[Solved] Toddler sleep problems

Buddy sounds tough.. Some thoughts :

- Has there been any major changes in his life / the house recently? If so kids can take a while to settle and need lots of reassurance
- Could be night terrors? A small wattage nightlight would help
- Is he eating enough? I remember how hard it was to get food down our 2 and a bit year old... Could a drink of milk help
- Could it be teeth - would a quick dental check help?
- Constipation? More fruit / plenty of fluids / Weetabix!!

My best thoughts would be not to get him up, but sit with him in the room and comfort as necessary. Keep putting him back to bed if he does get up or you could create a rod for your own back....

I would recommend responding to children to reassure them you are there and care, but not getting them out of bed and making it clear its night time e.g. keep lights low etc

Hope this helps!

/Buzz

Cheers Buzz - some good thoughts here.

I know when mine were younger we used to let then climb into our bed - my daughter used to kick 7-bells out of us though and one night i found my wife sleeping on the floor!! We took the approach of reassuring them, but putting them back to bed each time too. I was painful process at first but they soon get back into routine.

I have of course save the kicking my wife out of bed story up for my 'father of the bride' speech 🙂

Hi,

I don't suppose it's been quieter on the last 2 nights?

From our experience, the thing was to make sure they really had woken up fully. Until that point they would still be confused. Most often took them down stairs, turned all the lights on and sat with them for 10 mins. Sometimes a drink. Then took them back up and turned the lights up a bit, etc.

Batman

I solved this with my first child (can't remember there being a problem with the others) by sleeping on the floor in his room for a few days. If he woke up, I was there (and awake - can't really sleep that well on the floor) before he had time to make a fuss, so he quickly got back to sleep and then into a sleep pattern of not waking up. Hope this helps.

As a matter of interest (and I'm sure there'll be a few who think I'm cruel) - when I was trying to get him off a dummy, he would always get upset (and cry) when we took it off him. Solved this by painting some anti nail bite solution (bitter aloes) onto the dummy. It was quite comical at first watching the puzzlement on his face as his 'friend' turned against him - but within a couple of days, he decided of his own accord that he didn't want it any more.

Cheers for the replies,fingers crossed he's back to normal. One of those phases they go through hopefully.

Cool - did any of our wisdom work or did t just resolve itself??

I think possibly a bit of both Buzz to be honest. We have started giving him his tea earlier and if he doesn't eat it as there funny at this age we give him some porridge with his milk-we read somewhere that porridge is good to help sleep. I think that that has helped,hopefully things have got back to normal as he's only got up once in the last 4/5 nights and he went back to sleep real quick.

We had this with our daughter, and for a while we let her in our bed, which made it happen even more often and obviously made us have less sleep. We found just comforting them in their bed with the light off. If you haven't got one, a night light may help.