My 20 month old has only slept through the night twice...HELP!!!

[janey32]

My second child is 20 months old and is driving me slightly mad!! He goes to bed at 7pm like clock work, no bottle, just falls asleep on his own. He then wakes through the night at least twice and is up at 5.30am every morning. When he wakes I generally leave him for 5 mins then go on and put on a musical bear, which helps a bit, but more often than not I have to sit on the end of his bed until he falls back to sleep.

I have now limited his day time nap to 1 hour a day to make sure he is really tired. Which helps slightly, but things are not really improving...

Any suggestions apart from drugging him!!!

Sympathies - my DD only did it a couple of times between 4 and 6 months, and has never done it since. She's now 27 months.

You may need to work on it one problem at a time. Is the not-settling again more of an issue than the early start, or the other way around? Have you looked at either the bunny clock or the kidsleep clock, to help with the 5.30 start? (google either and you'll see how they might work).

Might it be possible to adapt one of the gradual retreat/fading kind of techniques to a toddler who can understand a lot more, re: the night waking? If you don't go in to him, does he get up and start playing, or is he distressed he can't go back to sleep?

Sorry for all the questions, but more info might help point you in a helpful direction!

Definately night waking is my biggest problem. When I go in he gets even more angry/distressed that I'm there and then go and leave him.

Think you're right I need to do the gradual/retreat thing, fingers crossed!

Good luck. It might still be worth thinking about a clock in conjunction with other techniques, cos then at least there's a visual cue that it's absolutely not time to get up!