DS is now 2.5 years, and until recently, there had been no problems getting him to sleep at night (preventing him from waking early was another issue!), but in the last week or so this has really changed. We've kept his routine the same (milk and story, brush teeth, tuck him into bed, lights out, sing his song), but recently he's been fine up to the tuck him into bed part. When you say 'bed time' he will refuse to get into bed, if you try to pick him up he'll run out of the room. I'm concerned that he may be scared as the other night when I was trying to put him to bed, he was cuddling his teddy and said 'teddy scared'. When I asked what teddy was scared of, he said monsters. I tried to reassure him that everything was okay, but I'm not really sure how to handle this at his age - do I just reassure him that there is nothing to be scared of, there are no monsters? I quite like the character Susan in Terry Pratchett's Discworld - if children are scared of monsters, arm them with a poker to defend themselves, but I don't think this would help a 2 year old If he is scared, it is a very real feeling for him and I don't want to belittle him by saying it's silly to be scared. How do you deal with this?
Also, I'm worried about the situation escalating - at first he would get into bed and go to sleep if I stayed in his room until he was asleep (not ideal as he's always been able to get himself to sleep by himself), but now he's refusing even to get into bed. Last night it took 90 minutes of trying/crying before he finally got into bed and went to sleep.
Is this just a phase he'll go through and grow out of? If your children went through this, how did you make it better?
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toddler won't go to sleep - maybe scared?
7 replies
SoTiredOfTheWheelsOnTheBus · 25/08/2009 08:32
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