3.5 year old refusing to go to bed and......

[mewmewpower]

guess what we are up at 5am most mornings! Help! Bedtimes are now an ordeal, we do the usual tea between 5 and 5:30pm, bathtime, no tv and then lots of calm down time with stories etc.....however we continue to have a 2 hour window of trying to get him to stay in bed. We get every possible excuse under the sun, when he does finally go to sleep he wakes around 5:15am and says he wants a wee, we have been getting up with him but then we get everything chucked at us again i.e. I want a cuddle, my runny nose is running blah blah blah......and so it goes on. We have now got to the stage that we are completely ignoring him and we just gently lift him back to bed in the evening, but in the morning my DH and I are held prisoner in our bed as we have decided to just ignore him. Has anyone else had this experience and has anyone used the "ignoring technique" and if so did it work. We have tried reward charts and other forms of bribery but he simply doesn't get it! help! The family is in meltdown because we are so exhausted

all I can suggest in the morning is positive reinforcement with a rabbit clock and a sticker chart with the promise of a treat/present at the end of the week. Perhaps a potty in his room rather than a trip to the loo would help him sort out the toilet issues on his own without bothering you?

Thanks I hadn't thought of putting a potty in his room! I'll try that tomorrow night, I think he's just given up now and gone to sleep - 2 hours later!

I secons the potty in the room.

I am much stricter than bodiddy. If my 4 or 2yo get up before 7am they get told in no uncertain terms to go back to bed as it's still the middle of the night.

If they start to act up (when there's nothing wrong with them) then they will either get shouted at or a threat of punishment! However, luckily, this has only ever happened on a couple of occasions.

Unfortunately we have done all that, shouted, punishment (he's been smacked before now), no tv, no treats whatsoever........sadly to no avail the message doesn't get through

We had this for a while with DD1 when she was a similar age.

Pick one method and stick with it - the more different things you try the less consistent you are and the more he sees it as a game or a way of trying to push the boundaries.

We did this:

Dinner, playtime, upstairs for bath, story and bed (no coming back down at all).

Kiss and cuddle night night, then in bed, glowlamp on and potty next to bed. Lights off and door shut.

If she came out, we didn't even speak to her, and we hardly looked her in the eye. We just steered her back to bed and tucked her in. Repeat ad nauseum. (Very tiring and frustrating but it doesn't last long).

She pretty quickly realised that coming out of bed gave her absolutely no benefit at all. No chat, no negotiations, no cuddles, no promises of treats for staying in bed. It was non-nogotiable - it was bedtime and that was that.

We did the same in the mornings - if she woke early i.e. before about 0600, and came in to us she was steered back to bed and told it was still night time (blackout blinds in her bedroom helped with this). She had a potty in her room and a water bottle and I would leave some books on her bed.

So I think the Ignoring method works well but you really have to stick with it, it won't change things in a couple of nights.