super nanny's stay-in-bed teqnique for a clingy nearly 6 yr old, any help, advice or just general reassurance needed!

[lizandlulu]

dd1 is nearly 6 and i have had to sit with her until she goes to sleep, ever since she was about 18 months. she wants me to stay with her and has to hold my arm until she goes to sleep, which until now hasnt really been much of a problem, but now i have a 8 week old and i cant be in 2 places at the same time, so am thinking of doing the super nanny stay in bed thing with her.

if i do try to leave her, she shouts and screams and cries until i usually cave in anf go to her, she doesnt usually actually get out of bed, so i dont know if to just try putting her to bed with her stories then leave. then leave her to cry herself to sleep, if she gets out just put her back like supernanny reccomends.

any advice gratefully received!

What worked for me was telling DD that if she lay quietly I'd come back and check to her in a few minutes. I did go back to her but pretty soon she started falling asleep within that few minutes.

Same problem here with 6 year old DS after got into the habit of sharing a bed when I split from H. Will have a go at the lie quietly technique

i have tried saying to her 'right, mummy has to go and check on the baby now, i will come back' but she expects me to do just that, check on the baby and go back to her to stay with her.

if i told her i was going to come back and check on her she would keep waiting for me to go back and start shouting if i didnt go back, she wont just start to fall alseep

How is her sense of fair?

You could tell her that when she was a little baby you stayed with her at night, and now her poor baby sibling has to be all alone because she won't be a big girl and let him/her have Mummy at night!

Also, if she screams and kicks off, take her toys away. She's too old for toddler tantrums.

For both my dcs, I had to do the 'cold turkey' supper nanny style. I just leave them to cry it out. Before leaving the room, explain I'll come back to check up on them. And then walk out of the room and stand by the door then come in for reassurance every 3-5 minutes and gradually increase the intervals.

It took about a week of screaming, well, maybe just the 1st 2 days of real screamig, after that the screaming reduced until they were fine.

I'm glad I did it cos now at age 7 and 2, I tuck them into bed and say good night and that's it!

colditz she doesnt really have a very good sense of whats fair, shes been an only child for so long she doesnt want to share me.

i think i am just going to do it like jesusgirl and sit through it but want to wait till we have a weekend when we are at home (away this weekend) so if it does drag out for hours she can at least have a lie in on the saturday!