My Two Year Old Wont Sleep Through the Night!!!!

If this is something sudden, and it has never happened before, it really is something you should ignore. It is a behavior-response issue - she screams, you react. Ignore it, it goes away. Seems simple, but worth a try...and yes, 2 year olds have dreams.

Hi C.,
My son is 2 1/2 & he as had bad dreams since he was two. I know because he talks & sometimes screams in his sleep! It is not fun, sometimes it takes us 1/2 hour to calm him down. I usually have to take him outside to distract him & to wake him up. Then he will go back to sleep once he is calm. I too am wondering when this will pass. It only happens once every week, depending on what has gone on that week. If he watches a certain movie or if we are out & about too much it affects his sleep. Hope it gets better for you.

Your situation might be something different from mine, but my 2 year old boy had all kinds of...shall we say...irritating behavior changes when my youngest was born. He did not deal well with having a new baby in the house that needed to be held and tended to so much. He seemed to love his little brother, and we did everything we could to give everyone the attention they needed, but there is no way around it, 1/2 the attention is less than ALL. It was clearly the start of the "terrible twos" and boy were they terrible -- for a long time. It could be that your twins are going through their own misgivings about the new baby and that is affecting their dreams and their sleep. I know I sleep less soundly when I am bothered by something. Also, yes, from my experience with my children, I believe that 2 year olds dream.

Good luck to you and congratulations on your new baby!

A.

Augh, congrats on the new baby boy!
I had a new baby boy on May 3rd, and my 2 year old little girl has had some sleep issues since then too.
It's okay.
This too shall pass.
Just nap as often as you can during the day.
I think that we, as adults, tend to have irrational expectations in the way of sleep. We are parents of young children, so we have to go wtih the flow. This problem will be one that you will have totally forgotten about and you will have gone through a gazillion other things in a year from now, so i encourage you to rest often. Take good vitamins. And do what your heart tells you too. As a mother, we have a gift and know what our kids need. Don't shut that down or push it away. Go with what you feel is the right thing to do.
Nobody knows your kids like YOU.
:)
Take care.
Good luck with it.
I hope you do get some good nights of rest soon. Sleep deprivation makes me a mean mommy, that's for sure. I hope you have some good help with the kids..........and remember, any time anyone offers help, say YES!!
:)
And don't you ever feel guilty about taking a bath or getting a massage!!
TAKE CARE OF YOU!!!
:)
S.
www.MomsOnAMission.US

Does she sleep with her twin or alone? I heard twins sleep better if they are in the same crib/bed, but I'm not sure how safe that is.

Two year olds definately have bad dreams! Mine has done this off and on for a while now. She'll have a few good weeks and then a few bad. Now we have gone through some tough stuff over the last few months so with her it could be attributed to that. However, I have four kids, she is the youngest, and they have all gone thru it at some point or another. What I have done in the past is to tell my kids, even at age 2, that they can sleep in my room but not in my bed. They can bring their pillow and blankie to my floor and camp out by my bed but they cannot get in my bed. It has always worked very well. I will say that my youngest is getting a way better deal than the rest did...because her dad left us (me and our four kids). Now there is so much room in my bed that when she comes in I usually let her sleep with me. My kids have all sort of migrated to my room during the night off and on but because I have taught them to bring their stuff and camp out they rarely wake me up anymore.

Hey C.! Boy can I empathize with you. I am a mother of 2 year old twin girls myself. Tatum, our youngest, wakes up on a regular basis as well. We might have a couple of good nights every once in a while but for the most part she wakes up around 11pm every night and sometimes again later. However, she would be aware of her surroundings so I don't think they are night terrors. The worst part is is that she'll have nights that she refuses to go back to sleep in her bed and the only time she finally falls asleep in on the couch downstairs with Dad. I agree with Carrie B. - usually if they are aware of their surroundings, then it probably isn't a night terror issue. We are also trying to break her habit of having to go down on the couch just to fall asleep. Like Alyssa, we think she is also getting into habit. This has been going on for 6 months or so. Our problem is the same as yours, if we let her try to cry it out in her room, we run the chance of waking her sister as well. I wish you lots o' luck. We're still waiting to get a full nights rest for most of the week.

D. G.

Hi C.,

Two year olds can have bad dreams. But, what does she do when you go to her? Does she respond to you or does she seem to ignore you? If she seems to ignore you, she's probably having "night terrors", which is very common in the preschool years. My son is 6 & every once in a while he still has them. They can be scary to you, but they don't seem to affect the kids much. It's like a form of sleepwalking. Look it up on the internet to get ideas on how to handle it when it happens, as you can't stop it completely. With our son, we walk him to the bathroom, pull down his pants (as he is too out-of-it to do it himself)& have him go potty. When we put him back to bed after that, he sleeps through the rest of the night.

If on the other hand, she's able to talk & respond to you at night, she's probably having bad dreams & you can try to find something that will soothe her like a teddy bear or a night light or some soft music playing. We like the Veggie Tale song, "God is bigger than the Boogie Man". It's very reassuring to my son when he gets to feeling scared. If it's just bad dreams, you can also talk to her in the morning about how dreams are not real & start telling her about some of your (rated G) dreams to help her understand that everyone has dreams. If it's night terrors though, talking to her in the morning won't help because she won't remember anything about what happened in the night.

Good Luck!
C. : )

My daughter at around 2, started waking up screaming, thrashing around in her bed, I would talk to her, massage her back, but she would ignore me and wouldnt know I was there. I could do nothing to console her. I would sometimes put her in bed with us. After maybe 30 minutes of this, she would calm down and go back to sleep like nothing happened.

This went on for a month or two and then it stopped. And every now and then she has these night terrors. The Ped says its normal, it happens to toddlers.

It may be that, I dont know. But it will go away in time.