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DS1 used to take 2 1.5-hour naps and still sleep 10 hours at night.

Even since he starts walking (he went from barely standing to running in a week), he refuses to nap and sleep at night. It sometimes takes more than 1 hour for him to fall asleep at night. While laying in bed, he signs milk every 5 mintues. Clearly, he is not hungry. We cosleep, so I cannot just leave him by himself.

I know a lot of you have children who don't sleep well. Anyone has similar experience?

Hi hellobaby,

I had a baby who never napped. She would finally collapse for about 15 minutes and than be up and full of energy. On rare occasions she would collapse and sleep a good hour sometimes an hour and a half but I never managed to do much with the time because she had already trained me to be waiting.

I have read that major milestones disrupt babies sleepy habits and walking is a major one. Their world's perspective has changed drastically. Now they see the world in a whole new way and it is exciting and different. Usually this lasts for a few weeks and with constancy from the parents, the baby gets back into his/her pattern. I don't know when he started to walk and maybe he is past that time period but just thought I would offer it up in case it is a fairly new cycle.

My 6 year old still doesn't sleep that well. In fact, he was awake for over an hour in the middle of the night last night. He says his mind won't go back to sleep, so his body can't either.

As a baby, he was colicky and NEVER slept. I've often wondered if it had anything to do with his overactive brain! When he would finally sleep, he had to be right next to me. We did the co-sleeping thing as well...out of necessity. It was the only way to get some sleep. Great bonding time too, but we were all very tired. To get him to sleep, we used to have to turn music up quite loudly (not lullaby music, loud guitar solos) and dance with him. Eventually he'd fall asleep, but usually not for long.

On a positive note, he does sleep in his own bed now and he only wakes up a couple of nights/week. Sometimes it's for a half hour, sometimes it's a couple of hours. Tough days when he has to go to school!

From what I understand, it's not unusual for gifted children to have sleep issues.

He started walking about 2 months ago. I am really hoping it's just a phase for him.

We didn't intend to cosleep either. When he was sleeping in his own crib, he could wake up every hour crying. He wakes up to every little sound, light, movement, etc. It's just easier to cosleep.

Maybe I am overthinking, but I felt like he is manipulating us by saying he is hungry. It takes time to heat up his milk, so it buys him more time. When we give him his milk, he refuses to drink it.

Haha...Oh the memories!!! Sorry to say, but two of my children stopped taking naps at 18 months. Now at ages 9 and 5, they still don't require a lot of sleep. I am constantly having to go into my ds9's room at night, to tell him to turn off the light (reading again) My dd4, fights sleeping every night. When she finally does decide to go to sleep, she falls asleep talking!!! Then they both pop out of bed in the morning...Bright-eyed, and full of spunk, until they collapse again...And we start it all over

Be very careful to not let him train you into bad habits. I almost got caught when my DS was a year and a half. One night he woke up and asked for a drink, so we went to get it and were up for an hour. The next night he tried again and I almost set a pattern. It took three more nights of sitting with him saying no to get him back to his usual (not great) sleep pattern.

It has only been the past year or so that he has been consistently sleeping though the night without getting up one and two times and he is eight. He still will run into our room in the middle of the night once or twice a week. I think it is very difficult for him to disengage his brain and sleep and then when he wakes up, he thinks it is time to get going. (I really should get a clock in his room.)

My DS gave up naps before he hit two I know for sure. It was rough on him for a few weeks but, he adjusted and we moved his bedtime up and it ended up working well. He had got to where he would nap and then stay up till 2am. He is a bit like his mama ha ha.

I think you have a clone of my DD too! She gave up all naps at 13 months. She would have a terrible time falling asleep alone and would wake up several times every night and we ended up co-sleeping too. (it was just much easier to have her in bed with us, since she would sleep a little better in bed with us)

When DD was 3 going on 4, her older sister gave her a present (DD24 painted her old bedroom pink and purple for little sis, and put a big bow on the door). We set up the downstairs bedroom for her, and from then on she has not only slept by herself, but really doesn't wake up in the night calling for us anymore. Now, to be fair, the timing of this move also coincided with DD getting to go to kindergarten before turning 4, and we think that her being able to "use her brain" also helped her sleep a little bit better.

She still requires very little sleep and has not napped since 18 months old, but she does go to bed at 7:30 every night and does not come upstairs to get us until 7:00am each morning. (I know she is awake before 7, but we have told her that she cannot come up stairs before her clock turns green, and she waits it out)

I think it gives her time in the morning to gather her thoughts and start her day the way she wants.

A side note - as an infant and young toddler, DD would wake up in the middle of the night with what we could only think were night terrors. (opened eyes, frantic wailing but no connection to us being there) We would walk her outside and show her the moon and stars and that would calm her down enough to go back to sleep. When she was 15 months old she communicated to us that she had a "sleep family" and that is how we concluded that she was either dreaming or her mind was just so busy she could not tune it out even when sleeping. After hearing this, DH and I started to talk to her during her "night time wakings" and she would tell us what she was seeing/hearing and then she would fall back to sleep. The more she communicated with us the less the "night time wakings" would happen.

Hang in there!

Oh wow...this is DS7....he pretty much gave up naps around 14 months...he did not sleep through the night until he was about 5 years old. He would fuss and fight at night when it came to sleeping or he would wake up multiple times throughout the night. He didn't have night terrors, he would just tell us that something woke him up. We really did not want to bring him into our bed so one of us would lay next to him until he finally fell asleep....we have a bedtime routine and got that set in stone around age 5, we had to buy a sound machine with multiple sounds because he would hear every noise in the house and it would wake him and that helped. He is now 7 and we read 4 stories together and then I am amazed at what comes pouring out of his mouth as we are laying in his bed together just unwinding...he will talk about stuff that happened last week in complete detail...he says he hates going to sleep because he can't get his brain to turn off and that he has too much to think about. So what I do is allow him time to just talk before bed -it has become one of my favorite times of the day with him....my DH and I take turns each night - one night is his and the next is mine where we read and then lay and talk with DS7 until he falls asleep. I am hoping that one day he will finally be able to fall asleep himself without one of us there!

I wonder if you could make some changes in your bedroom so you would be able to leave him there with a video monitor. Some cosleepers I know only have a mattress so the child can not fall from high. We always put DD in her own bed and moved her with us when we went to bed. I was afraid to leave her alone on our bed to sleep. Maybe try a pack and play in your room. She also had a horrible time trying to fall at sleep if we were there. Alone there would be nobody to play with. If he likes books you could tell him if he stays alone he can have some books with him. DD has always enjoyed reading books alone before sleeping.

Oh and try to cut the milk completely, when our pediatrician told us to stop giving any milk during night or in the bed our nights got much better. If she asked for somethings she got water. If we gave milk one time our nights would be horrible for a week. She would remember it and use it as a an excuse to not to sleep. After getting rid of the milk she did not have that much reason to wake up. We gave her a snack just before going to bed which included milk in a sippy or a cup.