help my 4 yr old is getting up at 3:30AM!!!!

[mieow]

DD1 used to sleep through, from 6pm-6am, then she started to get up at 5am so I started to put her to bed a hour later at 7pm, but now she is getting up at 3:30am and waking up everyone in the process. Poor DS get a face full of light when she switches the light on, she will go into DD2s room and jump all over her bed. I try to get her back to sleep, but as soon as I have dozed off she gets up, disturbs me again, and starts shouting (and she is very loud) I can't handle this. I have a sore throat and a cold, my wisdom tooth is playing up and I have a headache, I have to get DS to school this morning, and DD2 to preschool (DD1 is off today for a teacher training day) and I don't think I will be safe to drive there, so will have to push DS up to school in his wheelchair, then come home and ask DH to watch the girls while I have a sleep, then get up at lunchtime and take DD2 to preschool.
How can I get her to sleep, she only had 8 hours last night, and she will be so tired later, but if she has a nap, she won't sleep tonight so I will have to put up with the screams.
I feel sorry for myself, need sleep

still feeling very tired....

I think if your dd is aged four she is old enough to be spoken to quite seriously about this. Tell her that if she wakes up in the night she is not to get up or put the light on but to lie still until she goes back to sleep. Our oldest boys who share a room used to wake up earlier and earlier (but not as early as 3:30!) and we put a clock on their wall, taught them to recognise 7:00 and told them there was to be no noise until then. That was years ago but they still abide by it and don't go downstairs until the clock says 7.

Lonely mum, but she has Special needs, and has the brain of a 2-3 year old. She just doesn't get the concept of night

Mieow - what does she want when she gets up? Hungry, thirsty, frightened?? Very bizarre time to be wide awake!

Poor you, you must be shattered.

nothing thats the point, I refuse to get her a drink as she will continue to do this always if I do. She did go to the toliet, but this is the second night running she has done this.

I was thinking the same as Lonelymum; you didn't mention that she has special needs. I don't know what you can do. Will she go back to sleep in your bed? (You may not want to try this, but then at least everyone gets some sleep.)

sorry I thought that most people on here knew she had SNs. She won't sleep in my bed but will let me into her bed, which I did last night, but she just kept getting up

and no amount of pleading will make her sleep, had tried the firm approach but that doesn't make a blind bit of difference. She just gets out again. She is very lively as soon as she wakes up too, not good when you feel rubbish.

Sorry mieow. There's a lot of people on MN and I have a terrible memory, so even if I had read that your daughter has special needs I wouldn't have remembered anyway.

I wish I could offer some advice. My 2.5 year old occasionally wakes up at ungodly hours - I think the earliest has been about 4am - and there's nothing I can do to persuade her that it's not morning yet.

meiow, there's been a lot of threads on SN about melatonin.... Might melatonin help?

drug her

have u spoken to your HV about it? is there a gate she cant undo anywhere which u can put on her bedroom door. maybe remove the lightbulb or put a very low wattage one in so if she does switch the light on she wont wake up everyone else.