Nearly 4 year old has never slept through the night

[Downandout21]

My nearly 4 year old DD has never slept fully through, not once!!!

She is currently mid meltdown and I'm at the end of my tether.

I've tried everything same bed time routine every night, wind down time, relaxing bed time nothing works

She falls asleep but wakes multiple times however doesn't go back to sleep for hours.

Tonight she has been up for 2 hours screaming, she refuses to go to bed, says she needs a wee but won't go to the toilet, wants a cuddle but screams when I go near her.

I've tried speaking softly, distraction, making it as boring as I can, no lights in, ignoring and nothing g works, she screams for hours.

The neighbours are now complaining and to be honest I can't blame them

What on earth am I supposed to do, I can barely function

Talk to your HV or GP, you say she's screaming, does she wake up screaming? As it could be night terrors, they can seem as if they are awake even but actually aren't. My own experience off this was a good friend's little girl, they had sleep observations done to determine the issue.

If you hadn't mentioned the screaming then I would have said it was just normal night waking as some children still wake up at this age. But I think you probably need medical help with this.

Definitely get support. What is she like in the day? Both mine were (are 😭) terrible sleepers. One first slept through age 7. The other slept through occasionally from 5 BUT still wakes 4 or 5 nights a week age 10 😭😭😭

Both of mine have ADHD which severely affects their sleep. They both also have diagnosed anxiety leading to nightmares and wake ups.

The eldest also had severe reflux for years which didn't help sleep.

Basically it all took a horrendous toll on me so huge sympathy from me. We have done whatever was needed throughout the years to optimise sleep including buying both DC a double bed each so I can be comfy when I inevitably end up with one of them. After a string of bad nights DS2 will come and sleep with me and DH in his room so I don't have to get up so much.

Definitely not night terrors.

Same here. We haven’t have a full nights sleep in 4 years

Hes recently been sleeping in our bed more and we actually get more sleep as in his own he will wake probably every 1-2 hours after midnight and either refuses to go back in his or takes forever to go back to sleep even in our bed. At which point im
wide awake.

Since I have just let him fall
asleep and stay in our bed all
night (since about Christmas, as he had been ill a few weeks at first which is when I gave up) we actually all get better sleep, even though he wakes still he goes straight back

we actually spent a few weeks end of 23 in hospital for something else. I told them his sleep was awful and they saw him walking up and down corridor in the middle of the night and said it was ‘normal’ so nothing they could suggest