2.5year old waking at 4am. On my knees.

[xinchao]

My previously great sleeper (2.5 years) now takes 1 or 2 hours to get to bed and wakes at 4am. I work full time in a pretty stressful job and am studying. I have a really supportive husband doing many/most of the wakings but he is also in a stressful job. It is having a really negative impact on our marriage and generally happiness. I am a terrible/shouty mother at 4am.

I have travelled with work a lot recently so thought it could be that - but have been home and no difference (plus my husband is here).

We put him to bed later. No difference.

We skip his one daytime nap. No difference.

Give him more/less food. No difference.

I have tried bribery, promises, shouting, soothing. Everything.

We lie down silently in the dark for as long as possible. No difference - he is wide awake and ready for the day. Frankly this approach makes me furiously angry because I am so exhausted.

The GroClock is meaningless to him.

Anyone have experience of this? Did anything work? Do I have to ride it out?

I am really just exhausted and totally fed up.

Wanted to update:

Thinh's got worse...3:30am for quite a few days...but the GroClock trick seems to be working. We are now on 4:20am and I will keep edging it on 10 mins every couple of days until we get to 6am (I hope).

Art I thought he was missing us whe this first started so we did bring him into bed - for a few weeks maybe. Disaster. He is really wide awake from his first waking and ready to start the day. He won't settle and eventually we would all just get up. He also struggles to fall asleep in same bed as me.

Will come back and update in case it is helpful for others to see if the GroClock method works.

I have taken a week off work to try to get myself together and have the strength to tackle this - lucky that I can. I must say - it has really put me off a second child!

Might also look more into cherry juice...sounds too good to be true!

oh - should come clean and say we are also bribing him! He gets a chocolate and a 'vitamin sweetie' if he wakes after the sun comes up on the GroClock. It is the last thing he mentions before bed and the first thing when he wakes up!

Also, we have now cracked the going to sleep - he goes down and stays in bed. I was travelling quite a bit for work but knocked that on the head and I think the two are connected - he no longer needs to check I'm around. I also created a sort of barrier area with locked doors and staircases when putting him to bed - so he could get up and out of his room but couldn't go anywhere interesting and after a week he just stopped trying.

Hiya, I know this was from years go! But did this ever change I’m currently going through it :( be nice to have some advice from someone that’s been through it! Thankyou

Annie - I’ve just come across this thread because I’m going through this right now! 2yr old often needing me to sit in his door to go to sleep and waking up at 4:30ish each day shouting out for me and does NOT go back to sleep, even with me lying on his bedroom floor. What do we do?! I’m exhausted! Doesn’t seem to make a difference if we do a later bed time, or no nap, he’s just ready to go as soon as he wakes 😭

Stephanie,

did you ever find a solution? My 2.5 year old is waking 5:30 for the past month and I’m getting so frustrated. I’m so short tempered with him now. Idk what to do