Toddler bed time nightmare

[Anya20]

Please please help me!!!! My toddler is 2 years and 9 months, and he is toilet trained. Wears nappies for bed time and naps. Bedtime routine has been the same for a long time and now he is really pushing the boundaries. He’ll go to the loo before bed and generally always does a wee/poo. Then once tucked up in his cot will scream that he wants to go to the toilet. If we take him - nothing comes out and he just sits there for probably another 15 mins - basically elongating bed time. Now we see he’s manipulating us - we’ve said no each time he does this and it results in screaming.

We have a 6 month old and I have a dad in hospital with advanced cancer, and am under immense stress. If anyone can give me any pointers I’d much appreciate it, honestly feel like I’m a shit mum and I can’t cope with anything at the moment. The stress of bedtime is killing me.

Is he tired at bedtime? Perhaps it’s time to drop the nap.

I'm sorry you're going through that with your Dad.

I'm just going to echo what the pp said, we had to drop my youngest's nap when he hit 2yo, otherwise he'd be up until 9pm/10pm, sometimes later.

He was still tired at what was his old nap time but I had to get him to push through it, usually with fresh air. It really made a difference at bedtime.

Good luck

It’s so tough isn’t it. I had the same with my dad a few years back and I know how awful it is, be kind to yourself. You are not a crap mum toddlers are hard bloody work. Can you make any tweaks to the bedtime routine like a bath and wind down time with a story? We struggle with our little one too and to be honest we haven’t cracked it yet ourselves but I just wanted to comment just to say hang on in there!

We had this at a very similar age and when toilet trained. We first humoured him, out potty in sitting room and let him sit on potty on his own whilst we were in kitchen. He got bored and after ten mins we put him in bed.

Then when it got too much, we put potty in his room and made it part of bedtime routine, so after we had read book and talked through the day I would say right one last wee before we say goodnight? He'd say yes and then we said goodnight.

Then the stalling bedtime took another turn and he kept coming out with other excuses. What worked in the end was a night light on and Brahms lullaby played on mobile phone. We've now changed that to the sound of waves and he has not been out of bed since. I go in after twenty mins and turn night light off and waves off. And he's fast asleep. I think for us, eep definitely took a turn at 2.5 and was then made worse by potty training and then by him wanting to stay dry at night and waking us up in the middle of the night to go on the potty. It settled down again when he got better at holding his wee overnight. At about 3 2 months he was fully settled again

Thanks so much for the replies. I have noticed when he does not nap then he is much worse at bedtime!

We usually have bath , and then pjs, with milk cuddle and book, then he brushed his teeth. Into the sleeping bag , another book, cuddles and then sleep. So his routine is the same everyday

The night light has helped actually