Toddlers: 24 Months+
tracyl0826
member
2.5 year old not falling/staying asleep
tracyl0826
member
My LO has always woken up at some point during the night, talked to himself a bit, then gone back to sleep. However, recently it's getting much worse. We usually have him in bed between 8-9pm. However, he doesn't fall asleep for about 1.5 hours. He stays in his bed (toddler bed) and talks, sings, laughs, etc. He doesn't cry, call for us or get out of bed. He then will wake up at some point either in the middle of the night or very early morning. He may or may not go back to sleep. I've determined that he's only getting about 8 hours of actual sleep during the night. It seems that he's using the time to talk about the things in his head, he sings songs, talks about his day, etc. He still naps well (2-3 hours at school, 4 hours on the weekends). Any suggestions on how I can get him to sleep sooner/longer? Thank you!!
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Re: 2.5 year old not falling/staying asleep
The other thing with my daughter is that she takes a long time to unwind at night. The wheels in her brain just can't stop spinning. Sounds like your LO may be similar. After dinner, around 6:45, DH sits and reads a few books with her (or we do a bath on those nights). Then we go upstairs for potty time around 7 (usually 10 Minutes including more books), toothbrushing, jammies, another bedtime story, rocking and talking about our day or singing for another 15-20 minutes. Then in bed around 7:45. And it still takes her another 30 minutes of talking to herself before falling asleep. We tried just putting her to bed later with a shorter routine, but then she actually got overtired and took even longer to fall asleep.
DD usually naps for about 1.5 hours at school and 2-2.5 at home on weekends. Occasionally she'll sleep for 3 or more on a weekend, if we did something huge in the morning, but it's rare. She's in bed between 8-9 and usually stays up talking and singing for 30-45 minutes. She mostly wakes up on her own around 7-7:30, so I'd say she gets about 10 hours of sleep a night.
This ALWAYS happen with DD if we let her nap too long, or too late in the afternoon. We have a set rule that naps are not allowed to be longer than 2hrs. and she is not allowed to sleep past 4:30pm regardless of how long she has been down.
During the week she is in bed by 8-8:30 and falls asleep about 9:00-9:30. We wake her at 6:30, so she is getting on average about 9hrs. at night and 2 during the day. On the weekends when we don't have to wake her up in the morning, she is much more likely to sleep 11-12hrs. straight through and then either not nap, or nap only for an 30min-1hr.