Pediatrician has recommended keeping 3yo up until 10pm for 6 months. AARGH!

[EwanHoozami]

Oh Crikey.

3.6yo DS has a sleep disorder. He's woken up every couple of hours every night of his life.

HVs, GPs etc have always advised the usual tactics, nothing worked.

We saw a specialist pediatrician today who told me kindly but firmly that CC, rapid return were always doomed to fail and I need to reset his sleep. By keeping him up until he's totally knackered.

"take him swimming, to the park, to late night soft play" he merrily advised.

Bloody hell. I've got a 5mo as well. How the actual fuck is this going to work?

Has anyone ever tried this strategy?

I am rather dismayed at losing my evenings but I s'pose if it works and we can move bedtime back gradually to a sensible time after six months then hurrah, right?

Ewww. No advice or experience, just wanted to add sympathy! You must be at a stage where you'll try anything once, right?

poor you - I had a non sleeper

I found making sure she took no naps at all was crucial. She was the queen of power napping, 5 mins in the pushchair meant a broken night - does your ds still have naps?

Oh god, poor you. No advice, but late night soft play sounds pretty odd. Where the hell even does that?!

Do you have a partner? If so, I think you need to tag team it. So about three nights a week he/she takes your DS out somewhere reasonably late. There must be places like swimming you could go (finances permitting). If not, he deals with your DS, at least until the baby is in bed.

Swimming pools definately open till late. Some do adults only after a certain time but in that case I would ask the doctor for info in writing and then approach the management for a dispensation! It's certainly an intersting plan.........

Have you got a sleep shade for the youngest? We have the Koo-Di one and when we go out at night, when it's DD's bedtime, we just pop her in her pram, bung on the shade and she sleeps.

This might help for the 5 month old whilst you're trying to knacker out the older one!

We have a 10pm bedtime 3yo (her natural bodyclock which can't be reset by us & she does then sleep through mostly ) and the evenings are a bit of a nuisance as I selfishly? want them for myself.

It's taken a long time to accept this is our lot in life and stop being resentful. No real advice except try to accept it, get books you can repeatedly read or a collection of jigsaw puzzles. You're not alone and MN is your friend at 2130!

Are you bfeeding the 5 month old?

Nowhere near as extreme as your case but I have a child who doesn't need much sleep, and I've had to resign myself to late bedtimes and no adult time in the evening in exchange for a decent nights sleep (and it's a lot easier for me as I only have one). You have my sympathy.

How about sleeping with him ? Then if he wakes, its easier to sort it, rather than getting out of bed and faffing. We did this with my 2 year old since she was about 6 months. She just slept in with us. I imagined years of trouble at night, but actually she became a good sleeper, and went into her own bed recently. It was weird, she just went in it and slept through. I suppose we found it easier to establish a good night's sleep pattern with her in with us feeling all secure, then it was sort of set, ready for her to go in her own bed...?

Sleep shade sounds like a good plan. Also tag team idea. I think DH is secretly thrilled as he'll get to spend more time with DH.

He often works away for days at a time though. I don't know how I'll hold it together being on mum duty 6am - 10pm. I can't see where staring through a tv screen with a gin n' slim fits into this idea

This is karmic revenge for my inner judging of parents who take their toddlers out to restaurants for late-night dinners, dammit.

^^ with DS

Nope not BF. which is a bit of a gift in this situ really.

I think on days your DH isn't around you need to go for tiring DS out as much as possible during the day - long walks, long periods at the playground, soft play if dire (particularly those places where you pay once and can stay for hours on school days). Then in the evening you can stick him in front of a DVD or something while you drink gin tea and MN.

Is he at nursery? Can they support you in any way in making his days extra physical?

Ah, not BF. Well another option would be that, once or twice a week, you both get an evening 'off' DS. So you can have a bath, go to bed at 8pm, whatever. It would also be a reasonably good excuse to go out with a drink with a friend or something when it wasn't 'your' night. Might be quite nice in some ways if you look at it that way...

Sorry, meant to say, and whoever is on DS duty is also on baby duty that night.

ah yes, Karmic revenge..... a have a friend who had little miss perfect dd1, slept when she should, smiled at elderly relatives, never a problem. She said it was all a matter of having the right attitude and staying calm.

then she had dd2

Deep sympathy. I had two such children (both now late-ish to bed but literate and therefore not particularly demanding once in their rooms). We found that enormous amounts of exercise, more than you'd think a child that age could possibly accomplish, more or less solved the problem. We still make them walk a minimum five miles a day and if there's swimming/judo/ballet on top of that, so much the better. It's actually quite good for everyone once you get used to it. And she will, eventually, either sleep or at least learn to read so her wakefulness isn't your problem...

My niece was like this - just wasn't tired. (It drove me nuts as mine both went to bed at the 'right' time and straight to sleep - I wasn't exactly understanding, which makes me feel really bad now)

Hopefully it will work and you can get your evenings back again!

You have my sympathy a dr advised me the same with my Non sleeping ds. he's 4 and goes to bed with me at about 10 we also co sleep its the only way that works for us. He just doesn't get tired. I'm pregnant at the moment so dreading what I will do with a babe as well.

I had this. Ds would get 6 hours sleep in 2 hour burst 3-5hrs apart. On the advice of some amazing mnners I went and spoke to my gp and requested melatonin. And whilst you wouldn't have thought that it would work as it's aim was to send to sleep initially only. It made a huge huge huge different. 3years on and he is now of the meds and he sleeps much much better. Sometimes it will take 2-4hrs to get him to drop off but once he is down that is pretty much it for the night.

We did everything they asked too. Although they didn't offer children's sleep med as very high probability that he would be in that group that get more hyperactive.

We also controlled ds' diet incredibly strictly and if you deviate from it you know.
It got his sleep pattern to 1 block of 4ish hours (sometimes 3 sometime 5 and occassionally 6hrs) Will pm you the list. But it really was melatonin that fix this. And we didn't get it until ds started school. So still trying to recover from walking zombie with fucked up sleep pattern.

It's hard and you have my full sympathy. It is very much hard work.

They are reluctant to prescribe melatonin to kids though, simply because it hasn't been approved in the UK for use in children. despite the fact it is used in a no of other countries. Despite there being a good number of kids who have had the meds without side effect and have benefited from it. I really did have to go into the doc and say give me a good reason why we can't go down this route. it was bloody worth it though!