Can you all give me your one top tip for bedtime routines.

[Titsalinabumsquash]

DS was 1 last week and there has never been even a whiff of a routine (bedtime or otherwise )

ATM he's cuddled and rocked to sleep anywhere between 6-10pm sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, more recently it really doesn't.

Soooo if you had one element of your bedtime routine that is awesome, what is it?

I'm getting some order back into this house!

Keep it short (30 mins tops from start to finish) so he doesn't get a second wind. Not that I am remotely qualified to pass on sleep advice, the DDs are shockers!

Oooh gosh that sounds exhausting for you. My experience is that having a routine can really help little ones settle - it really helped my little boy, who is now 22 months. I didn't implement any sort of routine at all until quite late as nobody (i.e. the health visitor) explained to me that some level of routine is helpful for all children as they thrive on the predictability of it. I just thought that all routines were bad because of the negative press around Gina Ford.

The key is having a routine itself rather than what you do within the routine i.e. its repeating the same things at the same time of day in the same order that become sleep 'cues' that a child associates with bedtime that will help them go to sleep. Examples might include a bath, reading a book together, a cuddle in the same place every night, a feed, lowering the lights, quietening your tone of voice etc. One of the things I do at the moment is watch the CBeebies bedtime hour with my son whilst having a cuddle but it doesn't have to be that if TV is not your bag. It also sounds like your son struggles with self settling (my son did and does - he likes to be breast fed to sleep) - a routine might help with this but you might want to look at the sleep training section of this site for advice about that. Hope this info helps.

Agree with lola - doesn't really matter what it is (within reason), just so long as it's the same every night and happens around the same time every night. Ours is bath, into sleepsuit, feed, into sleeping bag, story, sleep (self-settle in cot).

Agree with others. Keep it short and simple:

Some quiet play after tea and bath.

Bedtime hour on cbeebies and/or a story.
Upstairs and into sleeping bag
Final feed
Quick cuddle and nursery rhyme - singing the same one helps.
Into bed

Dd loves her bath but it gets her very excited so we do this straight after tea.

I'm not into enforcing strict routines at an early age (or rather, dd wasn't!) but now she's 1 she thrives on set mealtimes, naptime and bedtime. It's sometimes a bit restricting but she's now very settled.

Short, simple and the same. Either the same-ish time every night, or at least the same number of hours after they woke up.

Ours is bath, bottle and cuddle in front of the telly for ten minutes, teeth clean, then into the bedroom for a story and left to fall asleep.

We keep it quick after bathtime as I don't want her to get excited or distracted by anything, and for her bathtime is now the cue to wind down and get ready for bed.

At 1 I think most children are getting ready for some routine in their life and start to want things done a particular way. You might find that by going to bed at roughly the same time he'll start waking up at the same time, and then meals and naps can slowly fall into place too.

I do it pretty late to be honest, my DD is 3 and goes to bed between 8.30 & 9.

I give her a bath at 8, let her sit and watch TV while she brushes her teeth and gets her pyjamas on, then one chapter of The Wishing Chair (where each chapter is about 3 pages long) in bed, then I let her fall asleep to a DVD for 30 minutes before I come in and turn it off. 9/10 times she's asleep when I come in to turn it off but if she's not, she accepts this and turns over to go to sleep.

I know watching TV in bed isn't everyone's cup of tea, but before we started doing this bedtimes were very very hard and we dreaded it.

Now it's really nice and she never moans.

We start at 6pm with a lullaby CD the bedtime bag which contains bedtime books and toys. It is only 'out' at this time. 6.30pm is bottle. Then upstairs for bath, teeth cleaning and eczema cream. After that DD is put into a babygrow and sleeping bag. 3 stories - same ones every night - and kiss.

As everyone has already said, consistency is key.

We did the same thing every night from when DD was 12 weeks old. I can't say that it helped her sleep through but it helped us and now, at 2, we put her down after her routine and she's straight asleep.

Our routine is dinner, bath, pyjamas, stories and bed. We are reasonably flexible with timings but what we do is set in stone.

I would echo what the others have said, it's not the content of the routine but the fact that its the same thing every night. I would also start and finish the routine at the same time, regardless of whether dc seems wide awake or not - we have fallen in to the trap of letting ours stay up later thinking he wasn't tired yet when in retrospect he was probably over tired and totally hyped up. The result has always been a dreadful meltdown and an awful battle over going to sleep. Fwiw our routine is in the night garden, bath and teeth, pjs and sleeping bag on then two stories in his nursery with dim lights then a kiss and cuddle, light off and in to bed. Another good tip I think is reducing the amount of interaction each time you have to go back in after he is put to bed e.g first time he might get picked up and a cuddle, second time maybe a quick lullaby but stays in bed, third time just lie him down and say night night, fourth time just lie him down and shhhh etc. We aren't advocates of CC so tend to go back in to him if he cries or gets distressed and can tell the difference now between a going to sleep cry which can be ignored and a cry that is only going to escalate.
Good luck!

My one top tip is to keep the hour before bed really low key even if you don't start your bedtime routine until 30mins before bed, they need a good hour at least to wind down.

I don't think it really matters what you do as long as it is the same thing each time and nothing that winds them up. (Also if you travel or holiday a lot, a routine that you can do easily elsewhere.) But it's useful to read what other people do.

DS is one in a fortnight and we do: 5.45 - supper, 6.15 ish - bath and pyjamas on afterwards, 6.30-6.50 - In the Night Garden, about 7 - last bottle (in the armchair in his nursery, in the dark), then bed.

DS is not a great sleeper (still) and to be honest the routine is as much for our sake as his - we really need to know that we have a few hours to ourselves after he goes to bed.

We do:

Cbeebies from 5.45 till 6.15 (at the moment till after 64 zoo lane)

Bath and teeth and wee.
Into pjs and nappies in the bathroom
Ds2 bottle and settled to sleep
Ds1 two stories and we lie down together for a cuddle.

They are both quiet by 7 but ds1 quite often plays with his cuddly toys in the dark till 7.30 ish.

Tbh never had much in terms of routine sometimes story sometimes no story, sometimes bath other times no bath you get the picture but one thing we always did was upstairs bottle bed then upstairs no bottle bed (when they gave up the milk ) Always withhout fail at 7pm and we have never had any problems bedtime wise even now at 6 and 3 they go up at 7 sometimes if we are trying to let them stay up latet for some reason they will take themselves off to bed

sticking to it like glue until it's established is key, so you may have to forgo a few things until you have it fixed in place. I agree that once we're upstairs (for bathtime) we don't go down again. Ours was: bath, milk, teeth, stories, bed with lullaby. Sometimes it does take a while, we've certainly never done it in 30 minutes! DD is now nearly 4 and we still do pretty much the same thing as we did when she was 1, only we can now be more fluid with it as it's very established. There have obviously been times when she's not been best pleased and we've amended it a bit over time, but that's basically it. Our problem was getting her to go down, once she's asleep that's usually it for the night.

Oh, and you're in charge. Not the DC, you. End of, no discussion. Which can be very hard! (but we are meanies)

Work out when he is actually tired.

DD1 from 1 to about 8ish went to bed on the dot of 8pm any earlier and you simply had a fight and an over tired grump who wouldn't go to sleep until 9.30pm.

Include a favourite cd (of yours! You'll listen to it a lot!)

I liked to keep it all in her room. I felt this made it easy to recreate the routine elsewhere if I needed to, shutting the rest of the world out and just doing our thing.

No need for complex rituals and baths every night, honestly if a child is tired, but not over tired they'll sleep and if they are not tired they will mess about.

Thanks for all your replies, it all went a bit wrong tonight though! I decided that at 7pm we'd go up put pyjamas on and have a bottle then teeth, story then I'd put him in the cot and sit next to it to see if he'd sleep. Ha ha ha.

After an hour of playing around DP got in and we switched to him sitting so I could go do done things I needed to get done, cue screaming from DS for a full hour, his throat sounded raw.

I gave in then and got him out for a cuddle, then DP rocked him to sleep in about 10 minutes.

I'm not sure what to do tomorrow now.

Was it quite ambitious, though, to try the "chuck in cot" method of going to sleep from the start? I think a routine is something that develops over time, and grows from things that are working well. If I were you, I'd keep something that's working (rock to sleep) for the moment and work simply on having a bedtime. Put a little structure around that every night for a while so that you have laid down a base of successful experiences of going to sleep at that time after those things. And then when you feel you've created a bedtime, try doing without the rocking. Or am I too soft?

Yes, I agree with thesurgeonsmate. I think you need to establish a routine - they call this "sleep cues" I think, so he comes to understand that bath+bottle+story (or whatever) means it's nearly bedtime - and let it bed down for a while, maybe even a few weeks, before working on him going to sleep independently. I've noticed that even if our DS is less tired than usual (e.g. has had a late nap) or is wound up for some reason (long day, travel, staying somewhere else) he always seems to understand the sequence and actually seems quite ready/grateful to go into his cot.

We were given a music box as a christening gift. Once baths, teeth, stories, etc are done and kids are in bed we wind up the music box and leave the room. The music distracts them till we were gone and then it's sleep time. They're 6 and 8 now and still remind us if we try to leave the room without winding up their music!

Softly-softly is the way forward. If he's not ready to settle himself to sleep yet then he needs to learn that gradually, so take your time with a new routine.

I'd start with picking a good time one evening - if he generally has a 12 hour day but only got up at 9, he's going to fight a 7pm bedtime. (Things to do start to come together re wake up and sleeping time, but there may be one day where you bite the bullet and get him up at 7/8am, earlier than he wants, to try and re-order his day)

Then introduce the idea of bath, pyjamas, bottle, teeth, story, for example - but keep rocking him to sleep, if that's what he wants.

Then once you think he is understanding that bath/bottle/story means it is time for bed, you can work on not rocking him to sleep.

Other posters are right and the bath etc is there to create a sleep cue. DD is similar to their DC, she sometimes even announces it is bath time when she's getting tired and overwraught. She's much happier once she realises that we're on the wind down to bedtime.

As with anything, it takes time for DC to learn what is going on. He will get there, but changing everything at once is probably too ambitious. Just focus on a bedtime routine, and work on the self-settling later.

Ok so I'll try working on the same sleep cues every evening, pyjamas, teeth, bottle, story etc. thanks for so much help from do many people.