Sleep (or lack of)

[adam12]

Our son turned two in August and he now sleeps in a twin size bed, with mesh rails on each side. For the last two weeks he has been getting out of his bed and coming to our room. Our bed is too tall for him to get in so he stands next to it and if we don't see him, he'll start calling for us until one of wakes up. Me or my wife will pick him, take him back to his bed and put him back in it. Sometimes he will want us to lay down with him and sometimes he will just go back to sleep. The really odd thing is, is that he gets up at the same time eery night; 1:30a and 5:30a. We've tried everything we can think of to encourage him not get up in the middle of the night but nothing has worked. Any suggestions? Thanks

[AnnW]

Does he wear diapers at night? Perhaps he is wet and that is waking him up? Maybe cut down on the liquids before bed?

[KarlaB]

My dks were like that when they were babies and I read a book once that talked about "sleep training" or something like that where you break their scheduled time of waking up - so like if he is getting up at 1:30, you would wake him up at 1....however, this was for babies and the idea was you were waking them up to feed them, so if your son isn't requesting a drink or something I don't know how it would work. Maybe just change his diaper to 'disturb' his sleep a little. I don't remember the exact details of the books plan, but this is the basic jist of it. If you're interested I could try to find out what book it was in.

Good luck!

[Amy]

My kids went through this. It was like they re-trained themselves to wake up at a certain time everynight. It would come in waves. They would sleep through the night for a month or two and then all of a sudden start waking up at the same time everynight for about 3 weeks. This happened around 2 years old and lasted for about 6 months.

I have no advice-I tried everything from keeping them up later (so they were really sleepy) to bribes. Just know that it is rarely permanent! :)

[Mickey]

We lean toward attachment parenting, so I don't have any advice that you'd probably want to take. We did go through the same thing, though.

[KarlaB]

I should add that although I did read about it - we didn't do the sleep training or whatever it was - I couldn't see setting an alarm to wake me up so I could wake up my kid. LOL! And, like Mickey we are more into AP. :)

[Linda/NE]

My kids have done this from time to time too. Is he upset when he wakes you up or is he calm?

First, like Ann said, check the diaper issue. If that's not the problem maybe try just telling him that he needs to go back to bed w/o getting up yourself to put him back to bed. It may be that he is just wanting your attention at that time. If he doesn't get it he may stop getting up.

A couple of our kids used to want me to get up with them for no apparent reason except to get up. At first when we told them to go back to bed they'd cry but eventually they learned that they had to go back to bed and I wasn't getting up. I know that sounds on the cruel side, but the more you cater to their wishes the harder it will be to break.

Good Luck!!