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screaming house down because its bedtime

5 replies

lilycat · 28/04/2004 19:41

Am having an absolute nightmare every night trying to put 20mnth boy to bed. We go through the same routine every day, books before bed and milk with his favourite toy. Before going to his cot. I have put a stereo in his room to gently play music but nothin is working. Tonight have been in twice since 7pm and he is currently going ballistic screaming like a mad thing. Do I go to him or leave him to cry himself to sleep? Someone PLEASE tell me a solution!!

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twiglett · 28/04/2004 20:36

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Furball · 28/04/2004 21:14

Sympathies, hopefully he's flat out by now. As twiglett said, the key is to be strict and very little attention, harder for you than him, he's just trying it on.

Another factor could be, is he tired? I seem to remember my DS changing his naps about, round about that age and that cocked up his bedtime, until we'd sorted out new nap times.

The thing that strikes me most about parenthood is how they like to 'keep you on your toes' at every opportunity and as soon as you think you've got it sorted, they have different ideas!!

Good Luck

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KatieB · 28/04/2004 21:30

Had the same with ds2, then went to Millpond Sleep Clinic (they do phone and e consultations too) - the best £150 I've ever spent: within a few days I was able to put him down awake and he'd go straight to sleep - not a tear or tantrum.

Thye use a version of CC, and though I'd tried it before I think the fact that someone who seemed to know what they were doing was telling me it would work gave me the confidence to do it consistently.

Try this

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Evita · 28/04/2004 21:34

lilycat, read my 'please help, doing cc now and it's awful' thread. It went on for quite a while and I got good advice and made some valuable changes. Dd started doing this crying before sleep at 18 months quite out of the blue after having had a good, settled routine for well over a year and being fine about sleeping night and day times in her cot. What I've sort of worked out for myself is that it's a developmental thing, definitely separation related. If I thought she was 'trying it on' as Furball suggests (I know they do do that too of course) I wouldn't have found it so difficult. I don't think in this instance that was what was happening, I think she was suffering real genuine anxiety about being left. She still is going through it but the changes I made have helped. I didn't ever really go into a hardcore cc routine as I didn't think it was appropriate for what was happening with dd. I did something much gentler which also involved being very firm and totally consistent. Now when I put her down we get the screams, the heart-breaking cries for 'mamma ... mamma' over and over and I go in 3 times, once every five minutes before she's gone off. In the beginning it took much longer. She seems to have settled at this point and although I hate hearing her crying and afraid it's much better than it was!