative mind developing (DD would talk of vampires) we just eliminated most things that could be causing concern.

DD stopped the nightmares pretty quickly. She did have a series of nightmares when she was 9 but it was linked to a project at school! And she does rarely have the odd nightmare but she seems to find them funny nowadays and not alarming.

Thanks for that, January. I do wonder whether DS had seen something scary because of all the halloween stuff that's been about recently. I guess he's of an age where I need to be more aware of these things!