Why did he stop sleeping?

amother

Magenta

Sun, Jun 19 2016, 4:10 am

My 2.5 year old has been getting up in the middle of the night for the last 2 weeks or so. The only thing that's changed is he dropped his nap, and his bed time shifted a little earlier as a result. But that was a month ago, he slept fine for about 2 weeks after that change. But I can't deal with the night waking, it's making me crazy. H9w can I make it stop?

FranticFrummie

Sun, Jun 19 2016, 8:28 am

This is the age where dreams start really kicking in, and it can make a child wake up.

Starting around age 2, DD would wake up at exactly 2:10am every single night, no matter what time we put her down. She was like that for the next 8 years! You could set your clock by it. Sometimes even nice dreams are scary, because kids don't understand what is going on in their brains.

I kept explaining to DD that when you go to sleep, your brain gets bored, and it starts telling stories to itself. If you don't like the dream, you can say to your brain "I don't like that story, I want a different one!" Eventually she was able to self soothe and "be the boss of her brain" and not let it scare her so much. If she had a real nightmare, she would come to me and I would have her tell her brain not to think scary things, and we would talk about what a nice dream would look like. It really helps!