Impossible, neverending bedtimes with 2.9 yo; really need solutions (sorry a bit long)

[KorrallKrabba]

Firstly, apols for length, but need to state the background to this, so hopefully someone can help.

Would ideally like to get to a regular 8pm bedtime with DD, without the epic amount of faffing that has been occurring for last 12 months +. Currently she's coaxed into bed by around 8:30 and then can spend anything up to 90 mins getting up and generally giving the runaround to me and DH. We never reward this or cave in or do anything to rev her up; it's just a constant putting back to bed Groundhog evening, or tedious lying with her in the dark until she drops off, which is hugely unpredictable in effectiveness.

I've tried moving everything earlier like her peers- 7-ish, but this simply lengthens the misery and groundhoggery to 3 hours with very little change in behaviour. Sod that. Also it would be very difficult in our situation to bring evening meal forward much further, given work.

Once asleep, she has always been good at sleeping through until a respectable and manageable time in the morning, which is something.

Routine day naps are long dropped, except at nursery, she goes 3 days a week and they practice lunchtime 'baby voodoo' and they all miraculously sleep together for 1 hour . She's also been ok/better with babysitters. So it must be something we're doing

She went into a toddler bed at around 17 months, as she was a climber and jumper. She's tall for her age and very resourceful so has been able to open doors, put main light on, move furniture to do so and generally muck around; much to our complete frustration.

So, having tried lots of the techniques and persevered for recommended amount of time; what else can I do to crack this, before I crack?

Evenings are an absolute wasteland and we have to creep around to make sure she doesn't get ideas that exciting things are happening (yeah right) and wants to get up.

Sorry about that. Tips / pointers appreciated, but please don't be offended if I give a 'yep, tried it, not worked' response as I'm genuinely keen to find something that will finally get us to a good place with this. I'm not an avid reader of baby manuals, so there may be something obvious and helpful I'm missing...
Willing to go back to basics and take a bootcamp approach.

Does she get upset?
If lying with her is unpredictable, I'd stop doing it. I take it you tried rapid return?

It is sounding to me as if she's just not that tired, sorry. Make nursery stop the baby voodoo, perhaps? on at least one day?

I presume she's not lying in until 10am, or something daft. If so, maybe wake her earlier?

I had nightmare bedtimes with DS1 from around 2.9 until 3.3 It was partly a reaction to DS2's arrival, and party not being tired enough. For us it took stopping naps entirely so he was tired enough to get into a good bedtime habit. His habit had become "piss around", and this changed to book read in bed, 5 mins with mummy/daddy sitting quietly, followed by being left to it. Is there some aspect of the routine you can change to give a sense of newness?

Thanks for reply. Genuinely helpful to hear other's situations.

Yes, have given up on the lying down thing. Bored the hell out of me too

Is rapid return - the 'back to bed with minimal attention' thing? If so, yes.

She gets up at around 7:45am and a bit later at weekend - which I know is really nice and works.

Over the months, my suspicion is that she's not tired either - hence not forcing her into a (pointless) early bedtime, despite raised eyebrows in various quarters.

It's frustrating, since as she's passed every milestone - learning to walk, longer days at nursery - which everyone around me has predicted will result in huge tiredness, without any such change.

No life changes or other DC to react to. DH often home late from work, so she might be waiting for him. She doesn't nap on 4 days of the week and tbh not much difference either there, so haven't forced the issue at nursery yet.

Might be an idea to try and change the script in the evening - I'll have to think about what to...

Currently: meal, low-key play, bath, milk, stories, teeth, little soothing chat/tinkly musical doll thing, lights off - ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE! - at least I can laugh, eh?

oops, routine - goes to bed after milk. Not a Freudian slip !

A day-time bump. She'll get upset if you prevent her from opening her bedroom door. Otherwise she's as happy as Larry, strolling around, burbling 'what you doing guys?', impromptu picnics with toys, singing. It's driving me crazy.

A day-time bump. She'll get upset if you prevent her from opening her bedroom door. Otherwise she's as happy as Larry, strolling around, burbling 'what you doing guys?', impromptu picnics with toys, singing. It's driving me crazy.

Anyone...? DH away this week, so it's all particularly trying. Would be good to try a new idea tonight, I'm really running out of steam.

My ds has always been difficult at bedtime (we're too soft), wish had dealt with it better when he was still 'cot-bound'! But, what we do at moment, its not ideal but it seems to be ok for now, 2 stories, then little cuddle, then say goodnight and i dim the lights and sit and read (my own book) on a chair in his room until he's sleeping. He needs to lie quietly or i threaten to leave the room. Seems to work at moment, plus i'm enjoying getting through pile of books i never have time to read

Forgot to say, start stories at 8pm ish, his dad often late home from work too so not easy to get him to bed early

I'd try some kind of reward system for having her stay in bed once she's put there. From the fact that you say she's okay with babysitters I'd guess that she's giving you the run-around because she can, maybe it's even just a habit she has got into. My children are exactly the same, ds wants to have his back stroked, hand held, endless cuddles at bedtime and I the first time he had a babysitter I completely terrified her by telling her all this and then he was perfectly angelic!

Hello-

my instant response would be that her body clock is confused with napping 3 days a week and not the rest. I've just been reading an excellent book called Sleepless in America (v cheap 2nd hand on Amazon) which talks about the importance of finding the child's window of sleep for their body clock and how importance consistency is etc. Very true for my 3 year old- I do stay with him while he falls asleep but it usually only takes about 10 mins after story and lights out. We do have about an hour of pre bed routine- go upstairs, tidy room, dim lights, bath, story. (My 1 year old is a dreadful sleep though hence reading a book on sleep!)

wrote to say thanks and the site crashed. Bah.

Sticker clarification - is it best to dish these out in the morning. i'm thinking close to the event would be too distracting, plus at the moment would require multiple retractions for general mischief...

Everyone I know seems to have a 7pm bedtime ritual, so it obviously makes me question what's happening here. Then again, they're mostly up at 5 or in the night, which would truly shred me

dd2 is currently behaving on a similar manner.

she & dd1 share, which means that dd1 gets really hyped up by it all, and now we have 2 of them running about the upstairs landing afte rlights out
we use a sticker chart/choc buttons after breakfast.

to get the choc, she needs to fall asleep with no crying (crocodile tears - just an excuse to make a noise)

to get the sticker, she needs to stay inside (this has mutated inot being allowed to wander a little, but we are a few months down the line now. if she wanders, she must do so quietly, and not encourage dd1 into misbehaving)

both sticker and choc are given the next morning. she gets 3 warnings before she loses either.

it has worked reasonably well, and she does go to bed well probably 8/10 times.

oh, dd2 is 3.6 now. have had issues since she turned 3.

What would she do if you had a stair gate on the door to her bedroom? Would she go crazy or would she just play round quietly in her room until she was actually tired and then go to sleep? My DD1 similarly messes around after lights out, wanting us to lie with her etc, but recently we have tried offering a sticker reward (the next morning) and 5 stickers=small reward (a 50p skipping rope) for 'no fuss' at bedtime which basically means that she is allowed to play quietly/read in her bedroom with the lights off/door open- but the stairgate means she can't start wandering around. We have also taken away all the things she was using to climb on to empty drawers/turn light on etc.

It isn't a perfect solution and I wish she would just get into bed and fall to sleep, but it does at least mean we can go downstairs and get on with dinner, and the star chart thing seems to be helping stop the shouting out for us that used to happen if we closed the stairgate on her.
She is 3.2.

We tried the stairgate for a bit. Total carnage and the set-up of the door - slow spring loaded shutting mechanism is a bit questionable if you try and combine with another barrier. Was seriously thinking about a lock for a while, but have held back.

We're all on one floor, (apartment) which is not ideal. She also seems to have very acute hearing and hates being 'left out'.

In all other respects she's a lovely kid, so feel bad for grumbling about this, but as I'm sure you all appreciate it's the insidious chipping away at tiny scraps of free time or usually time needed for other stuff which is aggravating.

The closer bedtime is to 9:30 or 10, the quicker the settling, but that doesn't seem fair on anyone. Maybe she was Bolivian in a previous life, well, minus the siesta.

My daughter is the same age and has a similarly late bedtime - she was also the same in that she dropped daytime naps very early (about 16 or 17 months). She did used to nap at nursery, 2 days a week, again made v little difference in the evening (we have just moved house and she is no longer at nursery, has made no difference).
She sleeps until 8.30/9am which I actually think is great, as then I can get up, have a shower, eat breakfast and then be ready for her when she wakes. I personally prefer not being woken stupidly early, and I like that she can happily stay up and eat with us in the evening etc. I do think you have to sacrifice either your evening or your morning sleep to some extent, and I also think that some children need less sleep than others.
DD gets into bed about 8-8.30pm and is asleep by 8.30-9 on a good day (after 10pm on a bad one!) She is improving though, and the main thing that has helped for us was buying her a CD player and some story CDs. She (usually)will lie quietly in her bed listening to them, which is a massive improvement on getting up and playing with toys and eventually falling asleep on the floor.
It probably took her a few weeks to get used to listening to CDs - and we had to cull any that had bouncy music as that made her get up and dance . I put the CD on quite low volume so she has to lie still to hear it. She has a new Thomas the tank one that she was so excited about she actually ran to her bedroom and put on her own pyjamas and got under the covers unbidden .

Thanks TT, that's a great idea, I could even liberate one of DHs /my multiple semi-obsolete iPods and speakers. Result. I always thought of story CDs as an either/or vs. books (of which I'm a big fan), which is crazy really.

It's funny how you overlook straightforward stuff, when you're tearing your hair out.

I'm completely with you on early mornings and we've never been stringent routiners, but I would just like to have a bit less of a full-on and meandering settling-period at night now she's this age. I'm sure everyone in the family would benefit

hey korrall i completely feel your pain and have been trying to get various answers over the past week with no obvious answers but a lot of nice support...

What we have found is this:

• supernanny method only winds her up
• stairgate makes her trash her room
• her willpower is not to be scoffed at....
• she's suddenly scared of her room/the dark/whatever which is why the door has to be open/small light on. I'm toying with buying her a little nightlight and I've ditched the painfully slowly homemade blackout blind for the moment .
• She doesn't really react to rewards for sleeping - as you say - how do you reward something so far after the event? With some perseverance though she's getting it- we do a star for Good Teatime, Good Teeth Brushing, and Going to Bed Like A Good Girl...(last one given the next day) ( we haven't managed one of those yet).
• she does react to, er, threats . The only "threat" that has worked has been the travel cot coming back out. After a couple of chances she ended up in the travel cot and fell asleep within five minutes. We are on night four of the travel cot I'm afraid.
• I think the CD/ipod thing might just work....one thing we did find that worked was watching tv/video on really quiet....i would rather a CD so will try that too.

Am absolutely NOT trying to hijack this thread but i wanted to lend you some support - the chipping away is A.W.F.U.L. and it takes over your life. Really. And yes she's a lovely girly and yes it's not the end of the world but really - enough is enough, surely .
I think my breaking point was eating cereal for the third night in a row because we hadn't managed to have an evening at all let alone cook!!!
Anyway will watch with interest and fingers crossed you have some sort of evening

Hey no problem, the more the merrier, say I - well, weak smile!

Even raising the topic of bedtime earlier this evening has caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Must go attend to the still rampant pottering...

However, in some thanks to friendly tips here, I'm in a much better mood tonight - which helps loads.

We used the sleep fairy which worked quite well, we decorated a box and if she was a good girl and stayed in bed the sleep fairy would visit and leave a treat in her box.

Things which have also helped was room pitch black/toy removal/music.

I have found the threat of withdrawing a privilege (story or music) more effective than rapid return etc.

It wears you out, I was up and down for about 2 hours after her bedtime and could never blooming relax!

The strange thing is now she actually goes to sleep at a decent hour (730)ish she sleeps alot better.

I tried the sleep fairy and we did a beautiful box covered in lovely glitter, stickers yada yada....
we bigged the sleep fairy up
and...as...she....shut...her...eyes....she decided the sleep fairy might actually bite her toes and that was IT for the poor little fairy..
I've persevered with it - we check the box every morning - but she's in no way deserving of a present so until the magic moment when she is good enough for it then it is a seemingly pointless task for her (in her eyes)

agree about overtiredness - think it adds to it a lot
korrall is it quiet yet?!

Hahaha poor sleep fairy!
You need an incentive the sleep fairy should visit you or a sibling so she can see what shes missing!

Reasonably tolerable tonight eventually - had a few funny poems on the sofa, let her amuse herself in the bath for a bit longer than normal; then once she was in bed, had a phone-call with my mum which provoked an excited "HEEH-LLLLLO GRANNY" yelled from the bedroom, but the ensuing dull 40 mins of inconsequential adult prattle about minor illnesses of various elderly acquaintances (of mum's) must have bored her to sleep. If I was being naughty and uncharitable, it nearly did for me too [evil imp face].

Parental respect - it runs in the family .

Any sagas your end?

knobbingnowt incentive - genius!! I'm going to get DH to buy me something nice, i always knew he'd look good in a tutu! great idea
how's things now korrall? We've had two better nights - she's still in the travel cot but she's back to sleeping straight through...and reinforcing the stickers etc is working...am at my mums this weekend but when i get back this week i think the sleep fairy might even get to visit....fingers crossed!

I'm glad I found this thread! DS is 2 and a half, and moved into his 'big boy bed' from his cot last week. Up until then he used to stay in his cot singing, chatting etc, etc for 30 mins or so and then drop off to sleep at night (usually around 8pm) and he also slept 2-3 hours during the day - bliss....especially with a 3 month old baby to look after....

Now, without the cot bars all hell has broken loose...

We have a door gate so at least he is contained to his room, and we've removed all toys (except soft toys and teddies), use blackout blinds etc, etc but he still amuses himself for a good couple of hours before he falls asleep (usually on the floor or in his wardrobe ). He has mirrored sliding wardrobes which are proving to be not only lots of fun for him, but are also proving to be very hazardous for his fingers so I also need to look into safety catches which will stop them opening..

Anyway, I'm watching this thread with interest! The CD books is a great idea - he loves stories and I just happen to have some CD story books which haven't been used yet