My son is 23 months old and for the last 2 or 3 weeks has been waking up about 3 or 4 hours after we put him to bed for the night. There is nothing wrong with him. He just wants my husband and/or I to play with him. Of course we don't, but I do go in his room and give him a drink of water. I know some moms don't agree with this, but I do it because I know that I wake up thirsty some nights myself. I usually just give him a drink, give him his paci (he only has it when he sleeps) and then try to get him to lay back down. But, he won't go back to sleep. We're usually up with him for 2 or 3 hours before we can get him to go to sleep. He'll play in his crib and talk to himself for awhile, but then we he realizes we're not coming in there to play, he'll start crying. We've tried to just let him cry it out, but he will literally cry forever if we let him. We usually let him cry for awhile, but we live in an apartment and a family with a young boy lives next door. This young boys room is right next to our son's and the walls are thin. We don't want to keep this boy up since he has school the next day. We don't know what else to do. Our son hasn't slept through the night in forever and I know that being almost 2 he should be. Last night we finally gave up after 2 hours and got him up and read books to him. I'm considering moving his nap later in the afternoon. Right now, he wakes up around 7 am and takes a nap around 11 or 11:30 am. He'll sleep for about 2 hours and then we put him to bed at 8 pm. Does anyone have any suggestions?
My kids stopped naps at 2yr. The problem was, that around 5pm they were very tired so sometimes they'd fall asleep. so I'd try to keep them up so they'd sleep through the night. Just our experience.
when you figure this one out send me a message telling me what works. I have the same problem its been 6 months now. want to talk to someone at 2am Im probably up send me a message and I will give you my yahoo chat id
Sounds like he is just overtired and is having trouble staying asleep. I say move the nap to the early afternoon after lunch, around 12:30 or 1. If he just can't stay up that long, and you keep the late morning nap, then you will need to do an earlier bedtime- say around 7 or so. This should fix the problem. Good luck.
Maybe he's getting to the point where he either A. Doesn't need a nap anymore or B. Needs a later bedtime. At his age, between 10-12 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period is what is expected. If he sleeps for 2 hours at naptime he's getting 13 hours of sleep, so he may be waking up because he's not fully tired.
I suggest waking him up earlier (not sure you want to do this?), putting him to bed later or taking away his naps.
If you don't want to do any of those, you may have to do something different when he wakes up. Is his door open or closed? Can you turn on a fan in his room to block out his crying? Is he teething and that is what's waking him up? If there is nothing truly wrong and he just wants to play, you have several options....
1. Let him cry it out. I'm not a fan of this and it doesn't sound like you are either so I think this is out.
2. Go into his room and rub his back instead of picking him up to see if that calms him enough to get him back to sleep.
3. Pick him up and rock him back to sleep.
4. Let him get in bed with you and sleep there.
5. Let him play as long as he stays in his room by himself. Explain to him that it's not time to play with mommy and daddy but he can play alone. Not sure at 2 he'll fully understand this.
Good luck!!
