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Behaviour/development

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Won't sleep till 10pm - nearly 3

2 replies

Celandine3 · 25/06/2010 22:59

Help - my ds is driving me mad with his sleep behaviour - he's got a normal bedtime routine of bath , milk, story and so on, which begins about 7.30pm we've got blackout blinds as well, but the little wotsit just can't drop off until nearly 10pm every night, leaving me a/ wanting to bang my head against a wall & b/ with no evening..he cries and wants me to stay in the room with him, calls out for water, toilet, comes out of the room- etc. (every trick in the book basically,..) I've tried staying with him/or going out & leaving & coming back in to reassure at intervals but nothing seems to make any difference he just doesn't seem sleepy- I couldn't leave him just to cry , he gets really distressed- he also sometimes wakes up in the middle of night and cries in his sleep - then sleeps on till about 7am - well just wanted to get that off my chest I guess, but any ideas of solutions would be wonderfull...

OP posts:
madmothership · 26/06/2010 01:06

Is he still taking a day time nap? Time to stop maybe, or limit to 20-30 mins?

I had this with my nearly 3 DD last week. She'd been taking 2 hr naps that I had to wake her from and going to bed 7/ 8pm then suddenly was awake and needing similar attention (songs!) til 10. Its exhausting. I'm with you.

nichan · 26/06/2010 09:51

How many naps in the day is she having? If you get a stair gate for the door this will prevent her from being able to leave the room. You have to make a rule that once shes had Bath, milk, story, loo, thats it. Don't give her water or anything after that. She will try anything to get you to stay or go back in the room. As hard as it is you have to say goodnight and leave her. She will cry, but it's important that she learns that you are not going to go back in the room. Then this will stop. And eventually through alot of tough love she will realise mummys not coming back if i cry and will just go to sleep. Goodluck hope this helps. I was very strict on bedtime routine with my lil girl from 6 months, we soon realised staying in the room was keeping her up. And now just saying goodnoght and leave her, she goes straight to sleep.

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