Battles over pj time

[DeathMetalMum]

What are your ways of getting dc into pjs easily?

We hare having trouble with dd1 (2.9) at the moment which she basically wants us to catch her and then continiously running off. She still has nappies and eczema so needs cream applying (particularly at the moment) so needs one of us to help her. It seems a very tiring stressfull process at the moment and me and dp seem to be at a loss of how to deal with it. It is the tip of dd just constantly ignoring us but other methods of dealing with that are pretty pointless at this time of the day.

You are not alone. DS is 4, and we have finally had a period where it works slightly better. For the past few weeks we've switched from reading short books at bedtime, to chapter books, so he's wanting to know what happens next. This has been just enough to tide him over the seemingly inevitable resistance to bedtime. Sorry that I don't think it's going to be an option for your DD just yet.

The other thing that seemed to help a bit was switching around our bedtime routine, so that instead of doing wash, pyjama, story bed all in one run, we now do brush teeth, wash, pyjama straight after tea, then back downstairs for play until it's time to go to his bedroom for story. Seemed to help that he wasn't quite so tired when we were negotiating wash and pyjamas, plus the motivation that the quicker it goes, the more play he gets.

Hope this sparks some helpful ideas for you

If pjs and teeth are done with no faffing, there are 5 or 10 mins of extra play time available (depending how flexible your eveings are). Maybe even youtube or cbeebies games online (or whatever is the favourite activity that doesn't happen very often). Lots of faffing = no extra playtime.

3.4yo can understand basic numbers on clock but you could also use kitchen timer. It's important to let them know you are serious by really sticking to the timings and denying extra playtime if needs be, so hopefully next time they will jump to it.

If things are really going badly I also threaten no stories but I always feel guilty about using that.