two year old waking up in crib wanting to be re-covered with blanket

So my kids are generally really good sleepers. They decided recently that they want to be covered with blankets at bedtime, which at first I was happy about because always worry about them being cold. Well now my girl twin keeps waking up in the middle of the night crying. When I go in, she says she want me to cover her with her blanket. Last night I tried giving her a pillow and tucking a sheet over the blanket and into the sides of the crib. No dice. She still woke up all turned around and crying for her blanket. Any suggestions? My husband says this means they need to go into toddler beds, but I really don't understand how that would help.

 

Practice having her cover herself with a blanket during the day & talk about how she can do it at night too. When she wakes at night remind her it's something she can do herself.

 

I agree. It may be just a question of practicing how to do it. Once you see they know how to do it and can cover themselves when asked, if they wake you up in the middle of the night crying for you to cover them, for starters, do it one time, but remind them they can do this themselves. Next time they wake you, you go in and tell them to do it. Beyond that, don't go in. They'll figure it out that you are no longer going to help them and give them that nightly attention. They'll start doing it themselves on their own.

 

This was a huge problem for us for several months! It drove me bonkers.

We worked with DS during the day to make sure he could pull the blankets up by himself...it had limited success because at night, he seemed too out of it to figure out how to do it.

What finally helped was using bedding (comforter/sheets) for a toddler bed. Even when they were ~2.5, I was still just using a baby blanket or two to loosely cover them up. Our cribs have the removable front to convert to a toddler bed, but at the time, they were still in cribs. I made sure to tuck the lower portion of the comforter and sheet far underneath the mattress so he could not pull it out. Then I would do my best to tuck in the sides when he was in bed for the night.

It was not a perfect fix, but it did reduce the number of night wakings. Good luck!