# 3 year old wakes up crying every single night



## Enudely (Jul 2, 2005)

My 3 year old basically wakes up crying almost every single time she wakes up. I have no clue why! She's a very happy kid. We recently moved her to her own room, because she was waking up her baby brother so much crying in the middle of the night. Sometimes she just crawls into bed with us, but usually she wakes up crying and one of us has to go in her room and lay down with her or get her. Is this a normal developmental thing or should I be concerned?


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## ramama (Apr 13, 2007)

This happened with both my DDs around that age. I figured that they have such a huge cognitive and imaginative growth spurt around that age that the world seems a lot more scary. Around the same time their play became more intricately imaginative and involved a lot of role-playing, and the "why" stage really went into overdrive. They started being concerned about monsters, or weird shadows on the walls. They turned from being fearless outgoing toddlers to being a bit more reserved and more mom-centered. DDs also started to describe dreams (and nightmares) in more vivid detail. DD1 (age 5) outgrew it, but DD2 (3 1/2) is still going through it a bit but thankfully seems to be coming through the other side now. Finally.

Anyway, I can't really say if it's normal or not, or if this is what your DD is going through, just that that is what happened to both of my DDs.


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