2 and 1/2 and it all goes pear shaped

[Klara]

please help. We followed Gina Ford for our DS and it worked - he's always slept through and not cried in the night unless he had a cold or similar.

ANyway, we went on hols 2 weeks ago andhe has been sleeping in the same room as us, and waking up horendously early (4.30 - 5 am).

Now that we are back home, he';s quite happy to go to bed at night, but wakes at about 3 wanting "mummy cuddle". I go in and tell him its night time and to go to sleep which he suually does....until 5 when he really gets going.

Last night I told my husband we were going to have to leave him to tough it out and after going in to reassure him that we were there, told him to go to sleep and just shut the door. He cried for 45 minutes on and off, until 5.45 when I have to get up anyway! Apart from the fact that he's making me feel guilty as hell as I hate to hear him so upset, he's doing my head in as I am pg with no 2, and have to go to work, so can't cope with being woken every night.

Any ideas on how to get him back into a pattern? He knows he's not supposed to wake up as he says to me "It's ok, mummys here, you be quiet, go back to sleep. Mummycross if you wake daddy up" which are all my standard tag lines.....

klara

Could he be having nightmares or bad dreams? My son is just a few months older and started doing similar things at 2 1/2. When I sat down and talked to him about it, he was having scary dreams and was frightened in the dark. So, now we leave the night light on and use the dimmer switch, turning the light down, not off. Initially we left it like that all night but now, I am going in and switching it off (just leaving the night light on) when I go to bed.
I also talked about how dreams can be scray etc but it helped to talk about them, mummy and Daddy are always very close etc etc. Tried a teddy but he didn't want that so one of his diggers cuddles up to him in bed and digger knows that if Mummy isn't there he can give ds cuddles for me.
It seems to have worked so far.......
HTH

I don't think so - last night he woke up 8 times! It was "mummy want a cuddle", then "Mummy want a kiss", then "mummy - I can't find boo boo" (his teddy) then "Mummy want my pillow" - all smacks a bit of parental manipulation - and I fall for it time and time again .

At 4.am my dh forbid me to go to him and he only cried for 5 mins before settling, so much as i hate to say it I think tonight will be cold turkey for him. We'll go in once to reassure him that we are still there and then he'll just have to settle himself. I can't continue to function on the amountof sleep i had last night anyway

wish me luck

klara

Dh has found that since coming back from holidays we have to spend longer before ds goes to sleep debriefing his day.

We have also taught him the concept of 7 O'clock, and while he doesn't have a clock in his room, if we go in and say it's not 7am he does go back to sleep. We talk a lot about staying in bed until 7am at his evening debrief.

Star Chart maybe?

well - today I feel like a new woman - because he slept through. I basically explained very carefully to him last night that Mummy was very tired, and that she would be very cross if he woke me up and that I would not come more than once. I also bribed him by saying if he sleeps well for the rest of the week he can have the big yellow digger he has been lusting after!

This morning he woke up and told me he'd had "a nice sleepy". We obviously showered him with praise and told him he was a very good boy for sleeping through.

Long may it continue - hope this is a return to normal.