Bedtime stories make me feel so stressed

[riotlady]

This used to be my favourite part of the day- cuddled up with DD, we’d read three of her books and she’d sit quietly on my knee and engage with them, get tucked in and have a kiss then go straight to sleep.

Now she’s 3 and she’s turned into a little hellion. She jumps up every minute because she needs a wee or to get another cuddly toy (to add to the other 20 that are already taking up room in her bed). She’s constantly jumping or fidgeting or flipping into weird positions or putting things in my face. She’ll throw a fit if I don’t read all three stories but she hardly engages with them at all and half the time she’s not even looking. I feel so bad for getting stressed during what should be a lovely relaxing time but honestly she makes me want to tear my hair out. Any tips?

Mine does that when she is trying to delay bedtime, is she ok otherwise at settling for the night?

Or maybe she is just fed up of the books and could do with some new ones. We go to the local library pretty often.

Even just have a break from stories for a bit and just have a little chat while she gets ready to sleep. You can always read books at another time of day if she enjoys it more then.

My DD does this amd I just read the stories and after they’re done put her to bed. I don’t fight to engage her if she’s not wanting to and if she starts playing with a toy then I just carry on; tonight she started singing a song so I just carried on reading over that too! From what I can work out it’s a way to delay bedtime and I just don’t engage in it. She goes through phrases of sitting nicely sometimes

I don’t do the bed time books in bed- bath, pyjamas on- we pick 3-4 books (sometimes she likes it for me to offer her two options x3, and she picks which one)- then we read on the couch, tv off- then bedtime is upstairs, wee (attempt even if don’t need), choose 1 toy and in bed with it.

Sounds like you could do to change the evening routine / bedtime and consider discipline approaches etc.

Eg wouldn’t be tolerating multiple loo trips!

My dd has not sat to listen to stories for years - she’s 8 now and plays with her toys while listening. She can listen for hours, but doesn’t want to just sit while listening. Give your dd something to do while you’re reading and just chill!

This is when gentle discipline comes into play. At 3, she needs to be learning how to actively listen and cooperate, so story time is the perfect time to start teaching her these lessons, such as being a polite listener. When my kids were that age, I had a set of simple rules. Pick out a toy before they get in bed, teeth have been done, toilet has been used, etc, and then it's quiet time. If they refused to settle down, jumping, fooling around, etc, with a couple of warnings given, story time would be over until the following night. This always worked really well for my husband and I.

My three year old does this too. I just keep reading and when stories are done they’re done regardless or not of whether she’s listened! I do find that she’ll listen nicely and we’ll have cuddles if we’re reading new books so we try and do frequent library trips now to keep her interest.

We have a varying amount of stories depending on how much messing round there is - loads of pissing about, that's 1 story, ready quickly and sitting nicely, 3+ stories! That generally works, as does the threat of just leaving him to it and getting on with my evening.