Help needed with bedtimes

[nellie75]

Please help, my very soon to be five year ds will not settle in bed and go to sleep, we do the usual bedtime routine, bath teeth cleaned etc, then i read him a story or two, kisses good night and i come back downstairs. He then proceeds to get out of bed, run round, throw things down the stairs, ask for a drink, food etc etc - what do i do???

Sorry to bump ths but 'm gettng desperate

First of all, I'd stick to one story, no more so it's the same each night.

What do YOU do when he's up running around asking for drinks etc?

Calmly tell him to go back to bed, then will try the you're not going to get x tomorrow or y or z and then usually get cross, wrong i know but really struggling with pnd.

Not that thats any excuse i know, sounds like i'm making excuses its just normally i'm very placid

Read Super Nanny??!!
What's his diet like? chocolate and refined sugars and food colourings may be charging him up?? Also fish oils help to calm so that may help. Does he get a chance to burn up his excess energy in the day??
When he does it do you make sure you switch off tv if you're watching? Cos I think its best to be as calm as possible and be as boring as possible so that its just not interesting for him. Just keep taking him back to bed with as little talking as possible.

Television usually off, his diet is terrible he lives on cheese and fruit juice and he is very active

My ds does this! Make it a rule that he can't come out of the room. I try to ignore my ds as much as I can when he does this as I think it's attention seeking behaviour. He drops off eventually!

any chance of changing his diet?

He has some behavourial difficulties and is under a peadeatrician and a dietician, its a very slow battle but we are trying

I'm absolutely not an expert so sorry if this comes accross all preachy, just trying to offer up a few suggestions.

I'd try a multi-angled approach.

-exercise to burn off energy in the evenings after dinner: a walk, dancing, trampette.

-half and hours 'quiet' time before his bath with no boistrous things (DH is the one that this usually needs drilling into in our house as he winds DS up)

-I don't do a bath every night but if you do make it the same length every night with no arguments.

-straight to bed every night after bath then story for 10mins and lights out.

-after lights out if he gets up just take his hand and lead him back to bed. Expect this to take lots and lots of attempts the first night (may take hours), second night and possibly third. After that it should take less long and each night should get easier though it may be the odd one is difficult if he tries to push the boundaries.

The theory behind all this is that with n shouting, communication etc he will realise that getting up serves no purpose and he will give up, though it'll take a while. I've found with DS1 though (nearly 3) that I have to keep discpline consistent with him all the time for bed times to work and I assume this will stay the same as he gets older. It took 4/5 nights of taking him back to bed for him to get the message a few months ago but he's great now (though he's tried it on for a few babysitters )

If you haven't seen them I thought the BBC 'house of tiny tearaways' programme was a great illustrator of how a few nights of hard work can pay off - and provide some hope

Thanks will try anything, though i get the feeling that part of it is down to new baby sister, as he used to be bad and then we just about sorted it out and he went straight to sleep but now dd has arrived and though i do everything i can not to create jealousy you have to wonder really.

Probably Nellie. Are you finding time to devote specifically to him still?

We've had to make extra fuss of DS1 since DS2's arrival. I had one friend who used to make a big show of putting the baby to bed and then doing her DS's bedtime so he still had his routine from 'before' - then she'd go and get the baby up again!

Yes he still gets mummy time as does my 10 year old i think its that he now thinks he is a grown up because he's a "big brother" lol and so should go to bed when we do and help put amelia to bed!!