Toddler is 18 mo and has been 'self settling' ie putting themselves off to sleep occasionally since birth and reliably since 6 months.
All the sleep training stuff seems to be about teaching them to self settle, or self soothe ie not need you.
Self settling to me means being out down in sleeping place happy relaxed and awake, and going off to sleep. This is no problem and happens every bedtime and nap time. So the theory is they will do it in the night too.
But what about when they don't? She has slept though the night 7-7 style three times but but most nights will wake up 3-4 times. Usually there is one about 9pm, I don't know why. Then another when I go to bed, upstairs bedtime noises wake her up. Then one or two in the proper night by which I mean 12-6 which is when I sleep.
When she wakes up she cries for about 20-30 seconds, I think disoriented, then will stand up and refuse to lie down. Shout all the words she knows at too volume over and over again, throw everything out of the cot with delighted 'uh-oh!'s and then start climbing.
It's not unusual for us to leave her to it and she will self settle and go back to sleep. But she can also shout and climb for 2, pushing 3 hours if you don't intervene. She keeps everyone in the house awake when she is doing it so quite often we end up in there soothing her and shutting her up, milk, cuddles, that sort of stuff in an effort to get her to go back to sleep.
Everyone says to me to try controlled crying but a) that's not something I want to do and b) she isn't crying or remotely bothered if we are there or not, yet every night this week I've been up with her until past 3am before being able to go to bed and the only thing that gets her to go back off is when she decides it is time.
Anyone had one like this? She will need to switch to a toddler bed in a matter of weeks and there will be no way of keeping her in it.