Help! 3 year old constantly waking at night

[Bahhumbug83]

Any advice appreciated... My DH and I are at our wits end with our little boys' constant night waking.

DS is 3.8 and since around Christmas time he hasn't slept through the night once. A 'good' night for us means only waking twice. A 'bad' night would be between 6 and 8 times. There are more bad than good nights and we are just exhausted, rattled and bad tempered. It's feeling very much like those early newborn days.

Don't get me wrong, DS is a delight (mostly) to be around in the day. He is bright, funny and somehow doesn't seem to be remotely affected by the endlessly disturbed sleep. I can tell he gets a little tired in the afternoons but he ploughs on through until bedtime which is around 7-7.30.

The night wakings revolve around him crying out for Mummy or Daddy anytime from 11pm to 5am. He doesn't leave his bed, but will shout out (very loudly) until someone goes to him, where we invariably have to tuck him back in or pass him his water bottle.

Sometimes he also wakes before 11pm, seemingly inconsolable and very distressed. I believe he is having night terrors when this happens but the rest of the night, he is perfectly lucid during the wakings and settles back down relatively easily.

There has been no change or improvement in 4 months, and it's beginning to feel like this is more than just a phase.

For context, he still wears a nappy at night, and we change it if it seems very full during the night. He doesn't seem to be anywhere near being dry at night.

We have a lot going on at home right now (extension and renovation) but the waking predates this.

Has anyone got any suggestions??

No suggestions, just sympathy. My daughter of the same age has never slept through since birth. Like you, wakes a minimum of twice a night and we are all so tired, except her she's full of beans constantly.

@BeeYellowMumma Thank you. There is some comfort in knowing I'm not alone.

I hate how the exhaustion creeps in and starts to affect relationships at home. We know very well its because we are all so tired but it means my husband and I have zero quality time and very few nice words to say to each other at the moment.

Our DD who is 5 is terrible at going to bed (often needing us to repeatedly put her back to bad until 9pm) so we only have a fraction of time to do anything for ourselves before we have to tend to the demands of DS.

I'm sure I will still look back fondly on these days when they are throwing other challenges my way

Would co-sleeping for a while be an option?

@BettyForgety I have considered putting a mattress in his room and sleeping there.

Co-sleeping in my bed probably not an option. He is also a very restless sleeper...constant fidgeting

Have you tried a weighted blanket? I found that very helpful with my 4 year old who kept waking & had night terrors also. Also trying to make bedtime as relaxing as possible, no stimulation (tv tablet etc). Have you tried a red night light? We bought a tommee tippee one which is great.

I agree with pp, try a weighted blanket.

My Dd stopped sleeping age 4, I've actually got a note on my phone about what we did which I'll just paste...

Bedtime passes
If you think the not sleeping is a psychological thing then you could try something called bedtime tokens / bedtime passes. Start with a family meeting, draw up some sleep rules, get your child to suggest and draw them to give them some ownership.

Agree a reward. We've used penny sweets and playmobil. We used playmobil, I bought a camping set and split it all up, put the names of all the bits in a pot and Daughter got a new piece at random every morning she had tokens left.

Make loads of tokens together. I mean loads. If the child gets up at bedtime or calls you in the night then that's absolutely fine and allowed, but costs 1 token. Put them in a pot by their bed. If there are tokens left in the morning, the child gets a reward.

For the first few nights the child needs to succeed. So you need more tokens than they will use. My Daughter used more than 30 the first night. When they're in the swing of it, start to gradually reduce the number of tokens. It took us a few weeks to get down to 6. My daughter started to fail a few times and had to try. We got stuck at this level a while. Eventually we got down to 3 and at some point the system was gradually forgotten. 30+ night wakings down to 1 or 2 was a lot bloody better.

You can look this up, I believe it's called bedtime passes and there's a few articles out there.

Our main issue was night wakings rather than bedtime, my daughter would wake at 1:30am like a clock and not go back to sleep, sometimes at all. We found she needed to go to bed later for quite a long time then gradually move bedtime earlier in incremental steps. There is a technique used on insomniac adults where you work out how long you can sleep in a block without waking (xhrs), work out what time you need to get up, and don't go to bed until xhrs before then. We did that too. My daughter would sleep 6hrs then wake. We were on with morning at 6am. So if she'd have been an adult she would have stayed up till midnight for a week or more, aiming to sleep 12-6, then started creeping bedtime forward. We did 10pm bedtime.

We also went down the meditation visualisations route which she still uses. She's nearly 7 now. She is in bed now but not settled, school has thrown this week a bit. She still has a night light and music all night.

Hope things improve for you. Long term sleep deprivation is a destroyer.

My three year old does this as well. Actually all of my children have done this so it's totally normal for me. So obviously zero advice from me but mine have all been terrible sleepers so this is actually the best phase we've ever had as she can be tucked back in and she snuggles back up so no up all night crying like she did as a baby. All I can say is that it does pass as it passed with my older two.

My 3.5 year old has been doing this, and last week I sat him down and said now it’s bed time and you’re a big boy we won’t be coming to see you until morning, so don’t shout in the night as we won’t come… sounds harsh but so far has worked! The first night he shouted for 20 min and I ignored him- he wasn’t sad was more angry shouting at being ignored!