Our 3 year old is a nightmare when it comes to sleep. Even with Dad or I sleeping with her in her room in a spare bed she still fights bedtime and finds every excuse under the sun to get out of bed and delay sleep. Despite starting at 7.30pm it is generally around 10pm before she finally goes to sleep. And then she'll wake screaming 2 or 3 times a night with the same excuses/demands. And again, someone is still in her room with her! We've even tried letting her sleep with us in our bed and she does the same thing. It's not just a matter of calmly and continuously putting her back in her bed because she'll throw herself on the ground and scream the house down, waking her baby sister in the process. Same thing when we don't give in to her excuses. She has a night light, soft toys, we do the routine of showers, stories, cuddles, sleep. We just don't know what to do anymore! Between the baby waking during the night, the 3yo falling asleep late and waking the baby with her screaming, hubby and I never get time to enjoy each other's company or unwind at the end of a day, and the sleep deprivation is destroying us. Can anyone offer any advice or recommend any good resources to turn to? We're losing it here!
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I was in a similar position a few months ago with the baby AND the 2.5 year old playing up at night. It's terribly hard so I feel you. I had many tears because I was just drained..
We got a salt lamp (the night light he had wasn't bright enough I don't think) and we just decided on a plan and stuck to it. Which was, we'd go in and do all the goodnight things but if he came out again, we'd tell him off to bed and walk him to the door and say goodnight from there (so that he didn't get all the kisses/cuddles/high fives that he did the first time we put him to bed) and we stopped closing his door because he'd asked to keep it open.
BUT the biggest thing I find it sleep promotes sleep. We'd got slack with the new baby and kept him up later and didn't put him down for naps when we should have so because we wanted more time with him.. it was a vicious cycle of being over tired/over stimulated and just can't switch off. He'd wake having night terrors and scream our house down too.
So I spent about two weeks focusing on his day naps, catching him up on sleep and making sure he was in to bed by 7pm at night.
He has been good lately. Has stopped coming out and finding excuses. He might stuff around in bed for up to an hour on his own, but I feel like that's just what he needs to do to wind down some nights.
So being consistent (having a plan) and making sure they are rested enough and I hope that helps.