Sleep continued..

niknak1128

Hi again.  Tried to find the nite light.. it's out of stock like everywhere!! I'll keep looking though. 

So up again this morning. 3:45am!!!  I did let him stay in bed with me .. he's sick too so he was extra whiney. But I turned the tv off.. told him to lay down and go back to sleep.. it didn't work.  Tried to put him back in his bed, he kept getting up. The one time he stayed in there, I went back to bed and fell asleep and I wake up and he has his toy bin empty and on top of our bed! He never went to sleep. I made him sit quietly in the living room and gave him breakfast and took him to school.  

When I got to school, I told his teachers my concerns about his sleep and the impact it might be having on his learning and behavior.  She tells me that she does notice that he's zoned out sometimes. She said he also seems to have trouble repeating letters/numbers back to him.  Now, at home he does do this somewhat.  We play a lot of board games that he has and he's always able to read the number on the cards that tell him how many spaces to move.  I do notice that he struggles with 5.. he seems to always want to call it 2.  He struggles with letters at home too but he can spell his name and recognize it when he sees it.  Then she tells me that he squints a lot which he also does at home.  He does it mostly when watching tv. He always wants to stand really close to the tv and we are constantly telling him to back up.  But when he does back up.. he squints. She said she puts him in front to try to make it easier for him but sometimes he still gets up and walks over to her to look at whatever she's showing to the class.

My first question- why on earth did she not tell me this later and I had to approach her? Secondly, now I'm really concerned that his sleep is damaging his ability to learn!  

I'm going to ask the doctor about it at his appt. Friday. I also notice, when he does get super sleepy.. his pupils get HUGE.. like they fill up his little eyes.  I'm going to keep looking for that good nite lite.. that seems like a solution that might help.. she said they do TWO hour naps at school!?  He sometimes sleeps that long at home but usually more like an hour and a half.. so maybe I need to start weaning him from the naps and see if that helps.  

AmeliaKris

He may have out grown his nap. He can still have quiet time in his room with some quiet toy choices instead of nap. When I taught preschoolers, the non nappers could look at books during nap. My concern is his eyes. Have you thought about taking him to a pediatric opthamologist? I had a very similar boy in my preschool class, turned out he needed glasses. I don't know your full story, but the eye thing really jumped out at me. Good luck!