any tricks to getting an almost 4 year old to stay in bed beyond locking the door and ignoring?

[Anonymous]

My almost 4 year old has gone through stages of sleeping really well (going to bed easily / staying in bed all night) and stages where he cries out for more things at bedtime or during the night. The previous bad stages resolved themselves in a couple weeks and I just chalked them up to a brief phase. We've in a particularly bad one right now though of 2 months with getting out of bed multiple times after I tuck him in and multiple times during the night with some "need". He claims to have to poop and will try to force out a poop (he doesn't wipe himself yet), claims his stomach hurts, that he's "scared and lonely", etc etc - all things i'd want to be responsive to in a normal phase but now am just totally get played by.

i don't want to lock him in his room - the few times i've drawn a line like that he works himself into a full panic attack and vomiting when he's not usually a throw a huge fit type of kid. He also wakes up his 2 siblinds which makes everything so much worse. I've tried "you can have a treat with breakfast" but that doesn't seem to be enough of an incentive this time. Other ideas?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My almost 4 year old has gone through stages of sleeping really well (going to bed easily / staying in bed all night) and stages where he cries out for more things at bedtime or during the night. The previous bad stages resolved themselves in a couple weeks and I just chalked them up to a brief phase. We've in a particularly bad one right now though of 2 months with getting out of bed multiple times after I tuck him in and multiple times during the night with some "need". He claims to have to poop and will try to force out a poop (he doesn't wipe himself yet), claims his stomach hurts, that he's "scared and lonely", etc etc - all things i'd want to be responsive to in a normal phase but now am just totally get played by.

i don't want to lock him in his room - the few times i've drawn a line like that he works himself into a full panic attack and vomiting when he's not usually a throw a huge fit type of kid. He also wakes up his 2 siblinds which makes everything so much worse. I've tried "you can have a treat with breakfast" but that doesn't seem to be enough of an incentive this time. Other ideas?

We started a sticker chart around 3.5 and it has been working well. DS get a sticker every day for not calling for me after I tuck him in and for staying in bed until the Ok-to-wake clock says it's time to get up. It's been a life changer for us.

[Anonymous]

We went through the same with our 3.5 year old (including the constant bathroom requests, which I think is pretty common for kids this age because potty issues are so central to their lives at this point).

What we did is extend the time we spent in her room during bedtime. Instead of just doing a story and a song and then lights out and we leave, we started hanging out for longer. The first couple weeks, we'd actually stay until she fell asleep (took about an hour). But then we shortened it up. Now we are staying between 20 and 40 minutes (total, including the tuck in routine), and she's usually awake when we leave but she does not get out of the bed and the only request we ever get is to open the door a little wider (she is anxious about the dark right now).

We didn't really even focus on the getting up, because we didn't want to discourage stuff like letting us know if she needed to poop. I think the added parent time helped her relax and now she feels more comfortable. Most nights we just sit next to her while she lies down. We'll take a book in so we can read. Sometimes we'll find some music on Spotify that she's enjoying and we'll listen to it softly together.

Hopefully this is helpful. I only have one kid and am not an expert! But it seems to have worked for us and bedtime has become less combative and she seems more relaxed. She's also been staying in her room longer in the morning again, playing quietly and only coming out when she gets hungry. So I think this has helped her feel more secure and relaxed. For a while it was constant wake ups until 10pm and then she'd be in our room at 5am. It was exhausting.

[Anonymous]

Bed tent

[Anonymous]

Yeah my 3.5 yr old won’t go to bed by himself (guilt trips me hard) but since we’ve dropped nap it’s not a lengthy ordeal to put him to bed anymore. He started running out of bed to get someone to put him back in abs lay down in the middle of the night. We have also instituted a sticker chart which so far has worked great! Except I upped the ante with bribery and said when he gets X stickers he can get a small prize. Once he gets used to not running out of bed my next move is to try the sticker chart for staying in bed and going to sleep alone

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We went through the same with our 3.5 year old (including the constant bathroom requests, which I think is pretty common for kids this age because potty issues are so central to their lives at this point).

What we did is extend the time we spent in her room during bedtime. Instead of just doing a story and a song and then lights out and we leave, we started hanging out for longer. The first couple weeks, we'd actually stay until she fell asleep (took about an hour). But then we shortened it up. Now we are staying between 20 and 40 minutes (total, including the tuck in routine), and she's usually awake when we leave but she does not get out of the bed and the only request we ever get is to open the door a little wider (she is anxious about the dark right now).

We didn't really even focus on the getting up, because we didn't want to discourage stuff like letting us know if she needed to poop. I think the added parent time helped her relax and now she feels more comfortable. Most nights we just sit next to her while she lies down. We'll take a book in so we can read. Sometimes we'll find some music on Spotify that she's enjoying and we'll listen to it softly together.

Hopefully this is helpful. I only have one kid and am not an expert! But it seems to have worked for us and bedtime has become less combative and she seems more relaxed. She's also been staying in her room longer in the morning again, playing quietly and only coming out when she gets hungry. So I think this has helped her feel more secure and relaxed. For a while it was constant wake ups until 10pm and then she'd be in our room at 5am. It was exhausting.

This is a lovely idea. You focused on connecting with your child so she does feel more safe, relaxed, and secure as she's falling asleep. And good for you that you shortened the time so you aren't chained to her bedroom for an hour each ight - I think that so often people forget to keep decreasing the time they stay in a room - something works so you are worried about changing it and then THAT becomes a new crutch!

Eventually she'll need you less in the bedroom to get ready, and you'll just join her to read a book or two and sit with her for a few minutes, processing her day, chatting about what was good and what was bad. That time in bed, with lights down low, is a time when school-age children often reveal more than they do during a busy day when everyone's moving from thing to thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:works himself into a full panic attack and vomiting

To me that is a red flag something else is going on