How to help my 4-year-old get back to sleep in the middle of the night?
My 4-year-old son gets up every night to go to the bathroom. When he goes back to bed, he has trouble falling back asleep and will either talk, sing or play until he does and that sometimes takes hours.
I'm glad he knows when to get up to go to the bathroom and doesn't wet the bed, but I am worried he is not getting enough sleep. It has started to affect his behavior during the day and this has now been going on for weeks.
Does anyone have some suggestions on how I can help him get back to sleep better?
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Teach him that bedtime is quiet time. This is going to be very similar to getting him to go to sleep in the first place.
Stay in bed
sshhhh! No noise
No playing with toys
He may have a sip of water, but no food
Lights out, no tv, mobile, or other electronics
Try to come up with one thing he can have (one time), like a few pages in whatever book you are reading. And that's it. It will take a little while for him to become accustomed to it, but he will.
Honestly, this sounds normal to me at this age. I recall when my then-4-year-old would wake up occasionally, and take what seemed like hours to go back to sleep.
A couple of things to look into:
Does he drink a lot of fluids too close to bedtime? This is worth adjusting.
Do you encourage him to visit the potty prior to getting into bed?
On the bright side, this sounds a lot better than others I've heard of wherein the child runs into the parents' bedroom in the middle of the night whereas your boy sounds self-sufficient.
Other things to ensure if possible:
there aren't any noises that might be waking him up in the middle of the night
the room is sufficiently dark (use blackout curtains if necessary)
use an Echo Dot (say "Alexa, play rain sounds", "Loop") or a similar device to get a sound machine in the environment to black out noises
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