Help with 3.5yo TRYING to keep me awake at 4am.

[sandsage]

I co-sleep with our 3.5yo DS in his "big boy bed" in his room. (DH sleeps alone in "our" room to prevent migraines.) DS has always woken up in the middle of the night for a little attention - his paci, more covers, some water - but usually I just give it to him and we both fall right back asleep, no problem.

The past 3 nights, he has woken up at 3:30/4am and *refused* to go back to sleep until he gets milk (from a bottle, not me). The rule is that he may not have milk until 5:45am and I am not breaking it, because then he will expect it. So instead, he's been announcing that he will "wait" and *on purpose* staying awake until milk time *and* forcing me to stay awake with him by asking me for something new approx. every 3 mins - he literally takes his paci out of his mouth and then asks me to pick it up for him. The first night I responded, but then I got wise. Last night I completely ignored every request and pretended to be asleep for 2 hours, but he did the whole thing anyway, no change. And yes, I talked to him about it during the day, at bedtime, etc.

I'm not pregnant, no new baby, no new job or school, etc. The only change is that we just got back from ten days on vacation with family, but he didn't do this until we got *home*. Plus DH is still on vacation so he's getting extra parental attention during the day.

Any ideas on how to get him to stop? I've told him that if he does it again, I'm not going to sleep with him, but that would be a *huge* move for us, as I always sleep with him. I'm just hoping the threat motivates him...

Thank you!

[rzberrymom]

That's a hard one! I do my best not to threaten anything with sleep because I don't want my DD to associate sleep with punishment at all. But, I would calmly explain the natural consequence of purposely keeping someone up at night--without any threat in my voice, I would explain in a very calm and matter of fact way that I'm just not able to sleep in the room with someone who is purposely keeping me up at night.

It sounds like pretty typical 3 year old stuff, only you're getting it from him at night which must be REALLY hard! If it were me, I think I'd try to get DH involved in the nighttime parenting for a while--in our house, just switching who takes over certain routines often will break my DD of a bad habit.