NW, EW, and poor behaviour - 25m old

[*Fiona*]

Hi ladies,

I'm at the end of my tether My wee girl has been in the "terrible two's" since she was around 18m old, I can cope with that. However, the past week her behaviour has been awful. Take just now for instance, she has just had an hour long tantrum, during which she hits out, she throws things, she screams. I swear my neighbours must think I'm strangling her or something!!! Generally we use a naughty spot technique to correct behaviour, but we call it time out. This worked well to begin with but not so much now.

We also are having NW every single night and EW, this morning was 5am-ish altho it is perhaps classed as a NW as she was awake for about an hour then went back to sleep until 7:30am. Typically for NW we will go in and check she has her dummy & cuddly blanket (more often than not she does), and we come back out. Usually it is enough. But I feel like she has now become dependent on us going in, in order to re-settle? Aside from just leaving her, does anyone have any advice? Whilst I'm not against just leaving her, if we go in, we can "nip the waking in the bud" quickly, if we leave her she wakes up fully and is awake for much longer. The 5am waking this morning, she cried out, DH went in to her and came back to bed, she lay and talked away to herself for almost an hour then drifted back to sleep.


Our day is typically:

6/6:30am: awake
12/1pm: nap for an hour (we wake her or it impacts on bedtime)
7pm-ish: bedtime

Some days she naps easily, other days she takes time to go off, sometimes she can take up to an hour to go nap. However I tend to just take her back down if she hasn't settled by 30-45mins. She can go napless some days but not too frequently. When she doesn't nap, I put her to bed at 6pm.

Any advice/suggestions re the behaviour and sleep please? (sorry I know this is only the sleep forum, but I couldn't quite see where toddler behaviour fits in properly)

[deb]

Definitely sounds like OT there. Is there any way she can go down for her nap maybe a half-hour earlier so she can get a fuller nap without it impacting bedtime? I know the pain of having to shorten or eliminate naps - Josie HAD to go napless after about 26 months because of the later and later bedtimes and we decided that we needed or adult time AND we also hated the whole days of awful tantrums instead of "only" the second half of the day.

Is she cutting the 2-year molars by any chance?

[*Fiona*]

I checked her mouth yesterday and no signs of the molars, her gums look the normal pinky colour instead of teething red. I would love for her to nap earlier and have 1.5hrs but she wont sleep earlier. If she would go up at 12 and go to sleep reasonably quickly, I would allow her (and be grateful of!!) and 1.5hrs nap time!

Today she got up at 7:30/8am so we didn't offer a nap and she didn't appear to need it altho her behaviour was awful this morning. She mellowed out from lunchtime onwards and was in bed by 6:15pm. No-nap days tend to be at the weekend as DH gets up for work around 6am on weekdays which wakes her up so early and now her bodyclock is used to that wake up time. Sometimes on weekends she'll go til 7/7:30am.

What sort of time would you suggest naptime so be? We used to do lunch at 11/11:30 and straight up to bed and she would sleep 12/12:30 for 1.5hrs. If we are out and about she would easily fall asleep in the car/buggy when I would prefer her naptime to be (12-ish). But at home in her cot she takes much longer to settle.

[*Fiona*]

Just out of interest, how long is "too long" a nap at this age?

[deb]

No right or wrong definitive answer, I'm afraid. For Josie at that age, 5 minutes was too long, seriously. ANY day sleep, including 5 minute power nap on the way home from the grocery (6 minutes away ), would mess with her night sleep. Other kids that age can nap 2+ hours without affecting night sleep. It's all so individual, and probably more of a disparity with spirited kids who NEED them or need to NOT have them. LOL

[*Fiona*]

it's so tricky when their routines change but it impacts on every aspect of their day. Tmor I'm going to watch her carefully, she doesn't really give any sleepy cues anymore, other than when she is exhausted and gets pale and asks for her comforters (dummy, blanket). I might try getting her fed at 11:30 and in bed at noon. I would cope with her giving up her nap (altho I love my hour quiet time in the day) IF she would STTN, or most nights. It's so so tiring!

[deb]

Another option some people have success with is to nap every other day and just expect the later bedtime on napping days. Gives them a chance to sleep themselves out and catch up, and sometimes they may skip 2 days running or nap 2 days running.

[*Fiona*]

Thank you Deb, today my plan is to try her for a nap around 11:30/12 to see if she'll sleep. If this doesn't make any difference, I will try the every other day napping. Thanks for the suggestion

[*Fiona*]

Last night she was in bed at around 6:15 and fell asleep instantly (no nap day). She had NW about 3 or 4 times between bedtime and around 11pm, but then slept soundly until 6:30am which is the longest stretch of sleep in weeks.

today I had her settled for nap at 11:45am and she was asleep around 11:55 and we woke her at 1 (we had to go out at 1 or I'd have let her sleep til 1:30). It really helped with bedtime as she went up to bed at 6:30. Her behaviour really went downhill around 5pm which I put down to tiredness.

I am a childminder and have to collect a child at 12 from nursery so napping any earlier isn't an option. However, I might put her in the buggy and leave home at around 11:30 or 11:40 and walk to see if she will fall asleep in the buggy then go collect my mindee (nursery is literally 2 minutes from my house) and allow the 1.5hrs nap. It depends on the weather though as she would nap outdoors (too noisy inside with mindees!!)

I pray for a decent sleep tonight!!!

[*Fiona*]

Yesterday morning we had toddlers which is a half hour walk from our house so I took her lunch with us, fed her before we left to come home (11:30am) and she fell asleep in the buggy on the way home. I allowed her a 1.5hrs nap and her mood seemed better in the afternoon and she SLEPT THROUGH!!!!!!!!!!! She slept 7pm-ish until 6:30am this morning!! First time in months!!

Today she was asleep by 11:50am however the postman knocked on the door at 12:40 and woke her up, she didn't settle back off to sleep so a 50minute nap today Not sure how she will sleep tonight.

I'm working hard at getting her settle for nap just before midday in the hope that she settles by 12:30 at the latest so she can have 1.5hrs... hopefully it will continue and we will get back on track with night sleep

[*Fiona*]

Any other suggestions girls? The earlier/longer nap hasn't helped, this has been in placed (except one day when it was cut short) since Sunday and hasn't made any difference. Last night she woke up at 12:45 and finally fell asleep again at 2:15am. DH got up to her initially, then I got up around 1:45 again. She initially cries out, then just talks away to herself for ages before crying out again.

I'm so tired, I know I'm not up for long, but I cannot go back to sleep until I know she has fallen asleep again, so altho not out of my bed for all that time, I am lying awake, listening.

[deb]

Well.... if the sleep isn't changing anything, there may be a developmental thing going on disrupting her sleep. Often around the birthday and half-birthday there's a sort of developmental leap where one aspect of their personality makes a leap but the rest hasn't caught up yet so it's like they're uncomfortable in their own skin. Sounds like me when I'm PMSing, so I figure it's no fun for a toddler.

If you can identify any triggers for some of the more extreme behavior, maybe you can stave off some of them. For us the late afternoon sling-to-mommy thing was helped by meal planning, letting them participate as much as they could (they could tear lettuce or spin the salad spinner or use a plastic butter knife to slice hot dogs, or I could plan ahead and throw everything into the slow cooker and use the afternoon to go outside with them and run them stupid unless the weather was particularly horrible. Sometimes it was (and still is!) a strategically-timed snack to keep the hungry low-blood-sugar whines away for a while.

Oooh, do you give a massage at bedtime? Both our girls still get bedtime massages, and they have bedtime CD's too (J doesn't use hers any more but Nat does still) so they can listen to calming music while we massage them. Takes maybe 5 minutes for such little people (ours can take 10 minutes now LOL).

[*Fiona*]

So sorry I'm late coming back to this. I *think* it's her 2yr molars.... her nappies have been horrendous the past week, really really smelly, quite loose and a horrible colour. Her behaviour has been more settled. I've gotten her routine a bit more strict and she is usually settled for naptime by 12/12:30 at the latest, normally she is asleep by 12:30 and is getting the 1.5hrs. Nighttime sleeping has improved a wee bit, she still wakes but mostly she may cry out once or twice and then resettles herself.