How To Handle Middle Of the Night Wakings That Disrupt Her Older Sister

I just finished working with a family that has two kids, 5 and 3. The younger daughter was waking up in the middle of the night, asking for: a blanket adjustment, her water bottle, another stuffy, going to the living room, and more. Sometimes they were quick and sometimes they lasted for hours.

These middle of the night wakings were understandably disruptive to the parents’ sleep but they were afraid to ignore her because the three year old, let’s call her Penny, would scream if her demands were not answered, and that would wake 5 year old Jane. The only thing worse than two tired parents and a tired 3-year-old is all of the above plus a tired five-year-old.

So the plan that we came up with involved the parents moving Jane to their room. We always leave the challenging sleeper in the normal environment and move the good sleeper. That’s because we want to train the challenging sleeper is sleep well in her regular environment. There’s not much benefit to sleep training the challenging sleeper in a different environment because when you move her back, she’s bound to have sleep interruptions again.

Like most of my clients, this family lives in NYC and does not have extra bedrooms. They were understandably not thrilled to have a child sleeping in their room but it was worth it to them to get better sleep. Moving Jane to their room meant that Penny could make noise at night without as much worry about waking Jane. 

The deal we came up with is that Penny slept 3 nights in a row without calling to her parents during the night, she would earn the privilege of having her sister move back into the room.

Much to our surprise, Penny slept through the night the first two nights! Three-year-olds can be very surprising in this way – sometimes just getting clear with them about boundaries can be very powerful! She started to test the boundaries a bit more after that, but it was never once as bad as it was before we started the sleep training process. Her wakings were generally 10 minutes or less. And by the end of the two weeks, she had successfully earned her sister’s return to their room by sleeping through the night 3 times in a row. 

In our wrap up call, the parents asked how long they would have to keep this rule in place. I explained that while of course you can make an exception for illness or travel, they needed to keep the boundaries the same if they wanted to keep the same good sleep behavior in place.

The best thing about their success is that their three-year-old was happier as a result of being well rested. They hope that by reminding Penny of the rules before bedtime, they won't have to move Jane again. And a lovely side benefit is that Jane is actually getting more sleep now too because we found that Penny had an easier time sleeping through the night with an earlier bedtime! Now both girls can go to bed earlier.

If you’d like to get your three-year-old sleeping peacefully through the night, you have come to the right place. I work with more families of three-year-olds than any other age. Let’s schedule a free consult so we can get your family back on track in two weeks or less, guaranteed.