Says She Can't Open Her Eyes When Waking Up

[SpottyBag33]

For a fortnight now, my 2.5 year old daughter wakes up crying in the middle of the night, when we go check on her, she says she can't open her eyes.

When it first happened she was hysterical. I thought it might be stickyeye/conjunctivitis and cleaned her eyes. But she still didn't open them. Her eyes are healthy.

I tried gently opening her eyes, she cried more.

She doesn't have her eyes shut tightly, just looks like she's sleeping sitting upright.

I usually get her back to sleep, and she's fine in the morning.

A friend of mine is a teacher, she said she's seen a case where this was a type of sleep paraylsis.

Has anyone else had this with their toddlers? Should I be worried?

She might still be very close to sleep. Once had an awful do with dd where she was screaming at us in the middle of the night. Went on for ages, in the end just got her back to sleep. She had no memory of it in the morning.
Ask her if she remembers waking up.

Look up night terrors- it might be that
My DD had them about that age and was inconsolable when she woke up

Bizarrely, I had this as an adult when I used to go to the beautician for an eyebrow shape!!

Lying there having it done I'd become aware of my eyes feeling really heavy and the real feeling that my eyelids were too heavy to open....it's a really odd feeling and I'm sure if your dd experiences similar it would be really upsetting for such a little tot. Of course I was able to open my eyes but it felt like a real effort and was quite unsettling. I think the more I thought I wasn't going to be able to open them the worse it felt...obvs as an adult you don't give into silly thoughts like that but maybe your dd really thinks she can't or it makes her scared to try.

Thank you ladies x

Probably sleep paralysis, I get it sometimes when I'm between sleep and waking.

I can't open my eyes, can't talk (I can just make a moaning sound) and feel like I can't breathe. It's genuinely very scary even as an adult if you don't know what it is.

I would say the best thing would be to reassure her that it's a normal part of waking up sometimes so she relaxes and doesn't fight it.

Maybe "Don't worry - sometimes your eyes need time to wake up".

Not sure if that will make sense to her right now but if you can keep her calm and feeling like it's normal it should help.