I have a 4 1/2 year old son and he want sleep through the night!
The question I have is how do I get him to sleep though the night? He goes to bed really good. Unfortunately he get up at 3AM almost every night. It takes my self and my husband tell 5 or6 AM to get him back to sleep. This messes up his school day and our day as well. Please if you can help let me know!
Hi Michelle,
I am a committee member of the cri-du-chat syndrome support group here in the UK. We produce a booklet a few years ago that addresses some of he problems you are having. Do take a look, it is downloadable from our website: www.criduchat.co.uk
Hope this helps.
Best wishes
Damian
My daughter, zoey, still wakes up in the middle of the night. She is 5.5years old. Her sleeping habits were much worse when she was younger. She didn’t nap at all until she was 18months old. Then she napped sporadically. Around the age of 3 she started napping every day.
She started kindergarten all day this year so no more naps. Some days she falls asleep very early, then wakes up around 11pm and stays up for hours just playing with her blanket in her crib. Eventually she goes back to sleep and I usually have to wake her up in the morning to get her ready for school. She has always woken up in the middle of the night. If I added up the number of hours she sleeps in a 24 hour period it usually totals between 8and 10 hours. That seems to be enough for her. As long as she is happy, I’m ok with that. I don’t get up with her in the middle of the night. I stopped doing that a long time ago. She doesn’t cry in the middle of the night, so I don’t worry about it. She is fine. A sleep specialist at the convention 2 years ago said that as long as the child is getting enough sleep in a 24 hour period, it doesn’t have to be all at one time.
Anne Zettlemoyer
Hi Michelle. My son Jacob, is 8 years old now but still does not have a regular sleep pattern. He does have a special bed that was made for him. It is like a huge crib but padded on three sides and a opening with mesh that I can zip up and he cannot get out. He will wake up sometimes at 3,4 or 5 am and most times will rub his head along the side of the bed to put himself back to sleep. I do not have to get up for him. If I know he has been up early then just fallen back to sleep, I let him catch a few winks and when he wakes up I then take him to school. If I find out a way to keep him sleeping during the night I will let you know. Take care.
My daughter is 9 years old and has also experienced sleeping difficulties. Her teachers as school had been telling us that she had many days where she was extremely tired, and they were concerned about the amount of sleep she was getting. We started seeing a child psychiatrist last September for some issues with anxiety, so after much discussion, we started our daughter on a low dose of medicine to help her sleep. She is like a different child! We have noticed the difference, and her teacher has mentioned the positive changes to me a number of times. I am always cautious about giving my child additional medicine, but in our case, it was definitely helpful for our daughter. Rebecca
My son is 13 months old and has NEVER slept more than 1-2 hours at a time unless he was taking benadryl or another cold medicine. Even then the medication only worked for 3 days. He can go to sleep easily but wakes up from 3am until 6:30am.
Clarissa,
My daughter is taking a very small amount of Clonidine. This medication was recommended by our Child Psychiatrist. Apparently, Clonidine is given to some adults for high blood pressure; however, in children, it helps with getting to sleep, and staying asleep (and does not affect her blood pressure). My daughter has been taking this medication for 5 months. It continues to work effectively. She is truly a different child now that she is sleeping through the night. Her performance in school has really changed for the better.
Hi, We have been using Hyosine patches on Matias in an attempt to halt his dribbling, especially at night. This is working, an added benefit is that hyosine has the side-effect of causing drowsiness, since we started using them he has slept right through.
where to start?? My grandson Weston was a non sleeper. From birth to two years he never slept more than 2 hrs at a time. Our health was breaking down my daughter’s sleep deprivation was so bad that I had to go everywhere with her at times she couldn’t even speak she was so tired. I feared for her life when she had to drive anywhere. She started to lose her hair and it turned prematurely grey. The final straw was him starting to get out of his bed and get into trouble in the middle of the night. We lived in fear that he would choke to death on something as he would chew the door casings and get splinters in his mouth. He head butted my daughter in the middle of the night giving her a really bad black eye and we had to get him an enclosed bed. (Pedicraft) This relieved the worry so much but it still didn’t help the sleep. We entered a Melatonin Research program for sleep disorders in kids with special needs ,at Children’s hospital ,out of desperation. It was a double blind test meaning the patients family nor the research Doctor new which kids were getting the melatonin and which one a placebo. We knew right away that Weston was getting the really thing. It was control released and for the first time he slept. I know a lot of you have tried it but usually quit and say it didn’t really work but it is finding the right dosage that makes it work. It needs to be control released TwinLab is a good one because the tablets are nice and small and you can slide them down with yogurt. Weston doesn’t eat solid foods and his drinks are thicken as he just can’t seem to get the chew swallow thing coordinated and kept aspirating and getting pneumonia. So we needed the smallest pill on the market. During the research we were told that Weston needed the highest dosage of all the kids. He takes 4 crushed tablets to get him down he is asleep within 15 min and 8 whole with yogurt. That is 24 mg every night. It will give him 8 good hours of sleep. The reason why we crush the four is so that they then become fast release and the other 8 remain control released. The research Doctor explained that for some reason the pineal gland did not secrete melatonin either at all or at the wrong time for children with chromosomal syndromes. We did not start out with this dosage we have had to increase it as he grew. The Doctor that did the research has studied melatonin for thirty years. There are no side affect except maybe tiredness if you gave them too much. Start out with a couple of tablets and keep increasing until you get the results you want. If you know you can’t hurt them it makes the process easier. Right now if someone said" give me your right arm or give me that melatonin" I would help them saw my arm off. That’s how much affect it has had on our family. Lots of shift workers use it because there melatonin is secreting at the wrong time. Good night and sweet dreams you deserve it.