Bedtime - help

[lemontrees]

My son is 9 and for a while now we have been having problems at bedtime which are causing me a lot of stress. For context, I'm a single parent and my son sees his dad one evening a week (no stop over) and every other weekend Friday til Sunday. This has been out arrangement for several years now but he still finds the transitions hard and misses me when at dad's and vice versa. Bedtimes at home have become very stressful. Firstly he just doesn't go to sleep until late - he went to bed slightly later than normal at 8.10 tonight with lights out at 8.30 (usually 7.30 then lights out at 8) and he is still awake now at ten. Ailments often appear at bedime - tummy aches, headaches, sore throats... and sometimes there are tears. Until last week he would go to bed with his door open but I am using a reward chart to get him to sleep with it closer and although it met with resistance, it is working. The other thing I am using this for is to stop him coming out of his room after bedtime to "tell me something" or "for a hug" or whatever. Thus has been working but tonight he has cone out several times complaining of feeling ill and crying. I just don't know what to do - I need my evenings. I have tried eliminating screentime in the hour before bed and am currently using a reward scheme I mentioned before. I don't know where I've gone wrong but for his sake so he's not exhausted and mine so I can have some sanity and space after bedtime, please please can anyone offer any ideas / experiences of similar and how they dealt with it? I'm aware that 9 is a bit old for some of these behaviours :-(. Thanks in advance for any ideas or help...

[BackforGood]

When any of mine have gone through a spell of continually getting up / not settling to sleep, I've resorted to putting a chair on the landing outside their room and sat there reading or MNing for an hour or so until I'm sure they are asleep. They know I'm there, they know I'm not going to engage in any discussion with them, and it's a case of re-forming the habit of going to sleep as there's no point in trying to get up. Once the habit is "re-set" he'll prob sleep better.