I feel like I have been posting like crazy!!! Ok~ my 3 1/2 year old daughter goes to bed around 8:15. She gives us no problems. She doesn't get up and come out, she goes right to sleep. Problem...around 1:00 she wakes up screaming wanting to come into our room. This happened awhile back and I kept putting her back into bed, but it got worse, so I put a lock on her door so she couldn't get out. I took the lock off after 2 weeks and she was fine for several months. She has recently started doing it again. I put the lock back on. She will go back to bed after 5-10 minutes of screaming, but she is up again in an hour. So much that she is not getting enough rest (and neither am I). School starts next week and she needs to be rested. I started going in there after the first 2 rounds and calm her down and put her back to bed, but I am so tired, that I eventually let her come with us. She has always liked to sleep with us. She would usually come in at 5am when daddy left. I was fine with that, but now it is at 1 or 2am. She still naps, but I don't think that is the problem, as she goes to bed with no difficulty. She only naps for 1-1.5 hours. Any suggestions??? Thanks!
Try a night light and maybe have her pick out her own teddy bear. If she becomes attached to something - she might be able to fall back to sleep with ther bear. Ask her what is wrong. Maybe she is afraid of something. Try some "sweet dream" spray. It's just water in a water spritzer bottle but she may think it's something special. You can put some lavender scent in there if you want and that can help promote sleepiness.
Good luck.
My daughter did the same thing and now we have figured out a way to keep her there in her own bed. We turn on her night light, give her a stuffed animal of her choice and put on her soothing bedtime music. It baby einsteins mozart. She gave us a problem at first and wanted us to keep coming in there for something(a kiss, hug , drink, go to the bathroom,etc) so i heard somewhere to go in there give her a hug, kiss, and say goodnight and then sit in her room with her dont talk to her dont look at her just sit there until she falls asleep. I had to do that for about 20 min for about a week and since then we havent had a problem. She goes right to bed after a hug and kiss and dosen't get up anymore until morning. We also got her a fish tank for her birthday and put it in her room and any time she has a hard time falling asleep i turn the light on the tank on and tell her she can watch the fish swim from her bed for a few min and within a couple mins she falls asleep watching them. Hope this helps.
Maybe let go of the nap?
"I started going in there after the first 2 rounds and calm her down and put her back to bed, but I am so tired, that I eventually let her come with us."
It's not surprising to me that she has started this behavior again. You give in. You let her back in the bed. If you don't want her there - don't let her be there! She knows if she throws her tantrum long enough and hard enough, mommy is going to give in and let her sleep with you. Trust me, I know how important sleep is...so you will need to make a firm decision and not look back. Can you put up with a few nights of being drop dead tired or do you want to make sure you get a good nights sleep? If you decide that she needs to sleep in her bed and sleep through the night without disruption, then those are the standards you need to uphold.
If she is not hurt or sick, let her have her tantrum. She'll eventually figure out that her screaming and protesting will not cause you to make an appearance, and she'll go back to sleep.
If you simply cannot bear to do that, if you must make an appearance then make it as boring as unemotional as possible. Go in, help her back into her bed, say "Time to go to sleep" then leave. Talking, negotiating, justifying, begging only serves to arouse her even more which is definitely not what you want.
Good luck!
I don't have this problem in the middle of the night, but with "nap" time. Yelling or putting my son in time out don't work. So I put Elmo in time out. Then I give Elmo back and threaten to put him in time out again if he gets out of bed. Works great!
I know someone else who told her 3 year old that she couldn't get out of bed until the arms on the clock were in a certain position (6:30).
Is it possible she has bad dreams? If you don't think that's it, maybe she is just pushing the 5am thing up a few hours. My son does this on occasion (usually waking up at 6 but sometimes he starts to push the limit and wake up closer and closer to 5am....not quite the same but similar). Maybe she just wants some comfort to go back to sleep. Sometimes my son just wants me to rub his back a little so he can go back to sleep. If you comforted her a little until she fell back asleep, would that work? Sorry, I don't really know. She's 3 1/2 so she would probably understand if you explained to her that she needs to stay in her bed so she can get rest to grow big and strong...try explaining that before she goes to bed and then again when she wakes up in the middle of the night??? Hopefully, eventually she will get the point. Good Luck.
My son stopped taking naps by the time he was 2 years old. Children do not need naps just because they are toddlers. You may consider cutting out the naps. If you are going to send her to preschool in the near future she will not be able to take naps then anyway.
Give it a shot. Just my option but I don't like the idea of locking your daughter in her room. What if there would happen to be a fire? You might consider put up a gate instead.
Good Luck,
S.
