3 year old waking in the night and I can’t deal with the anger

[Peonyyyy]

Just having a moan. Our boy has always been a fantastic sleeper - we put him down awake from anc early age and he slept through other than when he’s sick or sleep regression.

But the last 6 months have been hell. At bedtime he requests more and more things - more teddies, books etc and finally goes to sleep. He also now demands a night light. He then wakes at 4-5am or sometimes 2am because a teddy las fallen out of his cot, or something else and we go in and sort it. That used to be the end of it, we would pick up the teddy or give him a drink and say it’s still night time and he would go back to sleep.

Now it’s gone downhill even more, for example tonight he woke at 4 shouting mummy, this then turned to crying. I went in and he said his teddy fell out the cot so I found it and put it back. I gave him a cuddle and said night night and he got really angry saying no I want another teddy, I was saying no you already have 3 teddies in your cot and it’s night time etc. he’s now hysterical so I say night night and go to the toilet (I’m 6 months pregnant). My husband comes in to deal with it, ends up showing him videos on his phone. That’s still not enough for him and he screams when put back in his cot. It’s now 5am and we’ve both tried. We’ve tried explaining it to him, telling him he has to stay in his cot until morning as everyone is sleeping, tried saying ok one video then sleep but he still gets angry and wants more.

he actually makes me so angry that I end up speaking to him in an angry tone and when I leave the room I scream in frustration. Tonight I even threw my phone and went downstairs and screamed in the kitchen.

this is followed by lots of self loathing that I can’t keep it together, but I’m just so tired and scared about having a newborn soon with this going on. I just need it to end. I feel like I just want to leave the house and not come back as his crying makes me so angry.

He’s an intelligent boy I don’t know if explaining it to him in the day will help or something.

we have tried bringing him in our bed and he NEVER sleeps, just wriggles around and gets annoyed and wants to go downstairs.

it’s now 5.30 and I can still hear my husband dealing with him. I said we can’t give in to this but honestly what else can we do? He goes hysterical and cries for hours.

It doesn’t matter whether he naps or not. It doesn’t matter what his bedtime is. He just wakes up and doesn’t feel tired and therefore makes us do things with him.

At the moment it feels like life is hell. I have to go to work in 2 hours. I hate myself for getting so angry but in these moments I just hate him. I feel like the extreme anger I’m feeling probably comes from my childhood. My mum has told me that from about 1 year old I wanted to get up with my mum, one night she left me and I cried until the morning (for like 5 hours). I wonder if it’s history repeating. I feel like a terrible mother because I have always been quick to anger and can’t calm down, I mostly keep this in check and I’m very gentle and understanding with him, but when this happens at night I really struggle and I lose it and hate myself.

When he’s not doing this he is a wonderful, kind, gentle and sensitive child, not in any way crazy like some toddlers.

He is overtired from today because he was back at nursery after a holiday and I know he is over tired but how the hell do you get a toddler to just bloody sleep at night when they are over tired?!?! At my wits end

@regementaria he woke up at 4, this is not an acceptable time. 5.30 is a dream in comparison, we regularly get up with him at 5.30 (although I miss the 7-7 days!)

We had the same around 2.5yrs old. We switched the cot into a bed (with a bed guard). It made a huge difference and they loved their grown up room. We were worried about wandering around the house, but they never have! They sometimes wake up and crawl into our bed and fall back to sleep, often without waking us!!

Mine do the endless requests, it's more about wanting you to be focused on them/ the thing they want, then the thing itself. Might it be time to move to a bed or take the side off his cot? Then make everything DIY

My Teddy fell out

• pick it up then

I need a drink

• there's a bottle next to your bed

I want more teddies/blankets

• you know where they are

Once he doesn't have you getting all the things for him, he might not actually be that bothered.

I'd get him out the cot ASAP. He may wake up, grab his own teddy, and settle again. Also you don't want any kind of link between him leaving the cot, and new baby arriving. So do it now before baby arrives.

He sounds chronically exhausted tbh. Try an earlier bed time for at least a week. Don't give up after day 1 because it "didn't work". Ban all naps at nursery.

PP makes à good point about him being able to meet his own needs too. Put a drink (in a leak proof cup) in his bed.

Does it matter if he grabs an extra couple of teddies?

You may find he potters quietly when awake if he can get out of bed too.

@Haroldwilson thank you regarding the cot bed, we know that ideally it’s best to keep them in it as long as possible and it doesn’t seem to be the cause of the problem. If he was in a bed I’m sure he would still want us to get up at 4 with him.

When it’s past 5 we do tend to do the taking in turns thing, it’s just 4am when we know he fell asleep late takes the biscuit! We know he is over tired 😞

that’s exactly it, I’m worried I won’t cope with 2. Everyone needs sleep it’s a basic human requirement. It’s so hard getting no evening, trying to get everything done to get to bed early only to have him wake at 4 and in a terrible mood, knowing it’s adding to the vicious cycle 🫠

You guys have made a good point about the bed.

he will say he ‘needs another teddy’ even though there’s loads in his cot. if we get him another one he will then need another ash’s so on.

the drink is by his cot but he has knocked it on the floor before and then can’t reach it.

I can also see how it may be easier to get him in a bed before baby comes, so it’s not too many changes at once. Our original plan was to use the Next2me again first with the baby and then figured toddler would be ready for a bed by the time baby was ready to go in their own room, but maybe we need to just do it now.

I would get him out of the cot and make a big thing out of new bed, duvet he chooses etc and also sleep train - no engagement except one quick visit, no leaving his room (hold the door shut but don’t talk while you’re there), make it very boring (and dark - we have black out blinds plus curtains so they can’t really see teddies at 4am - no night light), I would expect within a week he’ll be sleeping later and learn to self settle in the night. (And if he’s napping at nursery then stop that).

This is exactly what I’d do. Put him in a bed. Stair gate his bedroom door if you still want to contain him. Then make sure he has a drink in a no spill cup, his nightlight and let him take as many teddies, book etc. to bed as he wants. Make it so he can get everything he might want himself and remove yourself from the process so he won’t have your attention.

Honestly I was downstairs at 3am some mornings 🤦🏼‍♀️. It slowly went to 4, then 5, then 6. If he's up before 6 now that's he's older (nearly 7) I just send him down by himself!

I’m so sorry you’re having such a tough time. If it helps I found this stage extremely tough. We had a baby that woke up at 4am every single day until they turned 4. Then it was 5.30. It was brutal. I do think he is overtired and the transition from holiday to nursery is hard. I agree do not allow him videos, just made it boring. I doubt sleep training is particularly effective at this stage. I think you have to frame it as a phase and it will eventually end. Taking it in turns every day and trying to let the other person get rest. Plus naps at the weekend where possible can help.

It’s hard with the night light thing. What do you do when they ask for the light, you say no and they start hysterically tantruming for an hour? We just give up and do it and turn it off later, but then he wakes up at 2am screaming about it and we have this whole palava. He has always slept in complete darkness until relatively recently. It seems to be something they all do around this age? Needing a light?

@Starfish1021 thank you x

Sounds like the awkward phase where he's getting ready to drop the nap, only without the nap he's overtired and has a disturbed sleep and with the nap he's had too much sleep and has a disturbed sleep. It lasted a couple of months in our house but I definitely think a proper bed helped.

Fg hill

I think at 3 I'd be changing into a bed with a bed guard, and putting a safety gate on the door (we had this from 2.5 to 4).
Remove all toys except soft toys, maybe one really boring wooden toy (not noisy) and books from the bedroom. Get a nightlight/ star projector that stays on all night.
Set the gro clock to whatever time you're willing to get up, and get a sticker chart with a big and obvious reward for a few days.

For us, it would be: from now on, bedtime is earlier (overtiredness makes sleeping harder for little ones) so bed at 7.
If you can't sleep then you can quietly read a book/ play with your teddies, but it's sleep time, so please don't wake up mummy and daddy.
When the sun comes up, that's when you can get up and wake us up.
If you can go through the night without waking us up, then you get a sticker on your chart.

And then your work starts. You need to be consistent. Agree at the start what you will allow/ wont allow (videos would be 100% gone for a start, mine would absolutely wake up early if she thought she could watch bluey uninterrupted). Take up a beaker of water, decide if a snack is allowed if they're hungry at 4am and take that up if so, teddies go on the inside of the bed so they can't fall out. Decide on a phrase you both use- it's still night time, the moons still out. Remember mummy and daddy are still sleeping, so we've got to be quiet until the yellow sun is on your clock.

And then you really need to be consistent for at least a few nights. it's hard, I know, but even if he cries, just try it for 3-4 nights and give him a chance to learn a new routine.

Have you considered a sticker chart for staying in his own bed all night? My little one loved that. Start with 5 stickers = a kinder egg or a magazine or something

And consider if its time to move to a proper bed

It's so hard being tired especially when you are pregnant. I have felt some times of real despair. It does sound like you've had a really unusually easy ride with sleep which means you don't really have any strategies to cope.

I reckon dropping the nap may well solve it you will just have to push through a few days of adjustment to that. Or if you really can't keep him awake let him have 10 minutes.

If that isn't the solution I would suggest your husband sets up a bed in his room or in the corridor outside so he knows someone is there for him. We did this at various times with ours, who also didn't settle well in our bed. He's needing extra support at night it's very unusual in most of the world for such a young child to sleep alone (not here obviously). My son finally slept consistently well at 3 when we put his baby sister in with him. He didn't want to sleep alone at times and I really get that.

Good luck! Things will get better.

I agree with the others: proper bed (or side off the cot) and give him control of the teddies / blanket / water / night light. Set the grow clock to 5.30 initially, then gradually change it to 5.45, 6.00, etc. Explain that if he wakes earlier than that he can play quietly in his room, but mustn’t disturb you until the ‘sun comes up’. Sticker every time he manages not to disturb you overnight, then a comic / book / teddy / whatever will motivate him when he achieves five stickers.

First of all I wanted to say please give yourself a break. Nobody is a perfect parent. It’s clear in reading that you are a wonderful mother and an intelligent woman and your son is lucky to have you. The anger is totally normal and it sounds like you are expressing this (mostly) away from your son and that is great.
I have a 3 year 9month old and since around the time he was 3 years 1 month his mornings suddenly got crazy early (5-5.30am) and he would wake after losing teddy, needing a drink etc. in the past month or so he has begun sleeping until 6.20ish (he has a Gro clock but this wasn’t instant success and tbh not sure it’s doing anything however he now seems to understand he can’t come in until the clock is orange so stick with it)
We put him in an adult sized single bed at about 3.5 and so if he wakes upset in the night I just climb in and sleep with him for a bit so I’m getting some sleep. We got proper black out blinds and we noticed wakeups were worst in the height of summer- this helped. He comes in our bedroom at approx 6.20 every morning now and we do videos in bed so we can snooze until around 7. The main thing I did was just accept this phase and now I’m delighted to say he’s coming out of it. It was a long one though.
Please give yourself a break regarding the guilt and anger. You are only trying your best. X

Honestly the inability to execute a plan due to exhaustion with small children due to stuff like this is what's enraging. It'll get better - that's the other thing we do, feel enraged because we mentally stack things - 'this will still be happening when I have a newborn/I'm trapped' and make ourselves feel worse.

It'll get better, you know that.

I have a long term bad sleeper and you if something has to get cancelled because of poor sleep, that's a natural consequence of a bad night.

Oh and bribing. We bought our son a special toy if he could do three mornings past his Gro clock time (6am) this really really worked for us. Lots of praise and hugs and go buy him a toy. He now comes in every morning proudly telling us the number on the clock

You poor thing, of course you're exhausted.

I did find moving to a bed helped with my middle child. He was able to get up and play with his toys in his room rather than shout for me when he woke in the night. Sometimes I'd go in and find him asleep on the floor wiht a wooden train in each hand.

Definitely think he long overdue getting out of a cot!!!

I thought most kids were in a cot bed or bed by 2 ish. Tbh my son climbed out before 18 months so he was in a bed by then.

how does your son go to the toilet by himself if he’s in a cot or does he call out you to take him for a wee?