Not sleeping ....... aged 5.

[MillieMummy]

My DS is 5 and is not sleeping through the night.

He tricked us in to thinking he was a good sleeper by sleeping through from 12 weeks, but all went wrong when he started teething and he has no slept through since then.

5 out of 7 nights a week he wakes at least once and on 2 or 3 nights he wakes 2-4 times. Reasons are varied - nightmares, pins and needles, wanting a drink, wanting to be tucked in or often just because he can.

He goes to sleep really well, by himself when we put him down so can 'self settle'.

Thing have got worse recently - he has woken 3 times in the last 6 weeks at 3.30am and then not gone back to sleep for no reason! This meant that every 15 mins DP and I were putting him back in bed, or telling him to be quiet so no one slept from 3.30am onwards .

I am at my wits end - how can I have a non-sleeping 5 yr old ! It's starting to affect my relationsip with DP - we are both so tired, and it's hard for other people to understand how we can be having broken sleep without a new born/.

Has anyone else sucessfully dealt with a similar problem?

Bump

I didn't want to leave your problem unanswered. You must be at your wit's end. It must be like having a newborn for 5 years.

My DS is almost 5 and whilst he doesn't have the sleep problems you describe, he does have night terrors and occasionally wake ready to start the day too early. I did controlled crying at 9 months and have had a rule that he cannot start the day before 7am. I have a couple of friends that have had children with similar patterns to yours. In both cases they got much better due to external changes. One 5 year old became a brother another had a SAHM go back to work. A third family have a 4 year old coming into bed at 3:30am - this doesn't disturb anyone and so isn't a problem.

If he can self settle at the start of the night he can do so the rest of the night too. Do you engage with his requests? What has changed in the last few weeks; did he start school?

I have been where you are now -we have just coming out of 7 months of DD being up, up to 7 or 8 times a night. We were at breaking point, with nothing working. We consulted a homeopath GP (I know people's opinions on here are scathing varied ) and DD is now sleeping through. we first tackled the nightmares/terrors and gerneral anxiety (about what I'm not sure!) and now, most nights, she sleeps through. So, placebo or not, it worked for us.
Most people asumed it was our little one who was keeping us up, no one could understand that we had tried absolutely everything, it was Hell.

I wish you luck.

Have you tried a reward chart? And also, let him know that you and your DP check on him regularly throughout the night and create reward chart for yourself so he can see it's a two-way thing. I heard of someone who did this and they said it worked brilliantly.