angry half-sleep/wake

[seemfrog]

Anyway to use GD when dealing with a 3 yr old when he is half asleep/half awake and kicking/yelling at you?

I co-sleep with my boys for a few morning hours (whenever they wake up - usually by 3am), they co-sleep in a full size bed. Anyway, lately this has happened a few times when one or the other will wake up (ish) and sit up and get all angry and shouting "I need my snake!" or some other random stuffed animal or toy or book that is not their usual sleeping lovey, just a random thing. I will generally have no idea where it is and haven't ever tried to find the object, but also, they are mostly asleep anyway, so my method has been to try and get them to lie back down (at which point they go right back to sleep), but the other night there was a lot of kicking involved and of course when one is yelling it may wake the other...

I guess I'm asking how do you "honor their feelings" or just how would you deal with it? In my half asleepedness I have just said "OK, shhhhh, lie down and go back to sleep" and sometimes I get screams and kicks and shouts and other times they do it...

It's kind of funny later on, but just seeing if there are better ways of dealing with it while its happening, or not.

Thanks for your thoughts!

[MAMom]

For my DS, it usually works to just quietly tell him everything is ok, he's in bed & it's sleeping time. I gently put my hand on him and tell him to lay down and sleep. For him, he's definitely waking up in the midst of a dream. I would be hard pressed to get out of my warm bed to find a stuffed snake in the middle of the night

Also, if my DS is kicking/stirring a lot in his sleep, it's often a signal he needs to go to the bathroom. We usually bring him to the bathroom, and that helps him sleep more restfully.

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Mama to DS 5/03 & DD 2/06 :
: ICAN “You never know when you're making a memory.” ~ Rickie Lee Jones