Sleep! 3 year old and her sleep!!

[purpleblue2]

Hi everyone,

my new 3 year old doesn’t sleep very well! And what I mean by that is she will only fall asleep in the car so I have to drive around and around for half an hour/45 minutes every single night to get her to sleep if I don’t do it she will be awake till 10-11 and even as late as midnight or 1am.

I don’t know what to do to help get her to settle in her own bed or even mine. She just doesn’t. Any help or suggestions would be grateful. She would happily wake up at 6/7am and stay awake till 11pm some days! It’s mental and I loose all of my evening of me time allll the time unless I get her to sleep in the car at 6/7pm.

If you get her to sleep in the car at 6/7 pm, does she then consistently sleep through until 6/7 am? Just to understand her sleep pattern and how much sleep she's getting.

If she'll consistently sleep 11-12 hours, then I think I'd start trying to slowly wean her off the car. Drive until she's almost asleep, then park up so she does the last little bit of falling sleep without the noise and motion. Then a little bit less asleep, then a little bit less. The tricky bit is going to be the transition from falling asleep in the car to falling asleep in her bed – possibly you could drive a bit, carry her inside inside and then play car engine noises as a lullaby to help bridge the gap. (I expect YouTube has some for this exact reason.) Then gradually drive less until you just go upstairs and tuck her in with the car soundtrack.

@skkyelark thank you so much for your response.

she sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t sleep through but majority she does. It does depend cause sometimes she’ll wake up for just a wee and be quick at resettling herself. Sometimes she’ll wake up and say she’s hungry so now I’ve implemented a snack that’s like non sugar around an hour before bed.

i geniunely feel like I’m watching my mileage and petrol go up and go down every single night I just want normality back and to be able to read her a book and settle her to sleep that way.

whats your/her bedtime evening routine?

@3pancakesplz

hi thanks for the reply

I usually work 8-5 so she would be out of the house from 07:10-18/18:30 depending on traffic.

she used to nap like they all do and if she did she’d be up till late too. Then she stopped that.

so anyway. When we get home I will make dinner and she would play or help me so dinner would be about 7 Then we’d eat and as we were eating I’d be running her a bath about 30/40 minutes after her dinner i would bath her and then I’d sit her down brush her hair we’d sing and get her dressed for bed. this would be around 8pm which for me is the right time for down time.

I have not worked for 5 weeks, so she’s not had the routine of that to be exact dinner is a bit earlier and I will then give her something about 6 to eat to try and get her bathed and done by half 7.

The car was in place because when we stayed with her dad she would not go to sleep. I mean when she wasn’t even a year old she wouldn’t sleep he left the house to go to the shop once and said bye to her and within minutes of him being gone she went to sleep so I used to have to take her out instead of just let her work it oht. It’s like now she’s just laying with me. No sleep. No nothing. I just don’t want to drive round my area anymore it drives me insane 😳😂.

I need to put the hard work in to get her out of this.

Is she getting over tired? I bet she shattered if she's out the house nearly 12 hours.
Does she have a dinner at nursery? Could you get back and do something light for dinner and try an earlier bed time? Sounds like she's going past it .
My son has just turned 3 and we are having sleep problems too but the later I try and do bed time the worse he is!

@Elisabeth3468

hey! I think this may be it and no she doesn’t it’s usually just a snack. However come January I am leaving my job and she is going to a pre school for the afternoon session 12-3pm. So I am hoping the new change for us both to enable us to wake up have breakfast her have lunch go to school come home and have an early ish dinner ready for bath and bed by 7pm. She’s still awake right now just bubbling away watching shrek 😂😳. I just want my evenings back and her routine to be normal ish. At one point she did 10 hours sleep 14 awake! I would love to just be able to put her to bed in her actual bed and settle her that way. Thank you so much for replying