Our son has recently just turned four and for the last couple of weeks, bed times and night times have become a nightmare.
He has always been a brilliant sleeper, we’ve had a good bedtime routine for him and he’s always settled straight to sleep and stayed a asleep for at least 11 hours.
However, despite nothing significant changing, he now refuses to not only go to bed but wakes consistently through the night too.
As soon as I finish his bedtime story, he starts to get upset saying he wants me to stay, he doesn’t want to sleep and I have to stay with him until he falls asleep. My husband and I then go in to him when he wakes in the night to settle him and stay until he goes to sleep. Sometimes this takes longer than others and my husband has to sleep on the floor in my son’s room.
Its becoming a nightmare, we’re all sleep deprived. So after researching online, we decided the tough love approach might be best and he should cry to settle back to sleep, if he got up, we should put him back to bed and repeat. Meltdowns of epic proportions ensued and I found myself literally wrestling him into bed kicking and screaming him hitting out, for him to jump straight back out again and run after me out the door. I just couldn’t continue with this, it was awful, having to physically restrain him into bed just seems too extreme! We’ve tried rewards/incentives – not interested, we’ve tried the night light – didn’t like it, we’ve tried special teddies/blankets – useless, leaving the door open – no good (unless we’re standing in the door way so he can see us – pointless!) we’ve tried discipline, if you get out of bed or shout you’re going on the naughty step – just results in lots of crying and meltdowns on the naughty step!
Is there anything else we can try or do we just wait for the phase to pass? Anyone else experienced this? We have an 8 year old too so really concerned about it affecting her.