Posted by
Havefaith
15 yrs ago
Dear All,
My daughter is 21 months old. She has been sleeping thru the night since she was 2 months old but she has had relapses (at 6 mth old and then again at 11 months old).
In the past month, she has started climbing out of her cot. As a result, we have moved her into a bed. Now in the middle of the night, she climbs out of her bed, opens her bedroom door (where there is a gate) and she starts shaking the gate and cry out for me until I go to her room and sleep in her bed with her. The crying and sleepless nights started 10 days ago and it has been almost every night.
Please let me know how to get her out this pattern. We put her down a little earlier last night to see if that would help and it has not. We tried to ignore her one night - but it is really hard because with her bedroom door opened it is like she is screaming and crying outside our room.
Many thanks!
HF
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These things come and go. As I see it you have three options:
- Allow her to sleep in your bed when she wakes up at night.
- Make her fall asleep in her bed again and then leave.
- Make her fall asleep in her bed again and stay there.
All have advantages and disadvantages. The first option will probably give your the most sleep, but it will be years before she stops coming in.
She is too old for the ignoring trick. That's for babies. At this point I think the yelling is a combination of getting a reaction from you and not being able to get to you.
Can you perhaps get rid of the gate, or put it somewhere that stops her from getting into trouble but allows her to go into your room? At her age, it's pretty unlikely she will get into serious danger in the middle of the night anyway unless you have stairs.
We taught our kids not to yell for us. If they did we would come in and look unhappy and tell them that they can come to us but we don't like yelling. They are to come to our room and wake one of us up, gently. That way they feel that they have some control.
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Axptguy38,
Thanks for your suggestions and laying out our options.
I have opted for option 3 - "make her fall asleep and stay there". DH and I also talked to her before bedtime. She did not get up last night. We will see what happens in the next few night before we get too excited.
HF
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if it carries on try getting someone else to talk to your daughter too about staying in bed - our doctor did it at one of our check ups and it was amazing how it was taken in and absorbed but we had been saying it for weeks with no effect. Teacher may work too if you have her in a playgroup.
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Z
15 yrs ago
We have just gone through this exact thing: 2yo climbs out of his cot so we move him to a bed prompting him to get out of bed in the middle of the night. We handled it like this: get up, say "Bed" and put him back into his bed. Lather, rinse, repeat often many times each session. The keys were that we didn't react or make it interesting at all -- we pretty much ignored his fussing and just put him back in his bed. Took about a week before he settled down again. Now, he will sometimes climb into his sister's bed as he is falling asleep, so we just make sure that he is in his own bed before we get into bed [her bed is very high and doesn't have a side rail -- we learned the hard way when he fell out of bed one night].
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A friend of mine had a similar problem with her 2 year old waking up during the night and very early in the morning. on the advice of Annerly midwives sleep clinic she bought a Gro-clock - see http://babycentral.com.hk/Gro-Clock-Sleep-Trainer.html which you set to change colour for bed time and awake time. as long as your child understands about colours, it should work. The clock is blue at 7pm (or whatever time you set bedtime) and turns yellow when you want your child to wake up. My friend says that even though her daughter wakes up earlier than 7am, she waits until the clock turns yellow before she starts calling out 'Mummy!'. Worth a try!!!
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Anonymous2008,
Thanks for the tip. I will definitely give it a try.
HF
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We bought a gro-clock for our 2 year old. It has a star for sleeping and a sun for when she's allowed to get out of bed. It wasn't too long before she learnt how to push the buttons to change the star into a sun and then say... "sun", and get out of bed.
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Slammy, don't you just love these little critters....your post really made me have a belly laugh.......
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