3yo won’t go to sleep alone in his own bed

[momof4]

Our boy just turned 3, and has started having trouble sleeping. A few weeks ago, he started not wanting to go to bed at the regular bedtime (9pm), and would refuse to go to sleep. He’d get out of bed and come to ours, and one of us would calmly return him to his bed. Repeat all night. If we stayed in his room until he fell asleep, he’d wake up crying when he realized we weren’t still there. He will not verbalize any reason for the change in behavior.

From infancy, there were NEVER any sleep problems. He always went to sleep easily and slept through the night (except waking him up to breastfeed).

Parent 1: feels like the best long-term solution is to continue to calmly take turns returning the 3yo to his bed in the hopes that in a matter of days or weeks this phase will pass and things return to normal.

Parent 2: feels that whatever the problem is, it won’t be solved by forcing him to remain in his room alone. This parent has started sleeping with him in his room in the meantime, although even then he still has trouble sleeping.

What do we do? We’re both at a loss as to what the problem is, what the solution is, and are both really tired.

 

[saint_patrick]

@momof4 When my daughter was 4 and had her own bedroom for the first time, we had a period of time where we would let her fall asleep in our bed and then move her. Sometime between April of that year and 4 months later when 4th of July came around we had gotten her to sleep in her own bed, but she started getting up. We figured out that it was the fireworks that were bothering her (I know thats not your issue). Because of the fireworks, we put a TV in her room to drown them out. Through this we learned something. She needed time to mentally wind down in her room before sleep. So, bedtime at 9pm became bedroom time at 8:30pm. She was allowed to watch TV until bedtime. She started going to her room, on her own, at 8pm, because she wanted to watch Mickey. Then we learned something else. If we turned off the TV it was an argument and a fight. But, when I handed her the remote and showed her how to do it and **she** turned off the TV/light, it was like she had to consent to bedtime. It made a huge difference! She is now 9. We have not had another issue with bedtime since we started having bedroom time.

 

[seekjoydaily]

@momof4 It's just sleep regression. Has your kid stopped napping, or cut down on napping lately? Both of my sons still sleep on bed with me most nights (2 and 3 years old), so I'm siding parent 2.

 

[madea945]

@momof4 Ours had something like this. He insists he doesn't like to be alone. Usually I'd sit with him for a bit and remind him that he's never alone, we're always close by, and he's got lots of stuffed animals he can hug. We also allowed him to look at books as much as he wants in order to relax to fall asleep. It helped to identify a few favorites we knew he found comforting and suggest them when he was feeling anxious. Very often, once he got a few extra hugs and snuggled in with his book, he totally waved us off and was fine.

 

[gailsie]

@momof4 My daughter has recently been doing this.(2y) I do what parent one does. I take her back into her bedroom, do some itsy bitsy spider and it’s lights out. When she first started doing this last month I would get up with her and go downstairs and watch a whole ass movie with her! But now I’ve decided to do things differently.

It has been working just laying her back in bed and playing a quick game and back to bed! She started doing this when her sister was born. But she’s actually been doing better most nights! For us it’s been about 2 months of getting up in the middle of the night but it is getting better!