My 21 month old little girl doesn't sleep and doesn't stop! She gave up daytime naps at 10 months, has resisted all efforts to get in to any kind of bedtime routine and health visitors (several of them) have told me she's exceptionally bright so just needs constant stimulation and not a lot of sleep!
She's up by 6am every day, and is non stop on the go continuously until she crashes usually about 10pm and even then it only happens because we all go to bed to get her to go to bed! Yesterday we were still trying to get her to be at 11pm!
She also won't play on her own for more than a few minutes you have to play with her continuously and games have to be imaginative otherwise she gets bored and you have to move on to something else.
I work 3 days a week and her childminder has said she's exhausted by the end of a day with my DD, but that's not the end of the day for us, we're beyond exhausted!
Does anyone else have a child of a similar age like this?
AIBU to think this isn't normal?
AIBU?
21 month old exceptionally demanding toddler
Ohbuggermebugger · 05/03/2017 11:23
My DD was a lot like that at that age, except that I could get her to bed at 8pm (though I vividly remember her explaining to me before DC2 was born, which means before she turned 2, that she couldn't sleep "because my head's manic Mummy" (she got the word manic from me, as I used to say she was manic when she witted about physically without stopping) - she's fairly normal now at nearly 12, not even especially academic for better or worse despite being miles ahead of her peers with most "milestones" when she was under 3... She still gets up early and thinks 7am is a lie in, but that's no longer a problem...
I remember lying on the couch at 5am with pre recorded Mr Tumble on the TV when she was 22 months and I was 7 months pregnant because I just couldn't face rapid return for a solid hour til 6am, but once DC2 was a few months old we worked hard on not leaving her room til 6am - she just re set her gro click so I taught her the basics of telling the time (just o'Clock and when it's before and after that time) and she had an analog clock in her room and wasn't allowed to leave her room til 6am.
If she is bright you can work with that and use strategies that wouldn't work for other nearly 2s - far more actual explaining and things like clocks and reward charts which DD "got" at that age but my boys wouldn't have understood properly til nearly 3.
I've had the bedtime problem with a different child and letting him have story CD s to fall asleep to and just being firm and consistentworked, but not til he was 2.5.
In all honesty what helped take the pressure off with DD was having DC2 when she was 24 months old - initially as a newborn he wasn't any help obviously :o but by the time he was crawling she'd incorporate himinto her games as a baby (d'oh) or a dog :o and he adored her and interacting with him meant she didn't always "need" me to play. They were absolutely inseparable for years, from about 1 and 3 til about 7 and 9, when they grew apart about but they're still good friends.
Apart from having another baby, which may be about drastic, I had DD's friends around pretty much every day from the time she turned 3, and at 21 months we just spent most of every day out in playgrounds and at other places there'd be other kids to play with, and invited people with kids over whenever we weren't going out.
DD didn't like to be alone til she started secondary - it is high maintenance but the best way I found was just to make sure she had kids to play with every day.
Also cbeebies won't kill her 
and you could try Reading Eggs or the cbeebies website too if she's bright - DD learnt lots from a bit of preschool appropriate screen time when I wanted a break :o
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