Help - my 26 month will not go to sleep without us lying in his room for hours

[stressed2007]

Up until about 3 months ago we used to let my son fall asleep while lying on us on sofa drinking his milk and then we would take him up.

We thought we had made progress by then putting him to bed in his cot with milk. We have to stay with him then until he falls asleep. We have constant "mummy" or "daddy" calls and we say "yes darling night night" etc etc. This process seems to be taking longer and longer and we are on average taking about 70 - 90 minutes for him to drop off (he goes up at 7pm). Even once asleep and we leave him he literally wakes himself up and continues to call after about 10 minutes or so. This normally happens once or twice. We try talking to him through the monitor once he starts calling but he is not placated by this and we have to go back in the room.

Has anyone got any suggestions? Really we wat him to fall asleep on his own - we really do not want to lie beside him for over an hour each night - sometimes it has gone past 9pm before the children are asleep.

I don't know what to do. Would a night light help or just encourage him never to sleep without a light on? Has anyone managed to solve this problem? Many thanks.

Hi Stressed2007.

I could have written a very similar post about 6 months ago. DS1 had never gone to sleep by himself. When DS2 arrived and my DH had to go back onto shiftwork we had to do something. There was no way I could have managed getting a 2month old and a 2 year to bed by myself. DS1 used to take about an hour to go to sleep with us laying on the floor holding his hand

Anyway, we did gradual withdrawal. We stopped holding his hand, then stopped laying on the floor and we then sat in his room. Every 3-4 days we moved 2 feet further away from him. Eventually we got out of the room and to the bottom of the stairs. Now he thinks we are sat on the stairs reading a book. We call up a couple of times but that is all we have to do. I am still completely amazed that DS1 can do this - he used to go hysterical if we left the room!

It took at few weeks but it was worth every minute.

He is now 2 1/2 and DS2 8 months. I can cope without DH being here in the evenings

PS. It still took a while for him to fall asleep while we were in sight. But once we were out of sight we could get downstairs. He would be quite happy in his cot. He doesn't take long now to go to sleep now - mybe 20-30 mins.

thanks very much for the post

"DS1 used to take about an hour to go to sleep with us laying on the floor holding his hand"

this the stage we are at!

It's awful isn't it!?!

I can't believe we never tried the gradual withdrawal method before. I don't know if he would have accepted it any younger. The fact his understanding was so much better at 2 helped I think.

If you do try it let me know how you get on.

Good luck with whatver you do. You'll crack it somehow