Losing it; 2 y/o awake for hours at a time. How to break the cycle?

[7curly11]

@poptart717 What 2 year old doesn’t have meltdowns?

 

[poptart717]

@7curly11 It's not the same frequency or intensity. And typically for different reasons

 

[dls8]

@almighty100 OP I hope you scroll down to see this. Many responses spouting the modern parent sleep training schtick. Which works...for some kids. Modern sleep training is also not normal in an evolutionary sense (you think villagers were letting kids cry it out 2000 years ago? Or 200,000 years ago?). So that advice may be what you want or need but it might not

It might be that your kid is like mine: lots of neurological differences. He would regularly wake up so often (still does but only like once a month now thank god) we had a shorthand name for it: the two hour wakeup. What eventually helped was in two areas.

First, we optimized his bed. Oversized blanket tucked under the mattress so it never gets thrown off. His exact right pillow and pillow case. That helped a lot.

Second, we got diagnoses and, eventually, meds that made a big difference both awake and for better sleep (note: neuro meds are inexact; our first try made everything worse! So consult a doc and go in with proper expectations)

Good luck op. Maybe it's just a phase. Maybe it's about bedtime routine etc. Maybe your kid is different

 

[mmelanie]

@dls8 I don't think people 200000 years ago called it sleep training but I bet crying babies got left to figure it out lol

 

[dls8]

@mmelanie Oh? And where are they getting left? No worries about predators?

 

[mmelanie]

@dls8 In the cave? I dunno lol

 

[johnford]

@maxinvasion We have the exact same situation with our son. We can barely enjoy a vacation because he wakes us up somewhere between 12-3 and refuses to go back to sleep. We’re both so so tired. I miss camping, going to a cabin or hotel somewhere nice, it’s all off the table and we have tried everything. He’s always so grumpy from lack of sleep too. I wish we could have some normalcy, this has been a very difficult experience. If you find a solution please let me know. I’m so sick of this shit.

 

[wonderwoman55555]

@maxinvasion First of all... This wont last forever and its usually a short phase...

Second... Kids get used to the routine and environment... If you want your kid to sleep through loud sounds, be loud when they are asleep.

Your kid seems to like 6 hrs of sleep... So dont put her down at 7 if you dont want her up at 1am....

Last, if you reward her for being awake... She thinks its a good thing....

Sometimes kids need to cry and self soothe

 

[emilieh]

@maxinvasion Our daughter used to do this. As terrible as it sounds we just let her be, she'd jibber jabber to herself and make the occasional loud sound but she would eventually go back to sleep. We figured it's best to not get her used to us getting her up, of course if she was really crying (more then a wimper) we would go check. She's a twin and her brother never woke up from her. Now we put them to bed around 8 p.m. and she sleeps through the night (they wake up around 8 a.m.). Our older son did the same thing, and we also did this same process for him, now his bed time is 9p.m. and he sleeps until 730 a.m. is.

Edit: for reference our older son is three and a half years old and did this when he was like one and a half. And our daught is one and a half and still does this once in a great while but as I said above we just put her to bed a bit later and just let her be if she does wake up. Her and her twin brother also only nap from 2 to 4.

 

[missingmywife]

@maxinvasion Don't listen to anyone telling you to cut her nap short to make her tired. If little ones are too tired, they sleep worse. Let her sleep as long as she needs during the day.

Our son also had the same problem at some point. It just goes away after a while. It's just developmental. If you try to force her to be tired by cutting the nap, it'll just make it worse though. She might fall asleep easily because she is tired but she will wake up more. Children around that age have problems transitioning from REM to nonREM sleep and if they are too tired it makes it worse. Just part of having a child I'm afraid.

It's gonna be a hard month or three but it'll get better.

 

[freezela]

@missingmywife Our toddler has been doing the same for the past year. How long can you take something like this?

 

[mcapicola]

@maxinvasion I totally know where you are, this happened to me for months while my wife was pregnant with our second. We never ended up adopting a particular strategy and that was likely an error which delayed things. For a while I was taking her to the sofa and giving her a bottle and she’d fall asleep there while I watched YouTube for a bit and drifted off too. Gradually it began improving as we developed a new strategy.

Later bedtime does seem key. We normally giver her a magnesium gummy around 5pm (you can’t buy melatonin in this country but magnesium supplements apparently stimulate natural production), no screens after 6, dinner around 6:30pm, bath around 7, and aim for sleep by about 8.

Just before I go to bed around 11, I go into her bedroom and jostle her around a bit. This is one of the crazy things which actually had a huge impact, sleep repositioning. If it’s a constant time she’s waking up there’s a sleep cycle problem potentially and her body hasn’t figured out how to go between cycles of sleeping and wakefulness. Giving her a reposition, light until you figure her tolerance for it, got us from a 6 hours followed by 4 hours schedule to a 10 hours schedule.

Hopefully you see this amongst the 90+ comments here as I think some of this is useful and a bit different from other advice.

 

[katrina2017]

@maxinvasion Not sure if this a a fix but here is what we do with our two year old.

Starting bedtime routine at 1935, +/- a few minutes. Brush teeth, pj, story bed by 2000.

We don’t go in anymore and at 0800, we get him up. If wakes up earlier, he has to stay in bed until 0800.

0800, get dressed, including diaper change.

Snack at 1000

Lunch at 1215

Rest from 1300 to 1500, does not have to sleep but has to be in his crib. If he falls asleep, we wake him up at 1600.

When he gets up, little snack

Dinner at 1830

This has worked for us. Hope you can figure out a solution that works for you and your family.

 

[juan08861]

@maxinvasion Tell me you were anti sleep training without telling me you were anti sleep training

But seriously, get a book on sleep training. Send the wife to a hotel. It’s gonna be harder bc you should have done this 18 months ago. In a few days you’ll never have this problem again.

 

[kyleswife2015]

@juan08861 We didn't sleep train and my toddler doesn't do this. We've rocked/soothed back to sleep since she was born. She is on a consistent 7:30-5/6 AM schedule! Our only rule was that we don't leave her bedroom at night time. If she is up and awake we have to stay in her bedroom and that seemed to do the trick for us.

 

[janehenry]

@kyleswife2015 Every kid is different though. My niece was such an easy baby. My sister really thought she'd nailed it. Sleeps and naps were just never a problem. Thought she had hit on the perfect technique. Was even planning on writing a book on it.

Then my nephew was born... the book never ended up being written.

Sometimes you get an easy one, sometimes you get a hard one, even in the same family. So you gotta find what works for you and don't judge others for working different.

 

[kyleswife2015]

@janehenry Oof, my baby wasn't an easy baby! We didn't officially sleep through the night until 13 months and even then it was spotty. The only thing I did was stay consistent with a bed time, wake up time, nap time, and eating times. If she woke up at night we stayed in her room, even if she was up all night we would stay there until wake up time at 7. She was ROUGH as an infant but by far one of the easiest toddlers I have met.

 

[juan08861]

@kyleswife2015 Tell me you sleep trained without telling me you sleep trained.

What you are describing is a form of sleep training.

 

[tech001]

@juan08861 Tell my you’re in a cult without telling me that you’re in a cult.

 

[duder45]

@juan08861 Tell me you're from the USA without telling me you're from the USA.