Tell us your bedtime battles for a chance to win a copy of the sleep-inducing Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep plus £100 worth of Ladybird books

[UrsulaMumsnet]

Do you struggle with getting your child to fall asleep? Parents all over the world have embraced a new, ground-breaking book – The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep. This No.1 bestseller turns nightly bedtime battles into a calm and affectionate end-of-day ritual, using unique and distinct language patterns and relaxation techniques that will help your child relax and fall asleep at bedtime or naptime.

Carl-Johan Forssen Ehrlin is a Swedish teacher of communications, a life coach and a leadership trainer. He has combined all of these skills and experiences in developing the techniques in this book.

Share your bedtime battles for a chance to win a copy of The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep plus £100 worth of children’s bedtime books. You can also enter the competition if you’ve tried the book; let us know if it worked for you and if you would recommend it to other parents.

1 lucky Mumsnetter will win a copy of the book, plus £100 worth of bedtime books by Ladybird and 9 runners up will win a copy of the book

Our bloggers test and review the book:

If you don't manage to get a free copy, don't worry, The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep is available now in eBook and will be available in paperback and audio on 2nd October. The audio version will allow you to choose between a male and female narrator. Find out more and buy

This giveaway is sponsored by Penguin

My daughter didn't start going to sleep easily and sleeping through until she was 3 and 3 months, so after her baby brother arrived last year.

The only thing that worked to get her to just lie down and go to sleep was bribery. I tried every blooming gentle parenting technique in the book and she resisted. Oh how she resisted.

But a sticker chart and the promise of plastic tat and we've not looked back.

Brilliant.

P.s. I'm hoping her brother is more amenable to sleep!

We use an audiobook to soothe my baby to sleep as the narrator is willing to keep reading for much longer than I am. I have to be careful of particularly exciting

...Sections as they wake the baby up. I am planning to try the audio version of this book as it sounds ideal. Wish me luck!

All my children have a specific bedtime routine and it's usually bath, pjs, 1 or 2 bedtime stories and then drift off to sleep. Doing the routine at the same time each day seems to be key, if I try to put them to bed later they are overtired and it doesn't work as well. A second wind seems to kick in.
Will definitely look into this book!

DD has never been particularly dreadful about going to sleep but I do have one favourite story. One night when she was two she was determined not to go to bed and she stood in her cot, screaming blue murder. It happened to be just after 7:00. The radio was on downstairs and once the news had finished the Archers started. DD's always loved the theme tune so she stopped mid-tantrum, had a little dance and then continued screaming once it was finished

These days she really enjoys listening to a meditation cd As she goes off to sleep.

I've not had a full night's sleep in 3 years. My eldest is 11 and he never had much of a problem settling to sleep. My youngest is a nightmare. He needs me next to him until he drops off. This can take hours. He also wakes up during the night and needs me to get him back off to sleep. I'm exhausted! I have just been googling this book after hearing about it on the radio. It sounds fab and I would really like to give it a try.

Ds has ASD and needs very little sleep, 4 hours is good for him. At about 5 we had a rule that if my bedroom door was closed then he needed to play quietly in his room as it wasn't time to get up.
On one particularly trying night following a week of little sleep I got up for what must have been the tenth time, Ds was running up and down the landing. I took him back to his room and said "the bloody door is shut it isn't time to get up" At the time he had few words but my exasperation must have triggered his echolalia (parroting back what he had heard) For the next eighteen months every time he saw a door open or close he'd say "the bloody door is shut it isn't time to get up" His poor teachers used to try and avoid opening or closing doors because it would bring gasps from his classmates because he said "a naughty word"

we have a simple Mantra in our house .... Bath, Bottle, Bed.
a nice warm relaxing bath, followed by a milky bottle then straight to bed with the mobile playing a lullaby .... works in my our house

The usual array of requests for toys, drinks and toilet trips. Recently we keep getting comments about her not being able to sleep alone. I will give the book a shot.

I'm fairly confident that DD1 can cry on demand. If happy diversions aren't working, she can turn on the waterworks and says she is scared.

Bedtime is - get bedclothes on, clean teeth, read if age appropriate, they have a story, song, then bed. All done upstairs.

No negotiations. You may leave the bedroom if you need the loo (or if you are ill). Otherwise that's it until 7am.

Having tried nearly everything ds 3 still needs someone sat in the dark with him as he is magnificent at finding reasons not to stay in bed...we gave gone through building a big Lego bus and carrying it to bed every night, demanding stories of recent outings, crying but saying ' mummy make me happy', taking his own pjs off.... The list goes on we have a routine but ds just ads random things to it and then want calm without them...as a baby he was a nightmare sleeper

Luckily now when he does go to sleep he sleeps through.

I think we need the book...

We read 2 story's, we have a strict routine of bath, warm milk, biscuit and then up for story's in bed. Our girls share a room and tend to be asleep within 15 mins of story. Would love to try this book, especially for our younger son.

My LO has always has trouble falling asleep. Now he asks to do extra homework before bed! Would love to try this book.

My son doesn't sleep. He just doesn't. It's part of his condition. Some nights he will only have maybe one hour, and because he's severely disabled I have to stay up with him all night.

I fell asleep one night through utter exhaustion and I woke up to him opening the front door! He has the learning age of a one year old! I've never fallen asleep at night again.

Hurr1cane I feel for you ds is 20 now and current bedtime is around 4am, he gets up for college around 6.30am. Sometimes he doesn't bother sleeping at all. I remember frequently being on my knees with exhaustion when he was small.
Have you made enquiries about getting a safespace? Around here they are generally funded jointly by social care and health (OT dept.) It won't help him sleep (and if he's like my ds sedatives have the opposite effect) but it would keep him safe if you had fallen asleep (they are generally room sized)

My little boy has just turned three and the Dummy fairy took his "Didi" a couple of nights ago. We're having an absolute battle because he says he can't sleep without it. He's breaking his heart and getting upset that his Daddy is working all the time just because he's so unsettled about it. Coincidentally my SIL told me about this book at the weekend and I am super keen to try it out. I know he'll eventually get used to it but right now it's taken up to an hour to get him to sleep despite no pm nap and normal he drops off in minutes. It's so hard to stick to it when you know what will work but we have no dummies and won't be buying any more so we'll have to wait it out. Any help would be gratefully received!!

Bedtime battle doesn't provide a just enough description. Our 3 year old does what he can to delay bedtime. All of a sudden, he is happy to eat the very same meal he refused an hour ago. Now he wants to tidy up his vast toy collection. He even wants to stay awake and be the one to look after his 6-month-old brother (!!!)
What can be done? Anything and everything! Bribery (chocolate, toys), trickery (lights out and announcing we're leaving him behind), hugs & flattery (you are the best, not him) ... and then ensuring the set routine is not disturbed. Must have his teddy bear, must have the dim table light on, must have someone sitting beside him until he falls asleep, must be NO disturbance when he eventually dozes off.
If this book is really a 'sleep-inducing' read, then clearly it's a must!

My son has always been a good sleeper, he would go down at 6.30 pm and then sleep through until 7.30-8. Since we have taken the side of his cot off, this has all changed. He now will not go to sleep and it ends up taking two hour of us saying 'get back into bed' before he finally goes to sleep. Then he will wake 4 or 5 times in the night and get out of bed, shouting 'mummy', until we tell him to go back to bed. Then he wakes up at 5.30 and is fully awake and will not go back to sleep. After having a baby that slept really well, this is a shock to the system.

It's a struggle trying to get my lil boy to bed at night, he thinks he's some sort of Prince lol! After the mandatory bath, bottle of milk & song he expects mummy to massage his legs or he won't even lay in his cot! Then either myself or daddy have lay in the bed next to him in his Chicco Next2me cot staring at him Whilst he holds our
Finger. It's military operation. Oh dear lol.

have had the same bedtime routine since my DD was a baby: milk, PJs on, brush teeth, story. Sticking to the routine has always helped, especially at stressful or difficult times, like moving house or when on holidays.

Our bedtime battle comes from my 5year old son. Each night he adds another phrase that we must repeat back to him before he will settle down. Tonights repertoire went as follows. Night night (night night aidan) hope you have a good sleep (hope you have a good sleep too) see you later alligator (in a while crocodile) hee hee (hee hee aidan) i love you (i love you too) sleep tight (dont let the bed bugs bite) night night mummy...mummy? mummmyyyy??? night NIGHT go to sleep!! This is then followed by suddenly needing the toilet again and another drink of water and something forgotten in the sitting room. He does go to sleep eventually..honest!

As for previous contributors, I have two (8 & 4) sharing a room (bunk beds) and whilst we have a consistent bath, stories & bed routine (mostly...), they are such good buddies that if they can muster the energy they want to carry on playing/singing/laughing etc together and when we check on them its not infrequent for one to have quietly snuck into the other's bed without us knowing. This can therefore be quite heart-warming or frustrating depending on the day that preceded, but does mean they can struggle to get up for school on time the next day, resulting in much grumpiness all around at times! I'd be interested to see whether this book has advice for kids past the preschool age, as sometimes they are more amenable to being 'reasoned with' than others....

My son (5) is great at going to bed. He has a bath, last wee, cleans his teeth, puts his PJ's on. I then read him a chapter of a book that we are both enjoying. At the moment we are working our way through the Faraway Tree trilogy. He loves it and I get to relive my childhood. Once we have finished it we are hitting the Roald Dahl books. Once I have finished the chapter (about 7:30pm), his 'star' night light goes on, ceiling light goes off, door ajar, monitor on (in case he calls out - plus it makes him feel secure knowing that I am just a call away) and there he stays. He very rarely gets up unless it if for the toilet or he is ill. He sleeps through until about 7:30 the next morning.

Wow, I'm so excited by the concept of this book! Sounds amazing, I for one would love to try it out on my very boisterous and hyper 2yo boy. He loves to fight tiredness and sleep for as long as he physically his able to. He is also a very early riser, and is awake before 5.39 every day. His relationship with sleep has always been a difficult one. I'm a firm believe of a strict bed time routine, bath - bottle - bed. I always take him to bed awake and I often have to put him back to bed max of 5 times before he gives in a goes to sleep. People often say to me he must sleep well the amount of energy he has, but no he doesn't. His energy is never ending. This isn't something he inherited from his dad and I as we love sleep. I've read every sleep book and tried out all advice and tips. This book could be our savior :)