Sleeping FAQ: 24+ months

In the last few months my son has become scared of the dark ever since he saw a spider in his room. He now insists on sleeping with the light on although we have a dimmer switch and it is almost on the lowest setting. We sometimes are able to sneak in and turn the light off when we go to bed but on other occasions he wakes and cries out for us to turn the light back on.

I'd be grateful for some advice as to how to get him out of this problem particularly as we have a 9 month old who my son will be sharing with on holiday for a couple of weeks. Our baby sleeps in complete darkness.
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My daughter has always slept well and we've followed Gina's routines from six weeks. From 16 weeks she regularly slept through the night and from six months always slept 7pm-7am. Three months ago this abruptly stopped after a cold and a sinusitis-type virus. She has woken every night since then at least twice and regularly stays awake for 1-3 hours. I'm coping with this alone as my husband leaves for work at 5am every day and isn't back before 7.30pm. She dropped her lunchtime sleep at 20 months. We put her into a bed at 24 months (my brother-in-law needed the cot for his first baby). We don't have any other children.
To stop her wandering around at night she has a stair gate across the doorway. When she wakes up she wedges herself between the door and the gate and yells for me until I come in. I try not to say anything but the first time it happens I take her to the toilet (she's been dry at night for roughly three months). I then return her to her room tuck her in, tell her: “it's still night time” and walk away. This is normally between 10.30 and 11.30pm. She then wakes up again about 2-3 hours later at which time I go into her and tell her: “it's night time and time to sleep”. She will try and engage me in conversation but I try not to respond. She'll try anything not to get me to leave: “I need the toilet”; “there are monsters (tell them to go away - this works); “I don't want you to go”, etc. She will then drift off for about 20 mins and then wake up crying for me again (same routine - wedging herself between the door and stair gate). This can regularly go on for 1-3 hours. She eventually wakes up ready for the day at 6am which is far too early!
During the day I try to keep her stimulated mentally and physically (although I'm finding walking for 2 miles each day almost impossible with the lack of sleep). She's a very bright child with advanced vocabulary and needs the stimulation of company to keep her happy. We go out and see friends when I'm not working (2 days a week) and my childminder who has her one day a week has other children so she gets to be amongst other children.
She has always eaten very well and I ensure she has the right amount of vegetables, protein, carbohydrates etc. She's allowed chocolate after lunch but no other sweets with E-numbers as they make her hyperactive! She has three good-sized meals a day and is on the 50th weight percentile and 75th height percentile for her age.
Her daytime behaviour is amazingly good, bearing in mind the lack of sleep. However, I do notice that from about 6pm onwards she gets totally hyperactive which is a sure sign she's getting tired. She's in the bath by 6.30pm and normally in bed by 7-7.30pm. I've always followed the same bedtime routine but for the last few nights we've had trouble settling her.
I suffer from depression although have been off medication for almost a year but can feel symptoms coming back due to continued lack of sleep. This is also affecting our marriage.
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After being a perfect sleeper for well over a year, my son now wakes up once or twice a night screaming for mummy or daddy. This has been going on for a couple of months (but it does not coincide with the birth of our new baby).
It wakes us up, and I always go to him - he settles back down very quickly.
It happens on most nights but not every one, and he settles quickly so I don't think it is attention seeking. It is not his baby sister waking him.
We are shattered because of this and his sister is waking us very early every morning - I am starting to suffer from cold sores, ulcers and am being horrid to my kids.
What should I do? Should I let him cry?
He has a lunchtime nap from 1.30-3pm and is settled in bed at 7pm.
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I have followed the Contented Baby routines since my son’s birth and he has always been very happy and content.
But all this has now changed at night time. Since arriving back from our 4 week summer holiday in the UK, I have not had a full nights sleep. He has slept through since 3 months old but is now waking 2 or 3 times in the night. I work full time so disturbed nights are making me exhausted.
He moved into a bed two weeks ago which does not help matters as he just climbs out and wanders round the house. He eats well and is a happy child in the day.
He settles to sleep at 7.30pm. He may wake at 2am, 4am and then starts his day at 6.30am.
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I have followed the routine from birth for both of my children and have been a huge fan of Gina Ford’s routine for the last 2 1/2 years. I employ 10 woman; there are 5 mothers between us and I have bought the book for all of them. My baby girl is 6 months old and has slept through the night from 11 weeks and is a dream baby. Her brother has always been more spirited but benefited largely from the routine and, up until now, has been a good sleeper. He suffers from eczema and caught chicken pox three weeks ago. During this time he was waking in the night scratching like crazy and making his skin bleed. We took him into our bed for a few nights as this was the only way to get him back to sleep. He has returned to his own bed for over a week now and he continues to wake up at any time between 11pm and 2 am. He is starting school in September; school time is 12.45pm so we are cutting right back on his lunch time sleep; now he only has half an hour. At night time we have tried several things after he has woken: going to his room calming him down, then switching the light off; this sometimes works and other times we have to repeat the process several times before he has dropped off to sleep. I don't believe it is night terrors as when he wakes he is not complaining of monsters or anything like that. We have tried not going to him at all he has cried on and off for over an hour and then we have gone to him. When my husband went in to him after this long time last night my son lashed out and was a like a frightened animal. At this age I really did not think we would be having this problem as we had been so strict about not going to him when he was a baby in order that he would learn to put himself back to sleep. Regardless of the kind of night he has had he is normally awake by 6.45/7am.
The business I run is a very busy one and I am really finding the tiredness getting to me. I very much hope you can me us some advice as everything the book has suggested in the past has worked.
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Our problem is night time waking. Lily (3.1 yrs) has always been a contented baby and an excellent sleeper. However her life has become rather disrupted over the past 5/6 months. She has had a new baby brother (whom she adores) and has dealt with the loss of a beloved grandmother. Her brother (5.5mths) is in a good routine and sleeps well.
Lily had chicken pox a few weeks ago. I took her out of night time nappies as they were irritating her so much. She has been out of daytime nappies for a year. She was dry for at least two weeks at night, but has now started wetting the bed every night. We lift her before we go to bed and don't give her milk at night anymore.
However, often before she even wets the bed she comes into us saying she can't sleep in her room as she needs someone to look after her, because of the monsters. We have tried many things: a night light, shooing away the monsters, giving her a special teddy to look after her and the gradual withdrawal method. Nothing seems to be working. Is this just a phase she will grow out of? We are about to go away on a long trip to Australia and US which will obviously cause much disruption to her sleeping, so I am almost hesitant to correct it before we go and tackle it on our return in a few weeks. We are both exhausted though through lack of sleep.
Should I put her back into night nappies until things have calmed down?
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I am really worried that my two-and-a-half-year-old son is not getting enough sleep and that this is beginning to effect his behaviour. He began to drop his lunch time nap a few weeks ago but is now only averaging eleven hours sleep a night which results in him becoming irritable and grumpy during the late afternoon.
I am finding this difficult since I also have a very active 14-month-old son, and my husband works late which means I am often on my own at bedtime.
How do you increase the amount of time a toddler will sleep for? When he wakes up early, he immediately calls for me, and if I just leave him, he becomes very noisy waking his little brother.

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Every morning my 2 year old wakes up crying and screaming around 5.30am. I've always rushed in with a little milk to try and satisfy possible hunger and hopefully settle him back. This did work for a short period, but now he still drinks the milk but won’t go back to sleep, doesn’t want to come in for a cuddle, and demands to watch 'Cbeebies'. If we say 'no it’s too early', he gets hysterical, and it can wake his baby brother up He goes to bed approx 7.30, so 5.30am is far to early to get up isn’t it? Do I just get up with him and go downstairs to keep the house quiet, or suffer upstairs with a grizzling uncontrollable toddler?

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My daughter is 27 months old now, and 2 months ago was toilet trained very successfully in 3 days which I was so proud of and thanks to Gina's book. She uses the big toilet now and has been dry during the night for over a month, but I still put her in a nappy. Now I am not sure whether this is the problem, but it certainly seems like it, although it had started to happen prior to her being toilet trained.

My daughter goes to bed at 7-7.30pm Monday - Sunday ( she is taken for a wee straight before bed) and her last drink of the day is with her supper at 5.30 - 6pm.

Without fail every morning she wakes at 5.45am shouting for mommy and daddy. When we go in she is standing up in her cot and asks for the toilet, which I know is probably every mom’s dream. We take her to the toilet, no lights on and no conversation other that for when she has finished we try to put her back in her cot and say its still night night time. She starts kicking and screaming and shouting no mommy, no mommy I get up now! We have tried the controlled crying method but she will just continue to cry and scream until we go and get her up at 7am (Monday to Friday) due to work and nursery, but on some weekend we have left her and she is still crying at 7- 7.30am, so we give in and get her up.

She only has 1 sleep during the day from 12.45 - 1pm for 45 mins, sometimes an hour (but that is max) on Sundays when we have been swimming I let her have an hour. On some weekends she doesn't want a sleep and will protest if we try to put her to bed for a nap. So I don't think that it is because she is having too much day time sleep. I thought it may have been too little, so decided to let her wake naturally and she always wakes after an hour anyway.

I think what I am asking here is do I now transfer her to a bed, put a night light on and teach her to go to the loo herself or just live with the fact she is a 5.50am waker, which is making both myself and my husband very tired and ratty even though we have changed our bedtime to no later than 10pm, but feel we have no life. You can see that when my daughter does get up she is still tired as she will sometimes roll the floor crying and having a tantrum. It is a battle to get her dressed for nursery as she is so ratty.

We tried putting her in a bed in July but it was a disaster as we had 7 nights of constant screaming and being sick and her finally sleeping from midnight to 5am, so we put her back in her cot and all was well for a month anyway.

How can I stop the early waking? A friend as suggested that when we go to bed that we lift my daughter and take her to the toilet which might stop her waking early. This seems very unusual but I am willing to try anything.
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Please help! My daughter (27 months) is waking early. We have been through the check list, and I got the darkness situation sorted. She slept longer for a few weeks, then decided she was scared of the dark. So we left her dimmer on low with one bulb in for a while. This worked for a few weeks, then the early waking started again. So I bought her a little light that is attached to her cot, which she can turn on when she wakes. This also worked for a few weeks, but no longer. I doesn't matter whether she has a daytime nap or not (most days she does), or how long it is, or whether she talks for an hour after she goes to bed in the evening......she still wakes at 6am. We have tried going in and telling her to stay there quietly till we come to get her for breakfast, but now she gets out of her bag, out of her cot, and can open the door out of her room! Do I just have to accept that she is a 6 am waker? Is there a way to reset her body clock?
My daughter usually goes for a nap at 12-45-1pm for up to 1 1/2 hours, some days she doesn't have one at all.
She goes to bed between 7 and 7.30 pm depending on whether she had a nap or not during the day. She usually talks for up to 1/2 hour after going to bed.
My daughter usually eats well and has a varied diet, but will only eat if she is hungry (her 1 year old brother does eat more than her), so I tend not to give her a lot of snacks. She usually has a snack of fruit in the morning but not one in the afternoon. She eats three good meals a day with her main meal being at lunchtime and something such as rissotto or pasta for tea, followed by fruit. She often has some milk at 3 pm with her brother, and milk at bedtime, the amount she takes is variable.
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My 26 month old is refusing to go to bed. The minute I leave her she becomes totally hysterical and starts to scream and scream. This has started since Saturday when the clocks changed and so I thought she just wasn't tired enough. Now I am not so sure. Last night we didn't manage to get her to sleep until 8.30; Today she has had no lunchtime nap at all as she was just too hysterical. I have tried all the techniques but she just continues to be hysterical the moment I leave the room. Ideally she would like me to sit next to the cot until she has gone to sleep, I really do not want to have to go down this route. We have just had a new baby 12 weeks ago;she has not shown any signs of jealousy and is very loving to her baby brother.

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My two and a half year old daughter moved from her cot to a bed over two weeks ago.  She has gone from settling brilliantly at 7pm and sleeping right through until 7.30am, to now taking nearly two hours settle to sleep in the evening.  We have the same bedtime routine of bath, story and drink of milk, then teeth cleaning and lights out, but now she keeps getting out of bed and  running to the top of the stairs (we have a stair gate) shouting for a drink or saying she needs a wee.  The only way that I can get her to sleep is if I lie next to her on the bed and hold her hand, which can take at least an hour and sometimes longer.  I have to go through the same procedure when she wakens in the night, which is at least once, but some nights twice.  I am 4 months pregnant and really tired and exhausted, how can get her back to settling well and sleeping through the night again?
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My son is 2 years 6mths. He used to have numerous dummies in bed with him but now has only one. He drinks a bottle of cow’s milk at bedtime but now is waking several times a night and takes 3 or 4 more bottles as this is the only way he will settle back to sleep. How do I wean him off both? He no longer naps in the day
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My daughter has just had her second birthday. My husband and I decided to put her into her cot bed. She is our only child so we were not doing this for any need to use her cot again. We were blinkered perhaps by the fact she was 2 and is extremely forward in most things. At her nursery they are always telling us how well she sleeps in her bed.

We took the sides off the cot a few nights ago. Prior to this consulted Gina's book’s (have them all) and it doesn't really cover what to do if your child continuously gets out of bed.
On the first after our usual bedtime routine, of bath at 6.45 - glass of milk, biscuit and story my daughter happily got unto her bed at 7.30pm. All was well and not a peep was heard so we thought we had cracked it. After 10 minutes she was screaming hysterically at her bedroom door, banging to get out a she cannot quite reach the handle yet. So having read another book which covered this problem, I escorted her back into bed and reassured her I was there but kept it minimal, tucked her in and left the room. This went on for over 2 hours until she finally gave in and went to sleep. She slept well all night and woke at 8.30am the next morning.

The following afternoon my daughter settled and slept well for her lunch time nap from 1pm to 1.50pm.
That night we had the same problems; into bed at 7.30pm, then took until 8.30pm before she went to sleep. She woke at 12pm, 1.30am, 4am and 5.30am each time crying hysterically and was sick at 1.30am from crying so much.

Pretty much the same on the following night; it took until 8pm to get her to sleep. She woke at 5.30am but didn't get up just cried for about 5 minutes and went back to sleep until 7.30am. So we thought perhaps we were making some progress.

Last night was the worst; bed at 7.30pm and she fell asleep straight away, no fuss at all. Woke at midnight and I have never heard her scream and cry like this ever, she was hysterical screaming “mommy, no bed out out !!” This went on for 4 hours until I gave in and she came into our bed (I hate this).

What do I do now, I feel awful, I have turned my beautiful little girl that slept like a dream from 7 -7 from 12 weeks into a nervous wreck.

Do I continue, but put her back into her gro bag and use a bed guard? Persevere with a quilt as I am doing now? Or put her back into her cot and wait until she is nearer 3 yrs old. I realize that if we put her back into her cot we will have a few nights of controlled crying to cope with but that’s fine.
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My son has always slept well, only having a few blips, but nothing serious. I have never had trouble with him going to sleep, he very often says he is tired and asks to go to bed; we have a set routine which he loves and feels secure (well used to).

I have put a post about my problem titled 'fireworks nightmare' on the message boards and have had lots of advice but nothing that has made a difference, only worsened the dilemma. Now I feel I am giving mixed signals to both myself and Peter. I don’t know where we are or what we are doing.

I will do by best to recall exactly how it happened, but all the days are blurring into one.

About a week before Halloween the fire works started. My son has heard them before and asked about them but they never seemed to bother him. So I wasn’t ready for what was to follow. He goes to bed in the dark with the door shut at about 7.30pm, he usually will lie awake for 20mins 1/2 hr chatting to himself and then drop off to sleep until 7.30am.
This night he heard the fireworks and started to scream, asking "what’s that bang mummy?” I explained what they were and that there was nothing to worry about, settled him back down and went back downstairs. This happened a few more times until he was hysterical, so to my doom, I sat with him until he went to sleep. Once he as asleep he was fine and slept until the next morning. The same happened the next night and I sat with him again, his daytime sleep wasn’t affected, he went down as normal and I stupidly thought that once the fire works stopped, he would go back to being his normal happy self.
It has now been 4/5 weeks and it has got progressively worse, affecting his day time sleep as well. I can’t believe it has happened so fast and how I’ve got myself in such a mess
now I can’t get him to go to sleep at all without me sitting with him. I have tried controlled crying but he is relentless.
Last night and to day for example:
In bed for 7.30pm, sat with him for 1 hr until he dropped off to sleep. He then woke up at 3.20am and refused to go back to sleep. I tried sitting with him but he just says he’s not tired and for me to get him out! (screaming) I refused to get him out of bed and said that if he was going to shout and scream that I wouldn’t stay with him and I was going back to bed, I tried returning every ten minutes to tell him to go to sleep, but this made no difference either. He has now been awake for 11hrs only having 7hrs sleep the night before, 8hrs before that etc. and I know by getting him out of bed for the toilet etc only reinforces the problem.
My son is severely sleep deprived and it is of course affecting everything he does. I am watching him deteriorate before my eyes.

He eats three good meals a day and sleeps for 1.15 hr at lunchtime, from 1-2.15pm.
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My son is 2-years-old and he has been an excellent sleeper. Up until we went on holiday, 4 weeks ago, he settled in his room by himself on a regular basis. The problem is occurring now we are on holiday and he does not have his own room for 5 weeks and during this time he has lost all his good habits and demands my presence during naps and night time to settle. In essence, due to the current sleeping arrangements, he has lost all his good habits. He returns to his own room next week and I am not sure how to get him back into his old routines; in fact when I suggest going to bed now, he resists heavily, whereas before he just needed to be reminded at bedtime to go to sleep happily. At present he sleeps from 1-4pm and goes to bed at 10pm-8am.
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My son is due to start nursery in January 2006, when he will be 2 years old. I am also due to give birth to my second son on 2.2.06.
My son goes to a crèche three times a week and loves it. He is definitely ready for nursery as he loves being and playing with other children.
My problem is that the only nursery I can get him into near me in London only have afternoon spaces available from 1.15-3.45pm.
He currently wakes at 7/7.30am and still has a lunchtime nap of two hours, at 1-3pm. He needs this or is overtired in the afternoon. He goes to bed at 7.30pm and usually lies chatting in his cot until he falls asleep around 8pm.
He has always been a good sleeper. He is happy in his cot [he still wears a grobag] until he falls asleep. When he wakes he never cries, just chats to his teddybears.
I am really worried about his nap schedule when he goes to nursery. Obviously I could do with the time when he is at nursery to do errands and to be with the baby. My son also needs the stimulation and company of other children and, in my opinion, will cope very well with going as he is an outgoing child who is very happy in the care of other people. But I cannot cope with a newborn and an over tired toddler!
Should I let my son have 2 one hour sleeps, one before nursery and one after? Or 2 hours in the morning? But then will he make it through to bedtime? I am sure that once nursery starts I will have to put him to bed earlier and he will fall asleep quicker but I do not want to be up at 6am.
I thought other mothers must have had this problem or does everyone manage to find a morning slot for their toddler?
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I have trouble getting my 29-month-old to settle down for his day nap; sometimes he does a poo after I put him down and treats it like a game because I have to go back and change his nappy. I feel he doesn’t have a restorative sleep and appears fretful and tired by 4pm. He takes ages to go to sleep so instead of putting him down at 7pm, I find myself getting him in bed by 6:15pm, and he still takes an hour to fall asleep. On days when he misses a nap, he goes into a deep sleep at 6:15 pm and wakes extremely early, but if I keep him up until 7pm, we still get the early wake-up, so that is why I try for an extra hour between 6 and 7pm. Is this wrong, or should I force him to go till 7pm in a hope that he will eventually sleep in later? My other problem is that he has a drenched nappy at 5am, even though I am limiting the water and milk at tea time. His sleep is precious at the moment and I've heard of lifting at 10:30pm, but I do not want to disrupt his sleep, as once he is awake he is fully awake !
My son sleeps in a blacked-out room in his bed in a grobag, and has 3 meals a day, but I have to stay away from juice, sweets etc as they change his behaviour.
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