Toddler awake for hours in the night screaming and shouting.

[jodowns]

My 2 year old goes to bed as good as gold between 6.30 - 7pm each night, no problems and no fuss . He will then wake between 11 - 1am shouting and screaming very distressed aswell as kicking his cot and rolling around, it sounds like he is being attacked and this will go on for 3-5 hours most nights, i have comforted him, i have left him to cry, i have told him off but nothing seems to work, does anyone else experience this or have any advice. i have heard of nightime terrors but these nightly episodes go on for hours and hours.

me too hun, i sat and sobbed the other day, Im strating to get so anxious in myself. Praying its a phase but its oh so hard. Sometimes wonder what im doing wrong :-(

well when i read your thread title i was going to suggest night terrors yes, i think they can go on for a while unfortunately :(

it sounds really stressful for you.
I wonder if waking to sleep would help? if he generally wakes at around the same time, what you do is go in about an hour before he would wake up, and gently rouse him, then settle him back down.
the idea is that you disrupt the sleep pattern so he then is in a deeper phase of sleep when the normal unsettles period comes round

might be worth a try?

Hi Jodowns,
It does sound a bit like night terrors though my Ds usually calms down after 10 minutes or so. Can you rouse him or is it as though he is still asleep (I mean, does he focus on you, talk to you, or is it as though you are not there?) Can he talk to you about it in the morning?

Sorry, posted too early!

Best way for us to deal with DS has been for me to go sleep by his bed (we tried him in our bed, but he thrashes around and won't be comforted) anyway - it just seems to prolong it so the best thing for us seems to be to leave him alone, but I can't bear to leave him completely when he's distressed so I end up sleeping on the floor

Has he had any upset recently / dropped a nap? It's happened to my DS when he has been overtired.

Hi all, thanks for the replies he hasnt droped any naps, in fact he catches up in the day as he is awake for upto 5 hours a night, i work full time and feel unable to cope at times with the little amount of sleep im surviving on, i too just hopes its a phase but there just seems no end to it at the mo.

oh bad luck. It will be just a phase but often that doesn't help when you're in it.

Can you maybe shift bedtime back a bit, see if that helps. Or try thisisyesterday's suggestion - I have heard of wake to sleep working really well.
Good luck with it all.

My ds suffered from these at that age, there was nothing we could do to console him and they lasted an hour or more in the middle of the night most nights for at least a year unfortunately. He's 3.5 now and very very occasionally has one but they don't last as long. I used to cringe that we'd be waking up the whole street . I've no advice really, we just rode it out and prayed it was a phase, which it was.

The only thing I used to do was make sure I was in bed by half nine every night so I could at least attempt to get a few hours in before he started.