2yo in bed - how to get him to put himself to sleep & stay put!

[sabinar]

my little guy has always been a pretty average sleeper and this is as much our fault as anything - we travelled a lot in his first 18 months and never got much of a routine, I breastfed him to sleep far too much and at the time we were moving him into a cot from his hammock he was hit by a bout of teething that transformed us into co-sleepers for the sake of getting a few hours of sleep so that I could actually get through work the next day.

fast forward to now, we moved him into his own room and his own little bed about 4 months ago. He seems to like both his bed and his room however there are two issues that I'd really love to resolve and I have no idea how to approach them!

1. at the moment his bedtime routine consists of bath, bookreading, singing, saying goodnight, then we lay down together in his tiny bed and listen to his 'sleepytime music' until he falls asleep. This process can take anything from 45mins (on a good night) to 2.5hrs on a bad one (like last night). He won't stay in bed by himself and go to sleep. I've tried sitting on the bed and backrubbing him to sleep as a transition from lying down with him to eventually leaving him to fall asleep alone with limited success. How am I ever going to help him to fall asleep alone now that he's in a bed that he just just hop out of whenever he wants to?

1. I could count on my two hands the number of nights in his two years that he has slept through the night. I know that at his age it is still entirely normal not to sleep through, but there is a 98% chance that at some time, usually around 1.30am, he'll hop out of his bed and come and hop into ours. I don't really mind him being there, but as he's getting bigger - and so am I, being 25wks pregnant with DC2 - it's making sleep harder and harder to come by. Frankly, I'm beyond exhausted at the moment and I'm pretty sure it's because of continually disrupted sleep. For the sake of getting some precious sleep we just leave him in our bed rather than going back and trying to get him back to sleep in his bed or transferring him once he goes back to sleep. What do you think is the best way for me to encourage him to stay in his own bed for the entire night, at least for the majority of nights?

He's a pretty bright little guy with good verbal communication skills - I think he'd understand if we told him that he had to lie in bed and go to sleep by himself etc. but he's also very much in the midst of throwing his weight around and providing us with several very dramatic tantrums every day, so I'm not confident he'll see our logic and go with it!

apologies for long post - I really don't know where to start with this and would greatly appreciate any and all advice.

When I moved mine into a bed from their cots I put a stairgate on the door. I saw it as just making the cot bigger I was also religious about puting them back into bed when they get out in the middle of the night. This has paid off in the long run as my DD now 5 will come through for a cuddle in the middle of the night and after about 10 mins I say right back to bed now and she toddles back no fuss. My 3 year old still has a stairgate (which he now knows how to open but doesn't) and just calls mummy when he wakes and we go through and pop him back in bed. I know for a lot of people they just buy a bigger bed and if you can sleep with them there then that might work for you, I had a problem with my hips that meant I couldn't sleep with one of them next to me which perhaps inspired me more to get out of bed and put them back!
hth

DD didn't sleep through the night until she was nearly 4yrs. We had to break the cycle of her waking in the night and coming in with us- I was pregnant by then so we had to do something. We tried all the conventional methods which failed. In the end we moved into her room and camped down until she stopped the cycle of waking. If she woke she could see us and just went back to sleep (with a bit of persuasion for the first few nights). It took 5 nights and then we moved out but left the camp beds set up so she'd think we were still there in the middle of the night! She has spent the last year in her own bed.

As for falling asleep- we did the 'I'm just popping to the loo' trick...we'd return 5 mins later, then make another excuse e.g hanging washing, tidying something...then return. By the time she'd waited for us to return to her room, she was asleep! As for getting out of bed, threaten the cot again or put him in a grobag so he cannot climb out.
The bedtime routine for your DS sounds very consistent so tweaking it slightly shouldn't be too hard.

Good luck.

DS2 has been very difficult. Now he is 2.4yo he is finally going to sleep on his own.

We gave him a go glow torch and told him he can look at books in bed. We give him a kiss and tell him we will be back in 5 mins to give another kiss if he is still in bed lying down etc. If he gets up we put him straight back.

They say it takes 2 weeks for a new routine to become established. Be prepared and good luck

sabinar - You are inspiring me to do something about DS2 as well with your post. DS2 was an angel when in his cot but now doesn't stay in his big boy bed, which he's now been in for 2 months now. Every night I stay with him til he sleeps and then he comes in to our bed somewhere around midnight. DH has even moved into the spare room to avoid the sleepless nights. I know it can't go on and I need to do something about it but at the beginning of moving into a big bed he would cry so much he would be sick (he has an under-developed gag reflex) - so we'd have to clean him / the bedding / carpet - after 3 nights I just caved in. Anyway I've bought the no-cry sleep solution - I just need to implement it . I've said I'm going to start from 1st - so only one more night with my cuddly little Ds2. One of my problems is that he is LOVELY to sleep with. He is so cuddly and gorgeous in the morning when he wakes me up.

well my advice is ...

OK getting on this thread, 2y8m old ds was up 5 times last night. Have a 15wo as well who didn't settle until 2 so I'm exhausted

actually i do the excuse thing with DS and it does work (while he wakes he's usually ok going back to sleep). when i was pg and weeing constantly he'd let me go (feeding him) for a wee and by the time i got back he was usually asleep. Now i can change the baby's nappy or settle her, same applies. I just want him not to wake up until morning!!

sabinar are you going to let us know how it goes? I'm putting DS into his big boy bed soon, and I'm scared! I know I need to have a positive attitude... But when I've got that I'm going to DO it, and hope it only takes two weeks for the new routine to kick in!

thanks everyone for your advice. I sped-read the No Cry Sleep Solution in the bath the other evening to see if there are any other tips and, to be honest, I'm still not really sure what my strategy is. I'm going to try the 'excuse' idea that a few people have mentioned, but I'm not really very hopeful as having had to duck out for real reasons a few times, despite begging him to stay in bed and wait for me to come back he's almost invariably hopped out of bed to follow me.

on the 'staying in bed' front, last night was an absolute shocker - he stayed in bed until 2.30am, which is relatively good for him - but then climbed into our bed and proceeded to keep us awake until about 4am when he finally fell back asleep. Argh. I need to start getting him back into his own bed when he comes into ours but it is so much easier (usually) just to make room for him, give him a cuddle and go back to sleep. We're going to need to get a bigger bed though when no. 2 arrives. Hrm.

I tried the excuse thing last night but he just shouted "MY COME" and scampered out of bed... Groan....

sabinar, I really do so remember those days . I'd say you have to break it. Not least because you're pregnant. He sounds bright, so howabout a reward chart - say 5 days. A sticker in the morning if he stays in his own bed and a treat that he really really wants if he gets 5 stickers - that doesn't have to be a toy, could be a trip to his favourite park or a big party tea or something. If he agrees, say that to help him, you're not going to let him get into your bed, so if he tries in the middle of the night you're going to walk him back to his and tuck him back in. Then stick to it. Ignore all wailing - it's sort of like pick up, put down in that you don't slam the door in his face but you're v. much saying gently this is how it is and no matter how much you scream at me, this is how it's going to be. So try not to get upset or cross with him, just be matter of fact. You could put some low level music on in his room or even an audio book on for him to listen to as he goes back to sleep. But do not give in, regardless of how dire it gets - he needs more sleep and so do you...

Sabinar - I have linked in loads of other threads to the method the sleep clinic HV advised us to use. If you search 'kiss to sleep' you should find it. It really helped us to get DS2 to stay in bed. You don't actually have to leave the room to begin with, but they have to stay lying down in bed in order to get another kiss from you.

You have to use the same approach when he gets up in the night, I know how hard this is as I often feel it easier just to let DS2 into bed with us...but thinking long term all the effort must be worth it.....(I have DC3 on the way)

ah, more excellent ideas, thank you!

@smee - he is a bright little thing (or I think so), but he doesn't quite 'get' stickers yet and his grasp on if we do this now then that will happen in the future is pretty vague too, so I think he's not quite ready for the reward approach yet, although in a few months things could be different. Is definitely a good idea. Agree that I have to get the going back to bed in the middle of the night thing sorted but fear I face more resistance than support from DH on that (as he quite likes to snuggle with DS through the night... he sleeps like a log though and doesn't find it disrupts his sleep)

@washersaurus - ah, yes, I found one of your posts here. DS is seriously addicted to kisses so this is something that I think might actually work with him - also, the very short 'breaks' away and him being able to hear us around (via humming) is probably good too. I think I'm going to psych myself up and see if I can have a crack at it using this approach (although, predictably, I'm just about to enter 3wks of stressful/long hours at work and then we're off traveling for a few weeks - eh, no wonder he has such poor sleep habits! Is totally not his fault).

We did a gradual withdrawl approach to get DD out of a similar problem. It does work but takes a bit longer and some tears are involved. I got it from NCSS I think or NCT sleep book.
Started off needing us to lie with her. We explained that we are not going to lie with her any more but will sit on the bed and hold hands. She cried but I gave her a choice of holding hands or mummy goes away and if she carried on crying I left the room for 1 minute then came back and she usually accepted the holding hands after a few of those. After a few weeks holding hands was fine and then we moved to just sitting by the bed, then sitting by the door, then outside the door.
With night wakings same thing exactly. No more coming in our bed. It is hard to follow through with it in the middle of the night and there is a patch of having less sleep but it was worth it as now she sleeps 8-7 at least, takes 10mins to go off and only wakes if ill.
Does he still have a daytime nap? DDs sleep really improved after we cut the nap out. If she has one now it takes ages for her to fall asleep. She was a bit more grumpy in the afternoons but it was really worth it to get better nights.

So how about making a bed up on the floor in his room? We did this at one point. I told DS he had to stay in his bed and call for me, so not come into ours, but I would curl up right next to him in his room. I only did it though if he stayed in bed and stayed quiet. Bit drastic, but it meant as he got used to it, he stopped getting so stressed and woke only vaguely rather than fully, so dropped back off to sleep quicker. Over a couple of months he woke instead of 4/5 times a night it was more like 1/2. Tell that DH of yours to go and do it. If he's so good at sleeping he'd barely notice and you'd get the sleep you need. Go on, be tough..