3 y.o. waking in the middle of the night!

sunnydays99

DS has always been a great sleeper.  Since he was a few months old he would put himself to sleep and sleep soundly for 12 hours.  Up until now....

He has been in his "big boy bed" (a double) since before DD was born (so about 7-8 months).  We've never had any issues with that.  A few months ago he started complaining that he was afraid of the dark so we got one of the starlight turtle night lights and that helped a bit.  He also went through a phase where he thought his ceiling light was scary and the curtains were scary, etc.  We were able to successfully ease his concerns and he hasn't mentioned that in months.

A few weeks ago he started waking up in the middle of the night and crying for mommy or daddy.  He just sits in the middle of the bed crying for one of us over and over until we go.  He'll usually say he's scared of monsters or spiderman.  He wants us to sing to him or cuddle with him.  Normally he'll just go right back to sleep.  This happens 1-4 times per night almost every night!!  Very occasionally he'll be really distressed and will almost seem like he's sleep talking - not making any sense, unreasonably upset, etc - then will kind of snap out of it and go back to sleep.

Any experience with this?  I just don't get why he's suddenly waking up so much.  I feel like we're just perpetuating it by going to his room and soothing him but I don't want him to be scared and I also don't want him to wake up DD.  Any ideas would be excellent!  

ETA:  I should also mention that he is still in pull ups overnight and is not dry in the morning.  I've been wondering if he's waking up because he feels the need to pee.  I've tried getting him to pee when he wakes up like this but that normally wakes him up even more then he has a harder time going back to sleep...

kpips20

DS started doing this a few months ago. It's not every night but can be up to 3-4times a week. What has helped is that we don't talk to him when we go in. We simply lay him back down (or put him back in bed if he got out) give him a kiss and leave. At first we were laying down with him or singing to him but then it seemed like he was crying just to get us to come in there. Once he realized we weren't going to do anything fun, it cut down a lot.