1year old wants to party at night?

[twocultures]

Since the previous thread didn't get any replies and it's coming up to the dreaded bed time I'll make the question simple.
My 1 year old DS is almost walking now and all he seems to want to do at night is practice it or throw himself around his cot like a crazy mackerel hitting his head on the bars.
I know this is a developmental stage where his little brain is working overtime to learn all these new skills, but is there any way I can help him sleep better? Last night he must've been up for 4- 5 hours straight and he NEVER used to do that...today he's been extra moody thanks to his lack of sleep and I'm running on strong cups of coffee
He used to be an extremely good sleeper sleeping around 11 hours a night with no disturbances.
Help anyone?

[Natsku]

It happens and it sucks. DD went through a horrid phase a few months older than that where she would be up every night from roughly 1am until 5 or 6am and then she'd finally fall back asleep.

It will pass!

[MargaretCabbage]

My DS had a similar attitude at nine months old. The only way I could get him to sleep was to put him on my bed and pretend to sleep, until he realised everything was so boring he would give in and sleep himself. It took two hours at first but didn't take long till it was taking 10 mins. We started co-sleeping at that time too, which we'd never done before, but he woke up every time we did the cot transfer.

He's 15 months old now and is good at going to sleep in his cot.

My method may not be practical for you, but I just want to reassure you that you will find a way to deal with it and it won't last forever!

[talkingtoclarry]

No real help or advice but just wanted to say that my 1 year old has done the exact same thing. We had a period of around ten days where he would up at 1am and be absolutely wired, wide awake and wanting to play. Some nights/mornings he would be up until 5am, then he would curl up and go to sleep .... ready to wake at 7am. We were dreading bedtime and it nearly destroyed me. And then one night he slept through, just like he used to do. Just like that, and we're back to sleeping through again pretty much every night again. And we're all much happier!

[twocultures]

I did actually relent and took him in bed with us last night....it made it worse lol
He would fall asleep on me when I took him out of the cot and walked around with him, but I couldn't sit down or put him back down because he'd wake up instantly. So we took him to bed and he became even more alert and awake started standing up, crawling, ripping my hair out (we were pretending to sleep) and almost fell out of the bed twice because of his wiggling. I don't know how I'll survive another night like that and to make things worse my OH gets up for work really early and he's not been getting any sleep as he cant sleep anywhere else in the house

[Titsywoo]

It's a,phase they seem to go through just before they walk. Both of mine did it. I just shut myself in the living room with them and turned on the TV. I dozed and they played. It was over in a couple of weeks each time.

[twocultures]

Titsywoo that might be an idea....!
To give you a perspective on how tired I am I just came downstairs to take my DS out of his high chair to take him upstairs for a bath (I go in the bath with him) and for some reason I ended up taking my jeans off in the middle of the kitchen as I was mentally preparing to go in with him....no idea why I did that