Cannot get DD to stop coming into our bed!

allie357

Help! My DD is 4.5 and will not stop crawling into our bed at night. It has been going on for 2 months. It always happens between 1 and 3.
Before then she was fine sleeping on her own. I have tried night lights and many other things. I am posting here out of desperation. In June I will have an infant to keep me up at night. I don't need her adding to my sleepless nights. Poor sleep due to pregnancy and her in my bed now is bad enough!

Luckystar2

What do you do when she comes into your room?

How long has it been going on? Do you think it has anything to do with being pregnant and a new baby on the way?

For my dd, she has gone through phases of wanting to sleep in our bed. I'm very against letting her because nobody sleeps. She is a very restless sleeper. What I've found is just being consistent at not letting her in our bed works. As soon as I let her in our bed she turns it into a habit pretty quickly. Of course of something major is going on or she's sick, that's a different story. But for normal wakings, I just walk her back to her room and tell her she has to sleep in her bed. Sometimes it takes a lot of trips to her room. But it doesn't last forever and then she's back to staying in her bed

Another thing that helped us with her waking up early and wanting in our room was this clock.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00EAHSBV4/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1390270808&sr=8-1

It helped for middle of the night coming into our room. We would tell her she can't come in unless the clock is

smynings_bride

We have a clock like that too, the "stoplight sleep enhancing clock", and it has helped us through phases.  DD love to feel as though she accomplished something and she's so proud to tell us she waited until the green light came on.  Perhaps you could set it to turn green later each night for a week.

I wish I had more advice except to say everything's a phase.  Hopefully, one night she'll "oversleep" in her own bed and the new habit/phase will be sleeping through in her own bed.  

waltsgirl102503

Brody joins us in bed a lot.  It got really bad last summer after vacation, because he slept with me every night for a week.  So when we got home he never stayed in his bed anymore.  We basically bribed him - if he got X number of stickers on the calendar for staying in his bed, he got to go get a new plane from the store.   It worked for him.  And honestly, a sticker on the calendar is his currency, I really don't think he cared about getting the item at the end, it was the excitement of putting a sticker on the calendar when he stayed in his own bed.   Good luck, the only person that was sleeping when he'd come to our bed was him..DH and I were exhausted, so I can definitely commiserate!   It hasn't stopped completely, but now it's maybe once a week or so that he'll come down, not every night.

lala5507

I was going to suggest a sticker chart too.  We've used sticker charts for a variety of issues and it really seems to work. 

Luckystar2

Oh yes sticker charts! We use them for many things!

amyjoy18

I was also going to suggest walking her back to her room every single time.  It will probably suck for a week or so, but once she sees that the trip to your room doesn't get her into your bed it likely won't be worth the effort anymore.