3.5 year old wake ups- need advice

[Dreamland13]

Hi
My 3.5 yo has generally been a pretty decent sleeper. But the last 3 months (coincided with lockdown which could be a factor I don’t know) he has been consistently waking in a bit of a state.

Generally around midnight he will thrash around kick out and call out constantly for daddy or mummy, when either of us goes in he settles straight away and always tells us that his leg hurts, we will give it a rub and that’s that. 80% of the time that’s it, but sometimes we will get a further couple of wake ups too if the same format.
Sometimes we have a break of 2-3 nights and then it starts again for a while.
What we can’t tell is if he is having night terrors, it does seem like a bad dream but we can’t leave him to shout as it’ll wake his baby sister (not that I would leave him but I read with terrors they aren’t really awake when they appear to be) or is it a bad dream or are his legs really hurting (growing pains etc)
Just wondered if anyone went through similar and had some advice.
Thank you

The 'my leg hurts' could be just an excuse he's found that has worked consistently in the last to get him a bit of attention in the night. That's assuming that at all other times his leg is fine.

Sounds like he just wakes a bit and instead of just rolling over to go back to sleep, he needs reassurance so shuts for you. When you ask him whats wrong he probably can't articulate that he needed a bit of reassurance for no real reason, so he makes up a reason for it.

Could you see if you could establish a special teddy? Find an worn-looking (but clean) one that he's never seen before and give it a back-story. Tell him it used to be yours for example, and that the teddy has special powers to make you feel safe and loved in the night time. Play along with giving teddy loads of cuddles, not wanting to give teddy up because he's go great but agreeing to on the insistence that DS makes sue he gets enough cuddles. You get the idea. It's about giving him a way to get mummy's reassurance without mummy being there.