2 Year old who suddenly won't sleep on her own

[Asha's Mummy]

I have a little girl (Asha) who has recently turned 2.  Up until mid December Asha went to her cot every night at 8pm, sent herself to sleep and slept right through until 8am the next morning.  One night in December she cried as I left the room (she wasn't ill nor teething).  As I had done in the past (as advised by Tracy Hogg) I let her cry and just went back to reassure her.  This time it wouldn't work, Asha constantly climbed out of her cot which we eventually had to turn into a bed to prevent her from hurting herself.  Unfortunatley since then we have not been able to get Asha to either go to sleep on her own or even sleep in her own bed.  She will now only go to sleep in my arms with her milk or in our bed with me beside her!  If anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated.......... not only for our insanity but also the "expansion" of our family, which at the minute will be non existant with madam in between us each night!!

[J&Jsmom]

Hi

I don't have many answers for you I'm afraid because I'm going through the same thing. I'll write what we've done so that you can try some of the ideas but I have to warn you that none seem to be working so I hope someone else can help us out.

My DS turns two in about 2 weeks time. Like Asha, he has been perfectly happy going to bed on his own (both lunchtime nap and bedtime). But all of a sudden he screams blue murder when we try to leave the room. He is now also waking at least once at night and won't settle back down unless we stay with him.

The first night he did it, my DH stayed in the room with him - not holding him, just being in the room until he fell asleep. But after an hour when my DH tried to leave (despite appearing asleep) he started screaming again. So my DH just decided to sleep on the sofa in his room.

Night two and I said: start as you mean to go on. Do you want to spend every night sleeping on the couch in his room? No, right. Lets get a new plan. So we tried to let him cry it out. In the past, if he has been unsettled, we've found that if we left him crying for five minutes, he would send himself to sleep unlike if we constantly tried to settle him which just wound him up. But instead of putting himself to sleep after 5 minutes of crying, he just went on and on and on. We went in and tried a different approach. We didn't say anything except: lie down, it's bedtime. And then left the room. We'd wait a minute and then go in again. Made no difference. He kept on screaming. So we tried the same thing again, this time waiting only 10 seconds before going back in. This worked and after going in about 5 times he went to sleep.

So night three, we thought we'd try the same approach again. He was having none of it. We went back in over and over and over and over.....and he just wouldn't settle. Until he eventually woke up my infant. Which was lovely.

So we tried staying in his room with him again, but not talking to him and being out of sight. It stopped him screaming but he still kept sitting up in bed to check that we were still there. So now we're back at square one and staying in the room.

I don't know what to do about this because I don't want him to get used to us staying with him. But I also don't want him waking up my infant every night (have only just got him to sleep through) so I can't really leave him screaming by constantly stepping out the room.

Do they go through separation anxiety or something at this age? Because he's also started screaming every time I drop him off at nursery, clinging to my legs etc. The staff say he is fine the instant I leave and he has a great time while he's there (he never wants to leave) but the two have come at the same time which makes me think it's separation anxiety - which could be the same for Asha.

So I don't have too much advice - other than try to start as you mean to go on. If you don't want her in your bed, don't take her to your bed. Maybe try to comfort her in her room and try to gradually ease your way out - but to be honest, I haven't found a solution that works for us yet.  I hope someone with some experience with this can help.

[Asha's Mummy]

Melissa,

Many thanks for your words.  It's just good to know that someone else is going through the same thing.  You wouldn't believe how many of your problems I was nodding in agreement to.  You may have hit the nail on the head about the separation anxiety.  Asha has the same problem when I drop her at daycare and like you said the two problems seemed to have occured at once and until you pointed that out I hadn't realised.  The nursery said that it's quite common at "that age". 

I think deep down I know that we really need to bite the bullet and do it the hard / long way but as you know yourself when you're exhausted and fed up fighting with them it's easier to give in.  I don't know about your DS but Asha is at the stage where if we leave her room she just constantly comes out after us.  We even tried a gate on her door hoping she would give up & go back to sleep but the determined little madam that she is, she managed to climb the gate, bruise her face and come looking for us!!

Let's hope someone out there can give us a few more pointers.

Thanks again,

Karen