Two year old wont sleep or stay asleep!

[3GirlsMum]

Ever since we stayed with the inlaws at xmas and my daughter was in our room in a travelcot, she refuses to go to bed and to sleep nicely. I have two older dd's who are both at school so I have to bring my youngest dd back downstairs to stop her waking them up.

Added to this she is waking at 4am every day! She has very little sleep during the day, sometimes no nap at all but still wakes at 4 and screams blue murder until I go and get her.

I never had this problem with my eldest two, their sleeping pattern was always pretty good, apart from the odd night.

Any suggestions?

Huge sympathies from me on this one. My dd2 did this kind of thing at this age and I had the same issue with school and dd1. There's many a thread of me moaning on about dd2. All I can suggest is pick your routine and stick to it without wavering (easier said than done I know). We had some sucess with star charts and the bunny clock. Big praising helped too if she slept "better". Also the "big girls" dont do this tac helped too.
One other thing though, I learnt eventually that she was often really over tired, and would sleep worse when like this. It was like her head would hit the pillow and she'd zonk out and wake with a start in the small hours, get scared and be unable to settle herself down. I let her sleep longer in the day and didn't exhaust her so much in the day and that did help. So did a night light for if she woke in the night. I also had 3 months of her not getting in to bed at 7.30, and with that it was a real battle of wills, that I have to say, if she refused to get into bed and settle she had to sit on the stairs until she'd had enough. I refused to let her come down stairs. She is very bloody minded and that's why it took 3ms!! HTH, I really do know how crap it is. good Luck.

could you wait until half term (not long now) when you don't have to worry about the older two as much and really concentrate on enforcing a routine?

Just been reading the excellent sleep book by Richard Ferber and I think batey's suggestion that she may be overtired could be it. 2 year old's should be sleeping about 12 hours at night and 1-2 hours in the day according to him. My 2 year old sleeps a lot less (10-11 at night but rarely any daytime naps anymore) and I have noticed that she wakes up in the night and makes a lot of noise etc. when she hasn't had enough sleep over a few days. I really recommed this book for anyone who has sleep problems with their kids!

How long should 10 month old sleep for?

My bionic 8 month old does about 2-2.30 hours in the day and 11 hours at night. He does need another hour at night and has done it, but he's a fighter.

On the original question my 2 and a half year old started waking up really early before christmas ( the earliest was 4.45am ) - it was brought on by a bad cold, his brother making lots of noise and being afraid of the dark. We cut his sleep during the day so he now gets an hour max, but that still didn't work. All January he has been getting up between 5-6.30am and he was always such a good sleeper.

Then, last weekend we went to paris and left the nanny with the boys. The first morning he slept till 7am, the second he was up at 5.45am, she told him it was the middle of the night and to go back to sleep, he whinged a bit but was then quiet till 6.30am, she did the same and he went back to sleep and she woke him up at 7am.

Since our return on Saturday he has done a 7.45am, 6.30am ( I used the same tactics and told him to go back to sleep - which he did if a bit grudgingly ) and this morning 7am. So hopefully, we are over the worst and he is so much happier for getting 11-12 hours good sleep a night.

Good luck and hopefully it will pass.