2 year old screaming to sleep

[TwirpingBird]

My DD is 2. She went to a toddler bed last july. From July to December she went to bed every night without a single problem. She has always been an amazing sleeper. Since the start of December she sobs and screams every night when I leave the room. She stands at her childgate screaming and rattling the bars. We go up, calm her down, put her back, she goes again. We have tried staying beside her in the room til she goes to sleep. She wont go to sleep if we are in the room. We have tried leaving the childgate open, she hates that even more. We have tried moving her bed because she hit her head off the wall beside the bed when rolling out of the bed in her sleep a few times. That didnt work. She is sleeping every night on the floor at the childgate. About 40% of the time she just goes there without moaning but some nights she screams like she is utterly terrified for 20 mins. Its horrific. I feel like I am traumatizing ber but nothing I do helps. We did have a baby early november and thought that may be it but it's been over 2 months now. I dont know what to do.

Has anyone any experience of the same? Any suggestions?

Hi @TwirpingBird read your post and couldn't not comment. I am on here looking for help about a two year old non sleeper too, until around three weeks ago she was going to bed so well and sleeping through, now she screams when we try to leave. Tonight my husband has camped out on the small settee in her room as she just would not go to bed without one of us.

Not sure how vocal your lo is yet but in between sobs the last few nights our dd has explained she doesn't like the dark and doesn't want us to close the door, however leaving door open or having night light one did not help she wanted us there too

She has told us she is scared of bees being in the house and spiders. Our son who is now 8 did the same thing at 2.5 years and his fear was crocodiles and wolves with red eyes if I remember (deep breath) it lasted around three months.

Starting to think it is an unavoidable development they go through when imaginations kick in and they also realise that there are dangers out there etc.

We tried so many different things with our son, even co sleeping (disaster as no-one slept!) Staying till he was asleep then leaving but he woke up wondering where we were, staying in his room but he wanted to chat and finally rapid return which worked in the end. In hindsight all the chopping and changing probably made things worse and we should have had a good think about which technique would be best and stuck with it. This time around as we have an older one who has school (and we're a good few years older and frankly to knackered!) we're taking the easier option but worried it will lead into bad habits.

I guess after that huge ramble my thoughts are if you can possibly have a calm chat about it possibly during the day you might be able to get more of a clue what is wrong and be able to find out what you could do to help. Hang in there it will be a phase I'm sure in the meantime

Unfortunately she is basically non verbal. She has gestured about hitting her head, so we move the bed weeks ago to smack in the middle of the room and have been explaining every night that she cannot hit her head anymore. Tonight I reached breaking point. I have opened the gates, and we are tag teaming putting her calmly back in bed til she gets the idea. We have been at it about 1hr 10 now. My guess is we gave put her back a total of about 70 times. But it was getting ridiculous. She just needs to be in the bed. It has spiralled and we have ignored most of it.

This sounds similar to how our son was and we found one of us each evening doing it was better although I completely get why tag teaming can help as it is so exhausting. If she is not massively distressed and you cam manage it I would keep going until she gives in. We had to almost behave like robots not make eye contactor anything. You're certainly not alone and will get through this I promise

Oh my god. 1 hr and 45 mins, approx 120 times putting her into the bed, and she is finally staying. She tried everything from poo (we checked. No poo), to a runny nose, to her foot hurt, to hungry.

Who knew a 2 year old could be so stubborn?

I will admit she cried a lot once she realised we kept putting her back. She has always been a (fake) crier for everything in general so we expected that, but she cried no matter what we did so solve this before so I think just teaching her that the bed is where she is supposed to be is our only way of fixing this.

Can you sit in the corner and read? Or have a hand on her but not look/play on your phone?

It might be she needs the reassurance you aren't leaving. This happened to us and initially took ages but as she settled was quicker each time.

@TryingNotToPanicOverCovid

Can you sit in the corner and read? Or have a hand on her but not look/play on your phone?

It might be she needs the reassurance you aren't leaving. This happened to us and initially took ages but as she settled was quicker each time.

Ye we have tried all of that. She just wouldnt go to sleep. She would just lie there for hours and if we shifted at all she would be wise awake. She has never had us stay with her when she slept. Even from age 10 weeks or so she put herself to sleep in a cot in our sitting room. We think its maybe the stair gate, that she doesnt like being trapped, so we have left it open but have closed the one on the top of the stairs so she cant fall down. If she comes into us we will just have to keep putting her back.

This is why I co slept.

It really sounds like she's scared to be on her own now though, which isn't at all uncommon.

I really empathise. We had a difficult sleeper (in our case turned out to be sleep apnea and she was scared) and you just di what you need to do to survive. Ours really couldn't do it on her own and got properly terrified without us so we ended up doing a mix of ways of her falling asleep with us (over ages) and then sitting on the floor readingnfor an hour before crawling out etc. Was worth it in the end but god it was hard.

Even now when she's older in lockdown weve had her back on our floor for a bit but she was fine when school started back.

@JayAlfredPrufrock

This is why I co slept.

Tried that. She said 'down' within 2 minutes and refused to stay with us. She is a real creature of habit. Routine is how she functions. The idea of sleeping with us when she never has just didnt make sense to her. The bed always worked perfectly. We honestly never had a single night of bother. Everything else we have tried has just failed and made her even more upset.

@TryingNotToPanicOverCovid

It really sounds like she's scared to be on her own now though, which isn't at all uncommon.

I really empathise. We had a difficult sleeper (in our case turned out to be sleep apnea and she was scared) and you just di what you need to do to survive. Ours really couldn't do it on her own and got properly terrified without us so we ended up doing a mix of ways of her falling asleep with us (over ages) and then sitting on the floor readingnfor an hour before crawling out etc. Was worth it in the end but god it was hard.

Even now when she's older in lockdown weve had her back on our floor for a bit but she was fine when school started back.

She does seem scared to be on her own. We thought for a while that she may just want the day to continue, and to be included, but I cant have her eventually collapsing on the couch at 11pm or something mad. She did the same thing, getting upset, no matter what time we tried to put her to bed. I hate hearing her cry. I feel horrendous. But she doesnt want us to stay with her either. She cant fall asleep.

I’m sorry that sounds so hard.

Is she not tired yet?

70 times and screaming doesn't sound like she's happy. What does she want?

If its you set a new nromal of you being there for a couple of hours and then leave and then after a couple of weeks cut that down.

What works for one stage may well not work for another stage.

@TryingNotToPanicOverCovid

Is she not tired yet?

70 times and screaming doesn't sound like she's happy. What does she want?

If its you set a new nromal of you being there for a couple of hours and then leave and then after a couple of weeks cut that down.

What works for one stage may well not work for another stage.

Honestly, I have zero idea what she wants. She cant tell me. When I ask her she just stands looking like she is thinking. I dont think she knows.

Its maddening when you're exhausted and friends have kids that sleep through or tell you to "just pat" (?!?!?! What when theyre standing screaming!?) Etc. It really really is hard. 😔.

We had this for a while with DD2 who was non-verbal. We went with rapid return with a mantra from us so that she got exactly the same physical and verbal response every time. We used a phrase like “you’re not on your own, we’re just close by but it’s time for bed now”.

DD1, who is 5 years older actually told us that she used to feel anxious (when she was that age) if we told her to go to sleep because she didn’t know how to make herself do that, so we were careful to focus on behaviour that she could control like being in bed, under the covers, head on the pillow etc....

Dd2 eventually seemed to accept that we would come every time she tried but we would never say anything different and I think the predictability of it reassured her. We basically bored her to sleep!

It's so reassuring to read that people did exactly as we did last night; rapid return, the same phrase over and over again. I suffer with serious mom guilt. I tear myself apart not knowing if I am doing the right thing for her, or if I am being cruel, so knowing others did what we did is nice. She is a pretty thoughtful child. She loves system and routine and knowing what to expect, so hopefully if we calmly reinforce the expectation of sleeping in bed, and keep telling her we are just in the next room and the gate is open, she will eventually feel secure enough to stay in the bed.

Surprisingly, she slept all night in the bed. She is still there now. Also, the baby (3 months) slept from 10:30 til 5am!! It's the best nights sleep we have all had in quite a while. I was expecting her to be in and out to us during the night.

Dont feel guilt about returning her. I'm very anti sleep training babies but I happily did rapid return with my son when we introduced a toddler bed and he would run out of the room 100+ times! Like you say you tried all the things like co sleeping etc so it's not like you didn't try to comfort her that way. She just needed to be taught that her bed was safe again and you've done that well done!

This is completely unhelpful but my little girl used to be a good sleeper and then about 3 became a complete nightmare and she won't sleep on her own. She is scared of even going upstairs on her own if we are all downstairs and we only live in a normal terrace house.

She is 6 now and still scared of everything and sleeps with us, plus about 20 teddies

And I also co slept with her as a baby and her siblings but they all went to their own beds at 2 and stay in their beds all night

@TwirpingBird so glad to hear it all calmed down in the end. We always found with our son he had the best sleep afterwards and was super happy in the morning. It is hard not to but you really need to try and not feel bad, you are teaching an important life skill and by being there returning her you have reassured her. I bet she will be all smiles this morning.
On the other hand I spent most of the night on the little settee and even then she was stiring crying in the night about spiders so may need to rethink approach lol

[quote Cornishbelle]@TwirpingBird so glad to hear it all calmed down in the end. We always found with our son he had the best sleep afterwards and was super happy in the morning. It is hard not to but you really need to try and not feel bad, you are teaching an important life skill and by being there returning her you have reassured her. I bet she will be all smiles this morning.
On the other hand I spent most of the night on the little settee and even then she was stiring crying in the night about spiders so may need to rethink approach lol[/quote]
Ah the poor thing. It's so hard to know how to make things easier for them. They just get scared and that's it. It's just black and white, but we dont really know why.

She was pretty happy this morning I have to say. We praised her a lot for staying in bed. We are prepared for a similar situation tonight though. She does take a bit of time to break a habit