OT - Toddler sleep issue

[Willow25]

My 2.5 year old DD has always been a great sleeper. About 9 months ago we transitioned her to a big girl bed as we had #2 needing a crib. Things went well with her getting out of the bed a few times but after we put her straight back in the problem went away. Up until a few weeks ago. Now she gets up about 20 times when we first put her down. There are no tears when we put her back but a few minutes later she is back up. She comes and gets us with a big smile on her face. Initially we would just put her straight back into bed but that did not seem to work. Then we tried ignoring her and waiting a few minutes to put her back in. That is not working. ANY suggestions would be very appreciated.

 

[Hannathy]

Have you tried putting her to bed 30 minutes later? Some kids just don't need as much sleep as others. Also as they get older she may not need as much. Is she still napping? maybe it is time for no or a much shorter nap? Neither of mine were napping by then and both went to bed a lot later than other kids.

 

[Tricia's mom]

My DD will be 3in April.She pretty much has been off from naps since she was 2.5.I find she will sleep later than usual and not as long. SORRY.....

 

[Syrreal]

We literally just went through this with our son. He went from sttn and an easy bedtime routine to taking almost 2 hours to put to bed and then also being up for 2-4 hours a night every night. He was only avergaing about 4 hours broken sleep which did not bode well for overtired kid or overtired parents. He also hasn't napped in about 6-7 months so he was only going on that little sleep he was getting.
The only thing that worked was to make it so that he couldn't come out of his room at bedtime. This may mean that you will have to hold the door until your kid is asleep. If she isn't a climber, you may be able to just get by with a babygate at the door. We didn't have that luck since DS can climb 2 baby gates stacked on top of one another in a single bound.
What worked for us was reversing the lock and locking the door for the 10 minutes that it took him to settle down (we stay right by the door and wait but this way there isn't a struggle with him knowing that mom or dad is holding the door (he is one strong kid!) and then unlocking it for the rest of the night. It only took 2 days for him to get back to his normal routine and he is back to sleeping all night every night. From the 1st night he stopped waking up at night too.

 

[Mathfailure]

When our daughter went through this we were living in a raised ranch house, so the bedrooms were close to the common living area.

We allowed her to make a nest in the doorway of her room and fall asleep there. She was lonely, and seemed to just want to see us. She did fall asleep this way, and no power struggle. We would put her into bed when we went to bed.

It only lasted a few weeks and then her bed won out.

Hope something helps. I hated the no sleep aspect of little ones!

 

[Luv Bunnies]

Do you talk to her or try to comfort her when you put her back to bed? Snuggles and saying goodnight should only happen when she's first put to bed. After that, you have to take away any incentive for her to get up again. If she knows she can get a rise out of you or buy herself more interaction, she will keep getting up. Be sure that when you're putting her back to bed, you don't talk to her at all and barely even look at her. Just make sure she returns to bed safely. This could take 50 times the first night but you have to be consistent. After that, she should start decreasing the number of times she comes out of her room.

As others said, she may not need to go to bed as early. Perhaps try to put her to bed 1/2 an hour later and be sure the time leading up to bedtime is very calming and relaxing - no running around or rough play.

One of my preschool parents had the same problem with her son. She tried the baby gate in the doorway and he climbed right over it. They ended up cutting his bedroom door in half to make a dutch door. They could lock the bottom half and keep the top half open so they could peek in and see what he was doing. Theirs was an extreme case because of the behaviors caused by their son's disabilities. But, it might still work for others.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I have babygated my kids in their room before. When they were totally out, I would remove the gate for safety reasons. But they realized that even if they popped up out of bed, they had nowhere to go.

 

[Willow25]

We have tried pushing her bedtime back by 1/2 hour it did not work and in fact seemed to make it worse. We are going to see how she goes without a nap today.

 

[dougsmom98]

What worked for us was reversing the lock and locking the door for the 10 minutes that it took him to settle down (we stay right by the door and wait but this way there isn't a struggle with him knowing that mom or dad is holding the door (he is one strong kid!) and then unlocking it for the rest of the night. It only took 2 days for him to get back to his normal routine and he is back to sleeping all night every night. From the 1st night he stopped waking up at night too.

This is what we did with our twins. It took a little longer than 10 minutes each night, but we took everything out of the room that they could get hurt with, and we bolted all the furniture to the wall so they wouldn't climb on the dressers and such when they were putting themselves to sleep (double trouble ) and then when they settled down after a half hour or so, we would unlock the door.

 

[deva]

We have tried pushing her bedtime back by 1/2 hour it did not work and in fact seemed to make it worse. We are going to see how she goes without a nap today.

Sleep begts sleep. She is still young enough to need a nap and an early bedtime. If she is overly tired, she will be stimulated and actually unable to sleep. Check out Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Weisbluth. I also did the door flip with lock outside. After 2 nights with some fussing DS was quiet and stayed in bed.

Also have you considered putting her back in a crib?

 

[aanderson5]

She may be liking the attention she is getting. I agree with PP's suggestion of no interation when putting her pack to bed. Does she respond to rewards? Maybe set up a chart and every night she doesn't get up she gets a sticker. After X amount of stickers she gets a prize.

 

[Mrs D]

Sleep begts sleep. She is still young enough to need a nap and an early bedtime. If she is overly tired, she will be stimulated and actually unable to sleep. Check out Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Weisbluth. I also did the door flip with lock outside. After 2 nights with some fussing DS was quiet and stayed in bed.

Also have you considered putting her back in a crib?

I love this book, I call it my second bible.

Whenever someone is having a sleep disturbance at my house we always move bedtime 30 minutes EARLIER! Most of the time it does them trick, then we slowly move it later towards original time.

I also agree that she is looking for interaction form you. So no talking, I try not to even look at them. If it becomes too much of a struggle then the door lock would be the next step.

Although she's been in the big bed for 9 months I'll bet she just realized she can get out! Hopefully she'll get over the novelty in a few weeks (or less).

HTH!

 

[happymommy]

I made the huge mistake of taking DS out of the crib at 2. He was not a good sleeper to begin with (turned out he has significant ADHD, emphasis on the hyperactive). I should have bought another crib!!!!

We would lie down with him many nights, and so many times whoever was in there would fall asleep. Then DH or I would wake up later and crawl into our bed.

I also put a gate on his door. Sounds mean now, but really he never wanted to go to bed! He needs much less sleep than DD does.

When we'd be away from home, like in a hotel, the easiest thing to do would be to let him sleep with us, either in between us in a king bed, or if it were a queen bed one of us would sleep with him.

What about getting another crib? My DD stayed in hers until she was 4.5, but she at the time was very little, and she loved how cozy it was. I just lowered the side for her, and she had a little step stool, so she could climb in and out by herself (she was the easy one, who would nap for 4 hours and still sleep 12 hours at night). It may be more $$ than you want to spend, but it may have been too soon to move to the big boy bed. I wish we'd just gotten another one.

 

[barnaby1]

I would look at her amount of sleep at nap time. By 2.5 my dd was down to 30 minutes. Any longer and she just was not ready for bed at bedtime.
We also had a rule when she was doing the getting out of bed bit. She had a nightlight that would turn off after 15 minutes. That went on as I left the room but she was aloud to come out only if she was still awake when that went off. I then took her straight back to bed and either sang her a short song or told her a very short story (2 minutes). Then she had to stay in bed. Worked 90%of the time.

 

[Syrreal]

The no talking/attention thing didn't work at all with DS. I didn't even make eye contact when I would pick him up and put him back in bed yet it was still taking 2 hours for him to go to sleep night after night. I wish it had worked though. Quiet is a whole lot cheaper than new locks (since he was a houdini too and figured out how to jiggle open the old lock)

 

[tam626]

We put a baby gate up at our son's door so he can't come out.