16mth old waking in night, refusing to go back to sleep in cot - help

[tweenie]

Our 16 mth old DS wakes up during the night and now refuses to go back to sleep in his cot, so we usually cave in and bring him into bed - which he now expects and loves of course. The only thing is that once in the bed he thinks it's great and proceeds to chatter away and roll around for anything up to 2 hours leaving my DH and I totally exhausted.

I realise we've got to do something about his sleep, we want him to get himself back to sleep in his cot when he wakes up but don't know how to do this. Is controlled crying the only option (we hate letting him cry) - we're prepared to give it a go if it is. He simply stands up in the cot and howls for ages. Any suggestions or advice would be gratefully received.

What worked for us is to let him comeinto our bed, roll around for a few minutes, then to put him back in his cot to go to sleep. We shortened the time each night, and eventually we were going in, saying night night, and leaving him.

Mine did cry for a bit, but I think by that age they are old enought to push the bounderies a bit, and it is not reasonable to play in the middle of the night.

i have a similar problem with my 19 month old, we now don't bring him into bed cos we too don't get any sleep; but he has started to scream and scream if we leave him. Does anyone else have any views, has anyone done controlled crying at night like this? It is heartbreaking to hear him crying so much.

My 23 month old ds had started doing exactly the same thing. What we did was instead of bringing him into our bed one of us will go and lie in the spare bed in his room. We push the bed right up next to his cot and hold his hand. He is normally asleep again within minutes then we go back to our own beds.

Sorry, I'm hijacking this thread because I need help too. My 18mth old is upstairs screaming right now. I put him in his cot (which until a couple of weeks ago he would ask to get in and just curl up and go straight to sleep) at 7pm, and I've been in twice to sssh him and let him know I'm here but it is killing me to hear him scream. I know full well he'll be back up crying when we've gone up to bed and then we usually take him in with us, but I am so tired I can't cope with it anymore. I don't really want to CC through the night because he wakes up DD (who's 8) and she has school to get up for. But what else is there? I'm not a believer in the Pick up Put down theory, it hasn't worked for me in the past, but I will try anything to get him back to normal. He seems to be testing our patience at the minute, refusing to eat (when he has always been a fab eater) and now this with the sleeping. He is even refusing to get in the bath, no matter how 'fun' I make it. Is this normal? I can't remember DD being like this (well, she was a madam but that started much earlier!)

He's just gone quiet - an hour and a half after putting him to bed.