Toddler bedtime taking hours - help!

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Looking for advice on how to manage bedtime with our 17 month old.

He’s never been great at getting to sleep, always needed to be held, but bedtimes have been awful lately and getting worse.

We do bathtime from about 6:30 and bedtime 7ish, it moves a bit, we try to take it from his tired signals, eg when he’s starting to get a bit cranky. He has stories and cuddles.

He will often start off fine and make all the signs of being sleepy and going to sleep but then he’ll sit up and want his sippy cup, or go to his books, or head to the door and that’s when the meltdowns start because he wants out of the room. It’s taking an hour most nights now and up to 2 hours several times a week. It’s exhausting and I need my evening back.

Other things that are relevant to sleep:

• I think his final molars are coming through because he’s dribbling a lot on his pillow
• He sleeps on mattress on the floor because he started refusing to be put in his cot shortly after turning one
• We’ve tried a later bedtime, I don’t think it has had an effect, but I suppose we should try again
• Perhaps we need to cut his nap, which is generally 12:30-2:30. Sometimes it might be longer if he goes down earlier.

Please help save my sanity!

Don't forget over tiered children seem hyperactive like hamsters on a wheel that just won't stop and then can't unwind....much like us when we are so tired we think we will sleep well and then can't drop off....generally cutting naps makes it worse not better. A Calm quiet hour or two before bed helps ....TV often overstimulates as children's programs are visually stimulating as well as full of lively music especially utube

@jannier god I know. We did move his bedtime forward a little because of this and it worked for a bit but not now. I literally can’t tell anymore whether he’s overtired or not tired enough. 😖

Could he be overtired? You mention watching for signs he’s tired - by then it’s too late. Ideally start bedtime routine before he gets to that stage, otherwise the bath night actually wake him up a bit and make it harder to go to sleep!

It might be worth trying to bring bedtime forwards half an hour and see if it makes a difference.

In the morning, unless you need to get up that early, I used to keep putting my son back to bed if it was before 7am, saying it’s still sleep time. Then as soon as he was crying to get my attention from 7am onwards, I’d make a big deal of opening the curtains, saying good morning, getting him dressed etc - he soon stopped waking every 30 mins from 3am to not waking until at least 7am. And then he started going down better at night too! But we needed to stop his nap around then as well.

good luck!

I bet he's over tiered he's learning so much at the moment.

Cut his nap, if he won’t go to bed at his normal bedtime he is having too long a nap. I would say 2 hours at his age is way too long.