My 2.8 year old has begun a new trend of being terrified at night time, waking through the night (like 4 times calling then screaming) and waking the same way. This started last week and we're at a loss.
Since we took his soother away at 5 months and did BW shhh/pat he's been a dream night sleeper - goes to bed on his own, very independent, soothes on his own for up to an hour some times before falling asleep, wakes up happy.
Lately, he gets terror in his eyes when we begin the night routine, starts to repeat our usual sayings manically over and over and over again like a crazy person and the wakings - he never gave us those as an infant!
Now when he wakes at night or in the morning, he yells "Mommy!" several times louder and louder until it erupts shortly into screams of terror.
He does not want us to leave the door open or give him a night light so that hasn't changed. I'm not sure what has happened but I don't want to react the wrong way and start a bad habit.
He's had some changes in his life recently - his Montessori teach left the school, he's potty trained (although he refuses to poop on the potty - can you help with that one as well? lol), and his father has shown his some age inappropriate things that I warned him might bite us in the butt one day.
How should I respond when he wakes in the night? I go in, he asks to go downstairs, I refuse and tell him it's night time and he needs to go to sleep. He asks that I put his blanket back on him - again one of his routine things - and then he eventually falls back asleep. But it's the consistent post wakings as well which I treat the same way.
His naps went from 1 hour to 20 minutes some days and even when I can get him to do an hour (I've been on vacation so dealing with it on my own and have gotten it back to somewhat normal) he still wakes screaming and having a fit.
We are at a complete loss.
