5 year old sleep - help!

[Wintergal201]

Our five year old son won’t fall asleep on his own. We’ve recently redecorated his room, he chose his own theme, bed etc which we thought would help him settle - it didn’t help at all. I have to keep his nightlight on, curtains open, be in his room, play a bedtime story / music and sit there and wait until he falls asleep. This can take anywhere between 30-60 mins as he’ll keep opening his eyes to check I’m still there. I’ve tried delaying his bedtime which doesn’t help, he just ends up going to bed at 11 🤦‍♀️ once he falls asleep, my husband and I get about 2 hours to ourselves to clean downstairs etc and then he’s up again anywhere between 11-1 and comes to our bed again. We walk him back to bed but then he comes back to our bed around 2am and sleeps with us till the morning as we can’t keep disrupting our sleep like this - we both work full time jobs.

We’re at wits end to be honest. We’ve got 2 younger children who go to sleep on their own (lights out and they’re asleep) but then they’re both up at 6am so it’s a vicious circle of late nights with our 5 year old and very early mornings with his younger brothers.

How do we fix this? Is it easier to just be in his room so he falls asleep or be cruel to be kind and somehow stop this cycle?!

thanks in advance 🙌🏼

I can post you something I've already got written on my phone, from when I ended up getting a sleep consultant to help...

Bedtime passes
If you think the not sleeping is a psychological thing then you could try something called bedtime tokens / bedtime passes. Start with a family meeting, draw up some sleep rules, get your child to suggest and draw them to give them some ownership.

Agree a reward. We used playmobil, I bought a camping set and split it all up, put the names of all the bits on individual slips of paper in a pot.

Make loads of tokens together. I mean loads. If the child gets up at bedtime or calls you in the night then that's absolutely fine and allowed, but costs 1 token. Put them in a pot by their bed. If there are tokens left in the morning, the child gets a reward. My daughters was whichever bit of the playmobil set was written on the slip of paper she drew out. Like a tombola. One day it would be a person or horse, the next day a fork or spoon! High stakes...

For the first few nights the child needs to succeed. So you need more tokens than they will use. My Daughter used more than 30 the first night. When they're in the swing of it, start to gradually reduce the number of tokens. It took us a few weeks to get down to 6. My daughter started to fail a few times and had to try. We got stuck at this level a while. Eventually we got down to 3 and at some point the system was gradually forgotten.

You can look this up, I believe it's called bedtime passes and there's a few articles out there.

I hope it helps!

Watching with interest. Afraid I've got nothing to offer but sympathy. Mine is the same. He also doesn't need much sleep. Still up now. Dad putting him down. He is in bed by 9.30 but won't actually sleep till 10. We are a distraction and he chats. But he will NOt sleep alone. He can he just hates it. We've been trying go bribe him and made some progress. Then my mil stayed over the holidays and let him sleep with her. So we are back to the start.

Last night he tried for 10 mins then the tears started. He has hated sleeping alone since birth, half of it is comfort but some of it is power I think. He wants to know we will do it.

The issue for us is that he won't sleep before 9. But he's really tired and cranky so we get to the point where it's easier to give in than hsve a huge tantrum.

My youngest goes to bed at 8pm and sleeps on her own no problem.

It's really taking its toll to be honest. We get no evening at all. I often fall asleep with him. My mum thinks I'm just soft. I might be. He's also a really strong willed child so it's hard to say no.

My 5 year old is struggling with going to sleep on her own, I think it might be needing reassurance with going back to school.

I sit with her giving her a cuddle, but no talking, reading my own book for up to 30 mins and then say 'I need to go to the toilet/cook dinner/do some jobs. I'll be back to check on you after that, you read some books in bed whilst I'm gone. Quite like the chance to read tbh!

The first few nights I'd go back in in 5mins or she'd pop up to ask me back, to reassure her that I was actually going to come back. Then I'd go to stretching that out to 10 then 20mins before checking and most nights now she's asleep before her 30mins of cuddle is up. So I'm going to try shortening the cuddle time.

One of the parenting books ( maybe Sarah Ockwell Smith? ) I read talked about this kind of behaviour coming from the kid needing more connection time from parents and so using bedtime for that, which made sense to me given this has got worse again in our house with going back to school and not being at home all day. So could also try having some more focused attention time during the day maybe? Hard I know with multiple kids but maybe something like family disco time after tea or some silly games time?

@Orangeinmybluelightcup thanks so much, it’s actually not a bad idea doing it this way. We’ve tried everything else, bribing with rewards, charts etc when it gets to bedtime he doesn’t care about the consequences he just wants us in his room 😭
@TaraRhu oh my gosh I can totally relate. We’ve been doing the same. It gets so late we just give in and we’re back to square one but at least we get that hour or two to sort the house and have a cup of tea in the evening 🤦‍♀️ can I ask, does your little one come to your bed at night too or once he’s asleep he’s out for the night?
@Lexibug that’s a good idea! Maybe it is the extra connection time he’s after… he says he’s ‘scared to sleep on his own’ (despite having his nightlight, hallway light, all his cuddly toys etc.) I can’t even leave the room to sit in the hallway without him calling out for me every 5 mins, plus the usual ‘I’m hungry / thirsty/ not tired / need a wee’ which goes on for ages 😩

@Wintergal201 yes, about half the time he is in our bed at some point. 🥱