My Daughter Cries at Night

I suggest that you don't want her to stay quiet at night because dreams are a way of processing our experiences and if dreams are the only way she can deal with kindergarten then she needs to dream and cry.

I suggest that she may be liking kindergarten and her friends because she is dreaming at night and dealing with things that way. I suggest that you could encourage her to talk about her feelings during the day so that she could process them before going to sleep and that might help.

I also suggest that she may need more emotional closeness to you and she gets this when you comfort her at night. I cried a lot at night when I was a child and looking back I'm aware that I needed my mother to hold and cuddle with me more. My mother was ill and wasn't very involved most of the time but she always comforted me when I was crying.

If you don't already, spend at least 30 minutes with her every evening. You can read together which often brings up subjects that a child wants to talk about. Go to the library and find children's books about things that seem related to what your daughter is dreaming. They don't have to be too closely related. There are lots of books about sharing which might be related. Most books will give you an opportunity to talk about life.

Let her know that you'll always take care of her. Give her lots of affection and opportunities to ask you questions and talk about experiences. Perhaps you can remember a time when you had dreams and/or felt sad and cried or wanted to cry. Tell her about when you were a kid her age. That often starts a good conversation.

She's crying because she needs to cry. Let her cry but find ways to spend close time with her during the day and she may not have the bad dreams at night.

You cannot 'make her' stay quiet at night.
She is having night mares.
Dreaming at night... is not on purpose.
Dreaming at night.... is not something a person does... at-will.
It is INvoluntary.

For me and my kids, since 2 years old, I have always explained to them about dreams/nightmares and encouraged them to express it and tell me about it... so that they feel better. So now at my kids' ages... they can succinctly tell me about their dreams/night-mares and feel fine about it... and they KNOW they can talk to me about it.
It relieves 'stress' and anxiety in a child...

You need to communicate with her about it... a child NEEDS to know they can express their feelings/experiences, with their Mom.... .

I hope she is not scolded, for waking???

BOTH my kids.... are noisy sleepers. Even when sleeping well. They giggle in their sleep, they talk in their sleep, the scream/grumble in their sleep. They have always been that way. Then, my Hubby snores. NO one in my house, is 'quiet' while sleeping... nor all night. You cannot make a person quiet while they sleep... it is involuntary.

all the best,
Susan

Dreams are important and can't be made to go away – while the subject of the dream is usually something the dreamer is familiar with (like kindergarten), the tensions and discomforts and even delights in the dream may or may not be directly associated with the place. But they are simple feelings, anxieties and conflicts your daughter's dreams are expressing. Someone not allowing her to do something could mean many things, including the most obvious: not being allowed to come home for comfort if she feels she needs that during the day.

As Marda suggests, she may be feeling the need for more cuddling and reassurance from you and/or her dad. Kindergarten makes new demands on children and takes many kids away from home for the first time. It takes a while to grow into the experience for many kids.

You might be able to help those anxious dreams fade by spending more time giving her one-on-one attention and snuggling, especially before bed. When she wakes at night, don't try to talk her out of the feelings, but reassure her and let her know you'll always be there for her. If she feels your (understandable) reluctance to comfort her in the middle of the night, it could deepen her sense of anxiety.

I know your desire for "quiet at night" comes secondary to your desire for your daughter to have peaceful sleep, lol, so I'm not going to psychoanalyze the dreams or tell you how you should support or encourage them for your daughter's sake. I also seriously doubt that a little extra cuddling will magically resolve this, though it certainly wouldn't hurt. :-)

Instead, I'll suggest that perhaps your daughter is simply not getting enough sleep. Night terrors are very often caused by your child being over-tired. The name is a little misleading, though, since these "terrors" don't have to be terrible at all. Some of my daughter's worst episodes were about someone taking a toy. Hardly a frightening idea, but in the limited experience of a child, it's one of the worst things that could happen to them, lol.

My daughter is four and it's practically guaranteed that she'll wake herself up screaming (and be practically inconsolable) when she's gone more than one night with too little sleep. They also flare up when she sleeps in a strange place (Grandma's house, etc) but I think that also might relate to the tiredness since she doesn't go down very easily when she's not at home.

Just a thought, anyway. If your daughter had to give up naps when she started kindergarten, maybe you could try moving back her bedtime by half-hour increments to see if that helps.

We recently were experiencing the same thing with our 3 year old and I agree with Steph C. now that I read her thoughts. I thought our daughter was having night terrors, but we had family at our house for 2+ weeks and no one was sleeping on schedule and she was over tired. Once we got her back into her routine, she started sleeping through the night again. I hadn't thought about this really until I read this. I always give her special 1-1 time and gave her extra cuddles etc and she just wanted to sleep with me (mainly because little brother was in our room due to guests). Thanks for the post, it made me realize what I think our problem was... lack of sleep. I hope this helps you too.

My son turned 4 last week and has been doing this for a long time. I think the crying may be due to just waking and exhaustion. I am a very light sleeper and wake several times a night and I believe my son is the same. The best you can do is talk to her and practice with her what to do when she wakes from a dream, give her a special toy to sleep with and hold on to when she wakes so she can distinguish what's real, what's the dream. Both my son and I have very vivid dreams, he wakes in the morning asking things such as where his mermaid friend went and I have to explain she only comes when he sleeps (difficult to explain dreaming to a 3yo!) Good luck.