At what age did bedtime finally become... easy?

[cloudy23]

Every evening seems to become a negotiation. One more drink, one more cuddle, one more story, one more trip to the toilet...
Does it ever just become "Goodnight" and they're asleep?!
I'd love to hear what bedtime is like in your house and whether it genuinely gets easier.

I just say no. Pj’s, teeth, toilet, story, hug and kiss and tucked in. They go to bed with water on the bedside table.
The evening becomes mummy’s time and if they do venture down, I tell them it’s mummy’s time, go to bed. The youngest, I walk back to bed and say it’s time for bed. Don’t get out of bed.

Ages 13 and 10 and still waiting. They will wait till then to show me a bleeding finger or tell me about their day or find something they're absolutely desperate to do/say/etc.

I end up a) despairing and b) bringing bedtime forward to compensate. Sometimes I think it's because they don't get enough one-on-one time with us, so trying to work on that as well.

10 weeks for ds and 7 weeks for dd - that’s when they started sleeping through the night say 10pm - 6 am never had problems with getting them to bed Bedtime routine and that was it for the night.

My youngest (10) is a breeze. Gets in pj's, clothes in wash basket, does teeth ..and reads for half hour. The teens...they don't sleep! Not when I sleep anyway!

Read the room 😂

Brilliant, well done! This is down solely to your exceptional parenting and humility - and don’t you know it 😁

2 years old for ds, but we'd always had a very regular routine which we stuck to religously. An hour for the whole routine (so he didnt feel rushed) which was
bath
teeth

two stories in his bedroom in a dim light

A useful tip I give everyone is make the last half hour downstairs chilled and quiet. Do the whole routine upstairs.

Yeah, probably not the place for this brag. That is highly unusual and nothing to do with your parenting.

DDs are 6 and 4. Bath time is 6-6:15ish (for about 20 mins) brush their teeth in the bath, then pjs on, a quick story or a chapter of a book and they’re in bed by 7pm.
DD1 has 30 mins reading time and then lights out at 7:30, DD2 is asleep by 7:15 at the latest. They fall asleep listening to their tonies boxes

Mine is nearly 2 years and I find bedtime easy because we keep her up til at least 8pm. By then she's so knackered she drops right off, we do sit/lie with her in her bed. Assuming yours are older, I think you can start being stricter with bedtime, like they don't have to sleep but they have to stay in bed, reading or listen to audiobooks?

Ha, mine went to bed like a dream as babies and toddlers. I was smug too.

then they got older with opinions, emotional needs and anxieties…

We find the opposite - bedtime is much easier if mine has had lots of running around the garden then go up for quick bath etc. She doesn't really have a 'chill' setting though, she's either 100 miles or asleep...

When we took the pressure off age 9 and allowed unlimited reading

Bedtime battles here still age 5 and 4, they are so close in age that if it's not one it's the other or both.

I find it's more difficult when the aren't as tired, such as after an easy going day at home. So I just try to tire them out as much as possible.

Bath starts at about 6.30 and they are normally asleep by 7.45.

Around 8 / 9 when they can read confidently and read themselves to sleep

When they left home....

Mine are 5 & 7 and have slept through the night since 7 weeks old.

Now it’s brush teeth, read a story, bedtime kiss, done.
Bedtime routine with both children takes 15 minutes.

Aged 7- 8 when she could read and we'd begged the gp for melatonin. Happy days.

5 to 6. We used to lie in bed with her to get her to go to sleep but pre DD2 coming along we supernannied her and put her back into bed when she got back out. Took 3 days.

Her routine is bath, teeth, toilet, sometimes book, cuddle, tonie story by herself in bed and then white noise about 30 minutes after tonie goes on (we turn her tonie off when DD2 is asleep which can be 30 minutes or 90 depending how that goes!) We also take up water bottles for the bedside table.
She either falls asleep with white noise, or is already asleep when we go in to switch it over.

It's night and day to what it was pre 5 where we had a 90 minute rule (the other parent had to take over after 90 minutes) to give you an idea of how long bedtimes took!

Mine are 8 and 10 and it's super easy now. I can actually say, " I'm really tired tonight, can you just go to bed?" and they will!

It wasn't like this a few years ago, the younger one is really clingy and struggled with sleeping alone...from birth to age 6 🫤

This is the only true answer. Even then the worry never ends 🙃

My youngest is the easiest of the three. He's 9, and happily get his PJ's on, brushes his teeth and gets ready for bed when asked, he then reads in bed and turns his light off when ready to go to sleep.

My 13 year old is a nightmare at bed time, bedtime for her takes hours and is an incredibly long drawn out routine, if a step of that routine is done wrong or in the wrong order she starts the whole process again (she has severe anxiety and is awaiting an autism assessment at the moment). Then if I've washed the sheets and they don't feel quite right or the bedcovers aren't in the right position she'll have a meltdown and strip all the bedding off the bed, it's exhausting.

My 16 year old doesn't get tired until around 11.30/12pm so is never wanting to go to sleep. I don't like leaving him up when I go to bed so I find myself staying up a lot later each night than I would like to. Often once he's finally gone to bed i'll sit down to have 5 minutes peace to myself, then next thing I know I'm waking up at 4 or 5am on the sofa still dressed in my work clothes from the day before.

Bedtimes were much easier when my kids were younger!

Ours is getting harder.
They used to have a rock solid routine - wash, Pjs, milk, book, bed, sleep by 8.30. Perfect

Now they are older 10/12 and they still want milk and attention but instead of a book they want to talk and talk 'til gone 10.

It's a lovely time of the day when we're still snuggled together on the bed, but there's no natural end to it anymore like there was to Rabbits Nap or The Giant Jam Sandwich.

I should be more disciplined but I kind of don't want bedtime to end. But also I haven't watched TV alone with my husband in 6 months 😂

My youngest is 10 and at this age they basically take themselves to bed. Unless one has a nightmare my only involvement is double checking they brushed their teeth properly and took their water bottle up with them. And that my youngest found his wash basket and somehow thought to put his clothes inside instead of on top or on the floor next to it. 🙄

I would say it’s around 7-8. Mine weren’t particularly difficult, but I never really made a battle out of it. I sat in with them or we co-slept until they were ready to go to bed independently. But I’d say it was 7-8 when that tended to happen. Now my 13 year old is still pretty annoying at bedtime. 😂 But it’s not because she won’t go to bed. It’s because she always has one more thing she wants to tell me or needs something from her school bag or whatever. But I don’t have to do much.