Do kids EVER sleep through?!

[SallyPatch]

My 3.5 year old wakes up every night, without fail.

To be fair, she actually goes to sleep nicely in her own bed, but when she wakes every night (not being dramatic, quite literally every single night), usually between 11pm and 1am, she won't settle back unless she's in our bed. I'm grateful that she will actually go back to sleep but it means "musical beds" every night and we always have a broken sleep. We even bought our other child a double bed, so when the Sleep Thief wakes, she goes in our bed with one parent, and the other parent goes in the sibling's bed with them. We have no other rooms/ beds and the sofa is a back breaker.

We have tried EVERYTHING - white noise, blackout blind, night light, no night light, food before bed, no food before bed, earlier bedtime, later bedtime, nap, no nap, altered "wake windows" - you name it, we've done it. Even a paid-for sleep coach told me "you've done everything I would suggest" 🙃

To those who say "cry it out" - no. Plus she is not the type of child who will "learn" and just go to bed in the end. She will quite literally scream the whole night if she has to, and that's disruptive and distressing for everyone involved, including waking her 6 year old sibling.

Everyone told me "she'll sleep when she starts school....." NOPE. She's been in full time school since September and nothing has changed.

She is also a Velcro baby and wants to be attached to us all night when she comes in our bed too.... sounds cute, is cute, but not when you need personal space to sleep 😂🙈

Is this just our life for now?

Boundaries and patience and returning to own bed if creeps into yours/ or not allowing her into yours if she wakes

if you want her to sleep in own bed you need to stick it out , in her bed

she will settle in own bed. It will take time and prob be some tears as you aren’t allowing her to do what she wants to do so will cry

many parents then give in as tired theirselves /dont want other siblings disturbed

the fact she settles in own room at bedtime means she can do it

im not saying cry it out an leave her - but to be firm and stay with her in own room till settles - yes it will take prob a few weeks but it will happen if you stick to it

Agreed - cry it out - no.

Just a thought — is there any possibility she could be autistic? I only mention it because if you’ve genuinely tried everything, it may not be behavioural at all. In autistic children, sleep difficulties are often linked to differences in circadian rhythm rather than routine or boundaries.

In those cases, support like melatonin — and sometimes options such as enclosed or specialist beds — can be real game changers for sleep, not just for the child but for the whole family too.

My son is autistic and he has a tent bed which zips up and can only be opened from the outside. It’s right beside my bed with netting so he can see me and I can see him. He puts himself in it even during the day and doubles up as a safe space. When he wakes in the night he’s safe if I don’t wake up (though I usually do) and he settles back down much quicker.

I don't think it's that unusual for children to wake every night for many years. You might still have a few more years of this OP!

I think I read somewhere that most people wake in the middle of the night. We just learn how to put ourselves back to sleep. As adults we get so good at it we forget we even woke up.

I'm sure your little one will find some midnight comforter that works for her, it just might take a while. Maybe when she learns to read you could teach her to read herself a story to get back to sleep?

Adults wake at night. It's normal for kids to need comfort at night. Calling a child a 'sleep thief' is pretty mean when she's behaving in a perfectly normal way. If she only wakes once, comes in your bed, and then goes back to sleep quickly for the rest of the night, i'd say that's pretty good going. I would love that!

I'd set it up so you sleep with her from the start. Get a double bed in her room and when you're ready to sleep, sneak in bed with her. Clearly trying to get her to sleep through independently isn't working.

My mum had to sleep with me until I was 7. I'm not autistic or have special needs. My grandma also slept with my uncle until he was 8 - her other 2 boys, including my dad, slept independently, it's just a temperament thing.

My daughter started sleeping through at 4ish. I don't know if this was the reason, but she had recently been prescribed a preventer inhaler for query childhood asthma as she had had a couple of really nasty chest infections in a row. Or she may have just been ready to sleep through. She has never seemingly needed the amount of sleep other children do. I always had her in with me, so she would go to sleep in my bed, I was too tired to be traipsing around in the night.

My daughter is like this, we had to wait until she was a bit older and then work with a sleep consultants to tackle things in a more psychological way. She's 11 now and still sometimes can't sleep well but she has tools to understand this more and manage.

Both mine slept through at 3.5ish once all teeth through and didn’t need bottle comfort etc.

My 3.5 year old sleeps through. He'll wake occasionally but i just pop in so he knows I'm still about and he's asleep again within a minute. He's never slept in my bed though so that could be the difference. I'd rather stay up all night putting him back in his own bed than co sleep so that's what I've done 😂

We been through various phases of sleep going off track over the years but I always manage to get it sorted again once I figure out what the problem is. What time does she wake up, is she still napping (how long? What time?), what time is bedtime? :)

This is great advice.

also, is she having any naps during the day? This could be a sleep pressure issue.

Youngest dc has slept every night since 9 months old..
I'm not smug. It's my reward for having a last dc at 43 and years of sleepless nights with the others!!

Ours have always been allowed to come into our bed if they need to in the night, ds1 stopped doing it at around 3.5/4, ds2 is 5.5 and still comes in most nights anytime between 1am-4am but I’d say 3 out of 7 nights a week now he’s in his own bed all night so slowly doing the right way. We do what works to get everyone in the house the most sleep - and returning him to his own bed and going back and forth every night was not the answer.

My dts slept 6-6 from 5 months but were so bloody exhausting in the day. Teenagers now. And won't get up

Have you tried a reward chart? That’s the only thing that worked for me with DS1. He was a bit older though, about 5 I think, so she maybe too young at 3 to fully understand. It’s worth trying though if there’s a toy she really wants it might be enough motivation for her.

I would say this too. Use bribery as much as possible. At 3.5 she is capable of staying in her own bed.. she doesn't want to and has got into the habit of coming into you. She doesn't necessarily need to cry it out but she needs to be returned to bed.

Have you told her that it’s nornally for everyone to wake up durring the night and she should snuggle in with her teddy and try to go back to sleep. Mostly works for my youngest.

But to answer your question no mine are much, much older and don’t reliably sleep through.

We bought a super-king bed around that age. DS went to bed in his own bed and when he woke up - anytime between midnight and 5am he came and got in with us and snuggled back down to sleep.

Agreed.

We had a cot mattress on the floor next to our bed would she use that. They just came in and went straight to sleep. We did what we had to do to get some sleep.

I would continue but one of you swap into her bed? Get her a decent single bed, make a huge deal out of her big girl bed, reward her with a star in a jar or something if she

1. sleeps through
2. wakes but stays in own bed

Could be worth a try? Then worst case, if she comes in with you, you crash into her comfy bed, own space, winner.
Someone told me ‘every hard stage will pass, it is just a stage’. I laughed, went through 2 years of horrific nights with my daughter, now she FINALLY sleeps mostly all night. Sending solidarity!

It’s so tricky but as you eventually give in and let her in your bed she knows she’ll eventually get to stay
so keeps at it. patience as another poster mentioned I think is the only way to change but it depends if you want to and are willing to.
As difficult as it is she needs to learn to sleep in her bed and see that as her safe space. I know it’s so difficult but I’ve found perseverance is key. I even resorted to putting my kids back in bed and sleeping on a mattress next to their bed for a couple of weeks so it broke the habit and they settled in their own beds when they woke up. It only gets worse the older they get and are able to stay up longer if they are used to sleeping in your bed. Also a big advocate of audio books in their own rooms to help them settle and reward charts!!!! If the stay in their own bed all night for a week they get some kind of treat…

No advice but I'd love to know the answer! My son is 7 and the same - happily goes to sleep in his own bed but when he gets up he comes into ours. It was cute but now he is taller and stronger, not so much. He sleeps horizontally, sometimes draws his knees up and sometimes pushes his feet against you like a cat. Really hurts and usually aims at my stomach. It's really making me irritable and we have told him this can't continue. Last night I closed my bedroom door, usually leave it open. He ended up waking his sister and getting in her bed 🤦‍♀️

I think parents in these situations have two options. Either you let them sleep in your bed, and accept it and don't give them a hard time for it. Or decide you're not going to let them do it.I then put in boundaries. I have four kids, three of which a neurodiverse and two of them we're terrible sleepers. I developed a chronic illness in which sleep was essential for me to be a decent parent in the day.
Editted to say there is of course the third option where a child with a secondificant disability is unable to sleep alone.In which case none of this makes any choice possible.

I made the hard decision to be very strict about not having them in my bed unless they were ill.
It took a lot of patience and being very strict about bedtimes and routines, and making their beds really lovely places to be. They all shared a room sothey definitely weren't lonely.
It did involve some tears, but meant, I could be a really lovely mum in the day, rather than a moody one. I watched so many other parents be exhausted and short tempered with their kids because they were being kept up half the night and made the decision.It was better to have a couple of nights of upset rather than years of tired parents and kids.

I think certain behaviours become a habit and a crutch. My DS slept through most nights from 9 months until about 3.5, but then we took away his night time nappies and he got into a habit of calling for us in the night to go to the loo, even though I don’t think he really needed it as he’d been dry for ages. It was getting harder and harder to resettle so we gave him a Yoto player for his birthday and said he could listen to calm quiet stories in his bed until he fell back to sleep. This didn’t reduce the wake ups at first but it did make the resettle easier. He’s 4.5 now and I’d say we’ve gone from a nightly wake up to one maybe once a week. We also have a groclock so he knows when it’s morning, which helps him resettle himself.

I would say though, he has never been in our bed, so we’ve never had to overcome that.

Would a reward chart for staying in her own bed work?

I would have a plan that either she gets into bed with you but the minute she falls asleep you carry her back to her own bed or you just calmly walk her back to bed and sit with her until she falls asleep.

It will be hard for a few nights but it’s a habit and if you wait for her to break the habit you could be waiting years 🤷‍♀️