Getting children to go to bed - we need your tactics

[GeraldineMumsnet]

BBC Radio Shropshire wants to know your top tips for getting kids to go to bed. We're on mid-morning, so need any tips before then please. Thanks v much

Routine..... again.
Tis the only way.

Don't put them to bed, ever. Just wait until they are tired and want to go to bed.

The trouble with strict routines (in my airy fairy hippified opinion) is that you have to stick to them whatever. What if everyone's having a lovely time and you feel like letting them have an extra half an hour? What if there's something REALLY good on TV? What if you've got a visitor, or somebody really fancies some cheese on toast (or is that just my ds!) or there's a fabulous moon to look at or daddy's going to be home a bit late (or early when they don't usually see him in the evening) or it starts to snow or.......or....or.....

I never understand why people are so keen to get their children to bed anyway...

I find that shrieking always works if all else fails

Can you believe it - we've been dropped by Radio Shropshire ? Oh the ignominy...
thanks for your tips anyway - we're definitely going to try the Simpsons routine.

If you have 5 children up from 6am then you would understand why you want them in bed.

It doesn't make any difference what time I put them to bed - they are still up early.

Routine works for us too

Dinner, then bath, then chilli out time until ds says 'time for bed now' (which is always round about the same time each night)

Then he goes off and gets a nappy from the cupboard and a story book from the toy box, i have no choice in the matter, he tells me when its bed time

Sometimes, i say 'give me 5 mins while i just watch the end of this' but he wont have it, good job i have sky+ so i can rewind

Awwww - so my ears have been bleeding for the past hour for nothing! Oh well - back to FiveLive .

It might be becasue they're doing an article on Cyber Bullying at the mo and thought the topic a bit too similar .

Seeker, I must say I had concerns around that - as a generally wildly unstructured person - our routine includes peanut butter on toast, so that's one of your concerns sorted already .

I find that things can be 'inserted' or tampered with - as long as there is enough of the stucture left to feel entire - eg whole thing starts later; or moon gazing inserted between bath & milk etc. I do also think that the older they get (I'm thinking 4 +) the more flexibility you have. Eg dd at 2 would INSIST on a bath, no matter how late we're running. Ds at 4 would be delighted to be 'subverting' the rules.

We also have different routines for weekends & weekdays.

We have routine as well and have done since ds was tiny.
Loosly based around a bed time between 7-8pm.
8 at weekends, 7-7.30 school nights.

For us it has been vital and has maintained a little bit of sanity.

my time is the evening time, so i am not keen to give it up.
ds didnt sleep through the night til he was 4 SO i would often get him to bed them do my jobs then go to bed myself.
i would count down the hours, minutes and seconds to be time most days.such was my desperation.

BBC Radio have dropped us!

Their loss I would think.

Routine doesn't mean to say that things have to happen at the same time - it was never that regimented for us, often because we might get home from work at different times, or the DC might be more/less tired.

And when we were on holiday things slipped naturally anyway.

I think for us the non-negotiable thing was really the main part of it. We never made a big drama out of going to bed, it was just something that happened.

DD (21 months) has a CD player in her room. I let her pick which CD she'd like to listen to in bed. Her favourites are an In the Night Garden CD and a CD of children's songs that she calls "Wheels on Bus CD".
She's usually asleep before the CD has finished

edam !

Seeker, we've got a routine, but it's not strict. We'll start later in the weekends/holidays. Or e.g. if we're on holiday and they're up until 10pm we might just drop the whole thing and just brush teeth and put on PJ's and jump in bed. Sometimes the book gets dropped if they insist on finishing a film that would take bedtime until after 8pm.

We've never had a bedtime routine. They seem to take so long, half the evening goes on them, when you could be doing something more spontaneous or interesting.

Like Seeker, we just say, "bedtime" and off they pop, generally. Quick and easy.

But when they were toddlers we did use tactics similar to compo's - just being basically unfriendly and unimpressed with any prevarication and getting-up-again activities.

Fennel, bedtime routines don't need to take a long time. From the words bedtime to them being tucked up and me being back downstairs within half an hour. I'm sure even though it's just saying bedtime you must have some sort of same order you do things, because I bet your dcs brush their teeth and wash their hands before bed. That's a routine too.