Reply to Toddler won't go back to sleep

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is she cosleeping with you? If not, I’d walk her back to her bed each time she wakes up, say good night, and close the door. I have friends who have had to use baby gates to keep their kids in their rooms, but it’s temporary as they learn when they need to stay in their bed to sleep. Use a white noise machine in her room to help soothe for sleep and block noise if she’s loud (put one in your other kid’s room too). If you are cosleeping, I have no advice, as anybody I know who cosleeps has disrupted sleep like this all the time. Good luck. [/quote]

OP it is unclear what your sleep set up is. Do she have her own room? If yes, this is what I do. My child always has a water bottle in his room. He can get water himself. My son has a high metabolism and especially during growth spurts will ask for a snack in the early morning hours. We believe in eating when you are hungry and since teenagers and adults do it, I see no reason why a toddler cant be hungry at 2am- even if they had a dinner and bedtime snack. Just look at the food forum and moms complaining about their teenagers eating all the leftovers at 2am in the morning. One of us stays up with him while he eats due to choking risk- he has to sit upright when having a snack.  If she is not hungry you can say something like this.

I see that you are having trouble sleeping and you want someone to be up while you are up. I will stay with you in your room but mommy/daddy/etc are tired and we are going to rest my bodies so we can feel strong tomorrow. I will lay here while you read some books. If you need me I am here and will be here when you are ready to rest your body. The salt lamp is on low, I put the gate up, and have a few safe puzzles/wood games/non-swallowable toys available. 99% of the time he grabs two or three books and snuggles next to me. Within 20-30 minutes he is back to sleep. Sometimes if I sense he is really struggling I will ask him if he needs to share something with me or talk about something. Likely it was a really fun day or weve been together as a family for a week with daycare closed and he doesnt want to go back to school the next day or wants us to go with him. He might ask for extra snuggles/hugs while falling back asleep.

During certain brain bursts their little minds have trouble shutting back down. All people wake in the night but most of us turn or re-adjust and go back to sleep. If youve ever had a really stimulating day or waited tables and had waitressing nightmares then you can see why little kids also experience this. Ive woken up in the middle of the night and been like F%%^% did I forgot to get table 7 more ketchup?

You can set boundaries and still be available. Sometimes they just want our presence. Sometimes they need to express something that their minds are working through. During sleep, our brain processes the day and effectively we re-expereince and re-process the day.

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