2.5 year old refusing to sleep (and 10-week old twins to deal with!)

[dekari]

My dd has been through all the major sleep regressions (reading other threads is like a trip down memory lane!) but we'd finally got to a point where it felt like we didn't need to worry about her sleep anymore. She generally naps from around 1.15 til 3.15 Sat-Tue (might be later/less depending on our plans and her level of tiredness) - I often have to wake her up - and goes to bed between 7 and 7.30 (merrily telling us to go downstairs then singing herself to sleep) and usually sleeps for 12 hours. Wed-Fri she is in nursery and used to nap for an hour mid-afternoon.

However, a few things have changed recently and my husband was in her room til gone 11 last night trying to calm her down to encourage her to sleep (she screamed her head off before he went in/when he tried to leave).

Firstly, her nursery hours have reduced from all day to 9-3 so she now won't nap there.
Secondly, Dh is a teacher so we've had a few days out in the holidays whereby she slept late in the afternoon/on our way home.
Thirdly (this is a big one!) we have 10 week old twins!

The arrival of her baby brothers hasn't really had an impact on her sleep habits over the past 9+ weeks so I'm hoping that's not the main problem, although I know it can't help!

She has always had a very dark room. She woke up at 10pm two nights ago crying and it turned out she'd had a nightmare. She refused to sleep without a light on (Dh stayed with her for a bit) so we went out the next day and bought her an Ikea colour-changing night light. I explained that it would keep the bad things away and she slept as normal with it for the next two days of naps and the following night.

Last night was a different story though - she went down at 7 (possibly a bit too early in hindsight as she woke from her nap at 3.15) and was wide awake and refusing to sleep til 11pm! (normally a couple of stories will sort her out). She wanted to come in our bed (jealousy?) and we explained no (it's crowded enough!) so my husband has been in with her most of the time. We're worried she may work out a way to climb out of her cot - which she's always been happy in - if left alone. It's been too hot for her grobag but she'll be back in it tonight!

Add to this the fact that her twin brothers would't settle either (I could really have done with Dh's help!) and you have a recipe for extreme stress!

So, has she outgrown her nap (despite still sleeping well for it) or should we cut it shorter? Is it fear related to nightmares/fear of dark? Is her new light disturbing her? Have we messed with her routine too much? Is it just plain jealousy?

I'm dreading bedtime tonight! Any thoughts/tips would be gratefully received...

Thanks in advance!

*apologies - I think I have posted twice but managed to hide the original post and can't retrieve it : (

I don't think she has outgrown nap. Many benefit and in America/ most of Europe children at kinder gate will be encouraged to nap/ rest until 6/7 years.

Why won't they let her nap at nursery now with shorter hours? I would ask if she can still nap at 1pm if possible, or what about if she just went mornings and you picked up after lunch, so she can nap?

I would aim for 1pm nap, wake by 3pm latest. Then aim for 8pm bedtime. With x3 little ones it will mean you don't feel so rushed in evening and can wait until dh is home for help with bath/ dinner / bed etc.

Hello, not sure if this is any help or not but my DD1 who, much the same as yours, has been a dreadful sleeper with lots of regressions, had a major regression when DD2 was about 8 weeks old - until then she had been an absolute star. There was also a bout of illness and a trip to my mum's just to compound things, but bedtimes went haywire after being brilliant for ages, she started waking in the night again and naps became a nightmare with having to put her in the pushchair or sit in her room for up to an hour until she fell asleep.

It took a few weeks but all has been back on track now for a couple of months so fingers crossed.

I just stuck to her routine as much as possible, did the last stages of gradual withdrawal training (yet) again, with sitting by her door until she was asleep, then outside it, kept night wakings as brisk as possible - even if I had to go in 10 times, I wouldn't stay with her after medicine if needed and a brief reassurance.

She also has stories to listen to at bedtime and a star projector which she can turn on herself - and she usually does if she wakes in the night now.

Her nap is much earlier too - she is usually down no later than 12 and sleeps 1.5 - 2 hours. If she has a late nap, she can be difficult to get down, but I still leave her and pop in and out as necessary. She has just gone into a big girl bed (which she loves) and has a gate on the door.

Good luck - thankfully I only had the one newborn to look after but that was hard enough so I don't envy you!

How about trying her in a single bed? My DS slept much better once he was out of his cot.

Thanks everyone!

Chocolate... that is weird - my twins were prem so have only been home 8 weeks! And so reassuring... Especially after a conversation with my mum earlier which involved her saying "you just need to tell her she HAS to go to bed then leave her to it". Don't think she realises my dd's capacity to scream! I reckon she could make herself sick if we left her.

I know these things tend to pass but have been stressing about it all day! She's got so much better recently with missed/late naps not adversely affecting her at night, I've become more relaxed as began to think we no longer needed to worry so much about sticking to the routine to the letter! My complacency has bitten me on the bum it would seem!

She has always been reluctant to sleep at nursery and it's always rested on her compliance. She went through a phase of saying she was tired (as she does at home) but now just stands in the cot refusing to nap - most of her little friends don't nap there anymore and she doesn't like to miss out. I don't really want to change her hours again - mostly because I can't face an 8am drop-off with 3 kids in tow and a potential fight to get her to nap once we got home (she generally needs time to unwind). In the past she has used her non-nursery days to catch up on sleep so I know she can do it.

I do worry that she now sees bedtime as a choice not an expectation but I guess that's to do with our parenting style - she's a pretty smart little thing so we tend to reason with her and let her work things out for herself when we can. My instinct is to carry on with the gentle approach as we've done in the past, but she's never stayed awake so late before! She didn't want to nap this afternoon and we couldn't face the prospect of more than one battle today so we all went out and all 3 of them slept in the car. Cheating! Our plan for tonight is back in her sleeping bag, in bed for 7.30 and a limit of one story if she protests. Hubby will do gradual retreat after that. My nerves are already jangling - must man up!

Re. Toddler bed - I was hoping to hold off as long as poss as we won't be able to put a gate on her door (stupid doorframe!) and she would just keep coming in to our room the way she is currently. Also, she can pretty much undo the stairgate herself! I'd rather wait until she's back to normal sleep habits (i.e. compliant!) rather than making the decision to solve a problem that is hopefully temporary.

I had thought of a CD though, as she loves stories and music. Might try that if needs be. Fingers crossed for tonight!

My 3yo had a major major sleep regression when her baby sister was about 8 weeks old. We always thought it was to do with the hour changing but maybe not?

Wouldn't drop the nap though.

Some may think our method of getting our dd to sleep through the night again is a bit silly, but it's totally worked for us. Dd is about the same age as yours, we don't have a new baby in the house but ever since she potty trained her night time sleep got progressively worse. As she knew that we would come to her if she called out at night (in case she needed the toilet), she started to wake up more and more frequently until she was waking anything up to 8 or 9 times a night. Usually she would just need the toilet once.

After trying a sticker chart, which worked very briefly only, we found online the suggestion of the sleep fairy. She comes to visit in the night and asks us if dd has been sleeping. If she has, there is a little present in the special basket for her in the morning. It's typical tat, a bouncy ball, stickers, pencils etc but dd loves it. The first two nights didn't work but since then (about 4 weeks) she has slept through almost every night. Usually she just wakes to go to the toilet when we go to bed.

It's not a long term solution obviously but we just needed sleep. It was astonishing how quickly we got stressed out after a couple of months of broken nights. We needed her to break the bad habits she had gotten into and she has pretty much done that now. We plan to find a reward system of some sort like marbles in a jar and put those in, with a letter from the sleep fairy, when we want the sleep fairy to quietly disappear.

If you are very desperate it may be potential last resort! Good luck!

Oh and dd still naps too. We tried dropping naps but it just made her hysterical at bedtime and had absolutely no impact on her sleep.

Well, dh bathed all 3 of them, with help from dd and it all went really well. She went upstairs willingly, told me she was going to bed soon and happily followed the whole routine... Until dh put her in her cot and she just started screaming "no daddy!" She's been wailing for 5 mins - we're hoping against hope that tiredness takes over but it's not sounding good. On the bright side, she's in her sleeping bag so can't climb out (although she may be very hot by now!)

Have you tried the whole ' big girl' thing

So letting her help bathe babies as she's grown up, getting her to help read story to babies as grown up. Then as she's grown up gets to choose own story before bed and go later than babies ( even 5 mins after). I would take bedside off also tbh, as then can explain big beds for big children who go to bed nicely etc

We have 15 months between ours and this helped ds1 around 18 months when he didn't want bed

Part of the problem we have is we can't get the babies down before 9 - they're 5 weeks corrected so still at the manic cluster-feeding stage. She knows we stay downstairs with them and didn't mind before but, again, it obviously doesn't help! We've told her we're just trying to get the babies to sleep but that probably doesn't help her to understand... Our house is small too so I'm sure she hears them crying at night Unfortunately the twins don't realise the whole world revolves around their big sister!