My 18 month year old won’t sleep

[Solspans]

My 18 month year old refuses to sleep in her cot. She goes down okay at the same time every night, we follow the same routine every night. We then have to co-sleep (don’t judge) which I wouldn’t have a problem with if she just came in and went to sleep. But she doesn’t she wakes numerous times a night crying and needs to held closely to go back to sleep. We tried the crying out method a number of times in the last year but she gets so distressed she makes herself sick. I just don’t know what to do. I’m exhausted and at the end of my tether. Any tips?

Hello, I would really recommend you read the booked called “how to solve your child’s sleep problems” by Richard Ferber. It does entail leaving the child to cry for controlled periods of time but it also has a great explanation around the sleep associations/habits children can form in going to sleep. For example, if you always rock your baby to sleep they link going to sleep with being rocked. So you have to break those cycles. Unfortunately for the first few days you do have to leave your baby to cry quite a bit but they learn fast. Since completing the sleep training my little boy has slept through the night for well over a year now and also self settles. When I put him in his cot, he likes to look at his picture books then go to sleep. Good luck

No cry sleep solution has more gentle methods

You could try a mattress on the floor of her room next to her for a few nights instead of co sleeping and then pat shushing rather than holding to get her back to sleep so she gradually gets used to being less dependent on you.

I had one child where controlled crying just didn’t work and we had to do more gentle methods. He was bad until he was nearly two and then just grew out of it and started sleeping through the night. So there is hope!

Ds2 would never settle in his cot so we co-slept from a young age. He's now 2 1/2 and has just started sleeping for most of the night in his own bed. Maybe it's a developmental/age thing?