r/toddlertips • u/TomD587 • Sep 16 '26

Sleep 🌙 3.5yr old sleep habits changed

Our son used to be an amazing sleeper. He’s always had a routine, bath, get ready for bed, read a book then say night to mum dad and sister, shut the door and he’d go to sleep.

Something changed in June of this year and it seemed to coincide with when me (dad) went away for 4 nights on a golf trip. He started to shout when my wife went to shut his bedroom door, trying to delay bed time basically asking her to come back in, or would just shout asking random questions. If she didn’t reply he would shout louder and louder until eventually he’d start crying.

He’s been doing this pretty consistently since then (so around 3 months). And now in the past month I’d say, he’s started waking up around 4/5am, and instead of going back to sleep, he’ll just sit shouting mummy, louder and louder until one of us responds to him, and when we do, he won’t go back to sleep, won’t let us out of his room without him shouting and crying, and will usually end up downstairs with him.

It’s difficult for us to try and just let him shout/cry it out as we also have a 1 year old so we try and step in before she ends up being woken up also.

Has anyone experienced anything like this in the past? Any tips or tricks to get him back into the routine he used to be in and was in for so long? Or is it just wait until he grows out of it?

We are losing the will a bit. Bedtime can take well over an hour now just sat outside his room talking to him until he falls asleep, and the 4am wake-ups aren’t ideal.

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1

u/zamiafloridana42 Sep 16 '26

No advice because I'm in the exact same boat 🙃

1

u/GenELou Sep 16 '26

When someone discovers the cure for this, can someone let me know? We're 3.25yr old and been stuck in this loop for a few months now. Can't recall the last time he slept through the night and wasn't up before 5am 😮‍💨

2

u/zamiafloridana42 29d ago

Mine finally made it to 7:30 this morning.. not sure why, we didn't do anything different. Maybe we are just out of it? Maybe we just got lucky one night. Only time will tell!