Wednesday, July 28, 2010

an adaptive challenge


I have a technical problem. Luca is no longer sleeping through the night, so neither is anyone else in the house. It typically starts at 2 or 3 a.m. when he tries to climb into our bed. We return him to his bed up to 10 times, with decreasing levels of patience, and it eventually culminates in a full-blown tantrum. Last night, for dramatic effect, he climbed into Andre's crib and woke him up so he could cry along with him. The lovely pattern has been lasting between 1 and 3 hours per night for the past 6 nights. I often end up so frustrated that I cannot return to sleep.

Addressing the technical problem at face value has failed miserably. Specifically, our approach has been to kindly but firmly return him to his bed every time. We have now resorted to locking our door, which led him to try harder by waking up his brother, screaming for milk, taking off his diaper, turning on the hall lights... I will spare you the rest. I'll just say that I'm drinking more than 4 cups of coffee at the office just to stay alert.

We have an adaptive challenge- changing our behavior and his surroundings so we prevent the issue rather than react to it. At the moment, I'm wondering what could be causing him to want to sleep in our bed. What could possibly motivate a well-behaved toddler to defy us so insistently, to suddenly stop sleeping soundly through the night? An analysis of recent events, such as routine, relationships, health, diet, has not led us anywhere.

I am wondering if he has developed a fear of the dark. Perhaps if I give him his Buzz Light Year doll to "protect" him during the night he may feel better? Have you had this problem and how did you address it? I could really use some help.

6 comments:

  1. I am so sorry this is happening. I have no experience with this so I can't really give any advice. Maybe there is some type of fear thing going on. Sometimes kids have odd ways of showing their emotions. Best of luck.

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  2. My daughter did this when she was almost three. Apparently it's normal, but it's hard to deal with it!

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  3. How old is your little guy? It is often related to them reaching certain physical or cognitive milestones...imagination/fear/separtion start coming into play and they switch b/w being clingy and independent. Hope you get some sleep soon:)

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  4. Hi Melissa, Thank you for the input. My son is 3 and a half. I am glad to hear it can be related to achieving certain physical or cognitive milestones. I was starting to get a little paranoid and fear that something had happenned to him, such as being bullyied by another child at the YMCA camp he attended... This sounds like a more feasible reason.

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  5. My boys all would have climbed in my bed around age 2 if I'd have let them. This is going to sound cruel, but we put a childproof doorknob cover on the inside of their doors so they couldn't leave their rooms. It was in large part for their protection, though, so that they weren't roaming the house at night and getting hurt.

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  6. Shell, we are seriously considering your suggestion. We decided to wait it out two more days to give him a chance to stop on his own and after that we'll install a lock. I'll keep you all posted!

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