Dealing with a Clingy Toddler at Night- Help Please

Kintarō Hattori

Hi Folks,

I've read through some of the other posts similar to the situation I'm in which have been informative but I'm wondering if anyone has experienced what I'm currently dealing with from our 17 month old.

So normally it's myself that puts our 17 month old daughter to bed. Before she started crawling and pulling herself up I used to read to her until she fell asleep but when she became more mobile she was too excited and I had to stop that. I'd put her to bed and leave the room and everything was fine.
A few weeks back she started to howl when I'd leave the room and I've ended up staying with her in the room until she gets sleepy or if she wasn't sleepy then picking her up and putting her over my shoulder until she was calm enough to go to sleep. That was all doable.
Since the weekend though she's become very clingy. Not so much physically but she'd howl if I left whatever room we were in. So for example we came back from a walk with Mam, I left dropped her beside Mam in the hallway so I could put the buggy in the car. She howled until I came back in.

Now the last few mornings when she's woken up during the night and when I didn't feel like waiting 40 minutes for her to drop off to sleep we took her into our bed. When I've been getting up to go to work in the morning she's inconsolable when I get up from the bed- despite the fact that Mam is right there beside her.

How on earth do I deal with this? She's fine during the day. I can go from room to room, upstairs etc and she'll be fine. It just seems to be when it's dark.

It's tough on my partner as neither of us end up with a good nights sleep. She gets woken up at 6am when I get up, has to mind her all day and then when I come home in the evening she's off to work and not back until after 10pm.

bee06

I don’t have any real life experience of this because my son is only 10 months but I do know that there is a huge developmental leap around 18 months with lots of separation anxiety involved.

Liam McPoyle

Our guy went through this too for a while. When I'd leave the room or go out of his line of vision he would go balubas, that's stopped now. Every couple of nights we'd have to wait in the room with him until he fell asleep otherwise he'd go balubas. That's now stopped too. We reckon it was a combination if the leap and he was cutting back teeth too so he is now back to himself. Nothing really ye can do but ride it out. Try and avoid bringing her into bed with ye (Not easy) but other than that not much ye can do.

catrionanic

We went through exactly the same thing at that age. He went from being a star at bedtime to super clingy, day and night.

We just rolled with it. Discovered he would only sleep if one of us stayed in the room until he drifted off, singing to him. Sometimes this would take an hour or more. So that's what we did. It lasted about a month and then out of nowhere, he was fine to go to sleep on his own again.

There's a developmental leap around then, coupled with a sleep regression. You just have to ride it out, unfortunately .

Kintarō Hattori

Well it lasted for around 3-4 weeks and has stopped. Everyone once in a while she'll sit-up and cry, not a real cry I think but a 'Hey, I want someone' cry. Thankfully she's back to being a solid sleeper 95% of the time.

Wildly Boaring

Ok I never posted parenting advice before but we went through this over last month

Our 2 year old was a great sleeper. Put her down at 8, babble away for 30 mins. Wake up at 8 in morning.

Few weeks ago woke up 2 nights in a row at 4 or 5am screaming. Wouldn't go back to bed or into bed with us. I had to get up with her.

That led to her having a complete freak attack going to bed ot nap. She woke every night and screamed the house down.

It is now sorted (I've probably cursed myself)

We got a new nightlight. It's a nice soft orange glow.
We left the door open a bit. (Closed again now)
We talked to her and got her calmer, not calm but calmer.
We stopped taking her out of cot when we went in to her.
We put her in cot a few times outside of nap or bed time and played games.
Really stuck to the bedtime routine
We then let her cry it out a little, maybe 5 mins then go back in.

My wife was completely against the crying it out
I felt that she's so clever that anything else wouldn't work.
2 year olds are very clever.
Claim dirty nappy to get lifted.
Scream to get us to stay in the room.

Tough week or 10 days and she was more or less back to normal.
A month later and despite tiny protests she loves going to bed.