4year old wakes every night

[carlyG4R2]

My son has always been a bad sleeper... when I say that I mean has never slept through the night wakes every couple of hours we've tried everything sleep therapist no nap, naps but nothing works. He's 4 and will be starting school september I've also just started an early morning job which means I wake for the day at 3 so I need him to start sleeping..

He will always wake around 10-12 and cry out for me then wants to come in our bed I give in and let him come in but he's so restless all night that we still don't sleep. If I didn't let him come in with me he would call out for me every 20 minutes or so...

If we put him to bed early (7ish) he will wake always around 9 so we tend to stretch it out till about 8.30 ish then he should sleep till 11 ish then it's up all night on / off.

Has anyone else had this I'm just completely drained and just need some decent sleep ( so does he )

Does he have any additional needs? Anxiety? If not, I'd be going for tough love. 4 is plenty old enough to sleep through the night. So I'd be putting him straight back to bed every time, supernanny style. Treat it like you'd treat any other bad behaviour. Explain expectation, enforce boundary, NEVER EVER SURRENDER.

Both my DSs woke regularly most nights until they started school. Both stopped around their fifth birthdays (well, stopped automatically coming through to wake us when they woke…DS1 (9) has recently admitted that he always wakes, goes to the loo and goes back to sleep). So in my experience you’re almost at the point where it gets better. It took a sticker chart to keep DS2 in bed, all threats were useless when he was 80% asleep and simply wanted a cuddle, consequences be damned! (I can see his point, to be honest).

I don't sleep through the night, neither do my teens so I don't know why we expect small children to.

I don't actually remember when dc started sleeping through, possibly never. If they did they stopped again. The difference is they learned to take themselves for a wee/get a drink and not come in to me.

Yep, we have 4yo twins - they are actually not bad sleepers in general but one or other has taken to coming in most nights.

I think it is a huge time developmentally for them and their brains are super active incl at night.

In case this helps, we keep a small pull out mattress thing on our floor - it just, just fits - and they can go there if they want to come in, but not "the big bed" as we have the same issue with restlessness.

It actually works prettg well as they come in, cosy down and straight back to sleep for all.

I'll copy and paste a note I've got on my phone about bedtime passes... But school really helps my dc too. Even now (she's 7) we lose it in the school hols.

Bedtime passes
If you think the not sleeping is a psychological thing then you could try something called bedtime tokens / bedtime passes. Start with a family meeting, draw up some sleep rules, get your child to suggest and draw them to give them some ownership.

Agree a reward. We've used penny sweets and playmobil. We used playmobil, I bought a camping set and split it all up, put the names of all the bits in a pot and Daughter got a new piece at random every morning she had tokens left.

Make loads of tokens together. I mean loads. If the child gets up at bedtime or calls you in the night then that's absolutely fine and allowed, but costs 1 token. Put them in a pot by their bed. If there are tokens left in the morning, the child gets a reward.

For the first few nights the child needs to succeed. So you need more tokens than they will use. My Daughter used more than 30 the first night. When they're in the swing of it, start to gradually reduce the number of tokens. It took us a few weeks to get down to 6. My daughter started to fail a few times and had to try. We got stuck at this level a while. Eventually we got down to 3 and at some point the system was gradually forgotten. 30+ night wakings down to 1 or 2 was a lot bloody better.

You can look this up, I believe it's called bedtime passes and there's a few articles out there.

Our main issue was night wakings rather than bedtime, my daughter would wake at 1:30am like a clock and not go back to sleep, sometimes at all. She was 4yo.

I hope it works!

Little tips - which I’m sure you or many other’s may have tried. But hopefully it helps.

Vitamin D during the day
Activity to tire out the body during the day
Reduce screen time before bed
Reduce sugar before bed
Bath with Epsom Salts (ie magnesium) at night
If he needs a night light - make sure it’s only low red colour
Lavender diffuser

Best of luck - it’ can be exhausting for you.