Sleeping woes

Please Help! Any Advice you can offer will be more than appreciated.  I have a little girl who will be 3 years in febuary.  Recently, we have started having trouble with getting her to sleep.  We are transitioning her to a toddler bed.  This has been an ongoing

process since August.  Unfourtently, she wouldn't sleep in her toddler bed so we had to revert to using a play pen because she would stay in it and sleep.  Recently however, she has been refusing to sleep at all costs.  She is now climbing out of the playpen and coming immediatly out of her room or she is getting out to "destroy her room." I have never seen her act like this before.  We do have a bedtime ritual in place including potty time, handwashing, jammies and lullaby music. I usually try and read and rock before putting her to sleep.  She has always seemed content up to this point but has been swirling out of control for a couple of days.  She just refuses to sleep no matter how tired she oviouslly is and has completly stopped listening to us.  We must have to put her in and out of the playpen dozens of times and still no sleeping.  We are unsure as to weather this is behavioral because she is just that age but are worried and very sleep deprived.  We would really appreciate any feed back. Thank you!!

Hi I can completely sympathise with the situation, as my son who is 3 in June has just gone through that. I never thought that changing him into a bed would alter his attitude, but it did.

However, just to let you know there is light at the end of the tunnel.

My sonis now happily sleeping in his bed, and goes down without a hitch.

It's great to hear that you have a night time routine in place, as it is completely necessary at this point in time. It has taken my son 7 months all in all to go down and be happy to go down.

It might sound harsh, considering your lack of sleep (just like I was) but the best advice to me was to take away the cot all together..()In my situation, I was being  slack and using the cot due to sleep depivation.

she feels that if she acts like that she eventually gets her way.

secondly, the acting out. It sounds liek she wants your attention, and maybe is going through another stage of seperation anxiety.

It is a cycle of bad luck that will eventually finish.

The attitude is  because she is tired, and the tiredness is due to an obvioud lack of sleep. Has anything recently happened which is a huge change for her? are you potty training her at the same time as changing her into a bed?

I was trying to make my son not take his bottle to bed, and getting him to walk everywhere instead of in the pram  at the same time...it was too much of an overload.

Also, I don't know wether this has happened to anyone else, but, my sons major problem was hearing the door shut that divides the kids end of the house and our end of the house, now that we don't do that, he is happy, and goes down without too many hitches.

If you get rid of the porta-cot, she'll soon realise that her behaviour does not mean that she gets what she inevitably did want......the tiredness sounds like it has caught up on her, and that is why she isn't going to sleep at all. Have you tried lavendar as a natural relaxant? and at the very last resort, go to your doctor, he will then perscribe a light antihystamine, which is also a relaxant to help people sleep. It does work, I used it on my son for 1 week until he caught up on sleep, and then, he realised that going to sleep in a big bed wasn't that bad. the only continuing problem was that he would get up and come into our bed...which has amost been resolved. Good luck, and I hope this has given you some help

CHarene