Gradual retreat sleep technique on a 2 1/2 yr old

[Jokempgee]

Has anyone used the gradual retreat / disappearing chair teqnique on a 2 1/2 ye old. My daughter has always had trouble settling but as we had 2 older daughters it was always easier to wait till she was fast asleep before putting her into her cot. Now that she is sleeping in a bed this has come back to bite us. She wakes 3-4 times between 1 and 5 am, she gets out of bed and needs me to return her to bed for her to get back to sleep, although she is asleep within minutes she will repeat the process within the next hour. Is this just a bad habit that needs breaking or will sleep training help? Has anyone had any similar experiences?

We nailed it an 3.9. I was using gradual retreat but we frequently ended up asleep in his bed at 2am which undermined it somewhat.

I spent a year outside his room before i realised dh was sitting against the bed - which explained why he did it in 30 mins and it sometimes took me 3hrs.

Once we agreed to take the same approach it took about a month to get bedtime down to sub 30 mins (we still have to sit on the landing though). He has finally started sleeping through after a few nights of gradual retreat in the early hours rather than cuddles. Being up for 2-4 was a killer though. Good luck.

We cracked our ds1's awful sleeping at around the same age with what I'd call reverse-controlled-crying. He was old enough to understand when we said we'd be back in 5 minutes if he was quiet, but if he wasn't, we wouldn't come back up until he stopped.

Probably wouldn't work on all kids, but in our case, he understood - totally understood that we'd be back, which was the main thing. Sometimes we'd have to go back several times after a wakeup (which happened every couple of hours, each and every night.) We always referred to it as "5 minutes" but gradually extended the time...very slowly...and it wasn't long before he was often asleep before the first return.

He was quite a bit older before he started sleeping through, but the gaps between wakings got longer over time, and at least this immediately stopped the stressful night-time full-on screaming sessions!

Has she dropped her nap? Once my daughter did that I could trick her into staying in bed long enough to fall asleep by saying I was going out to get her something ( more milk usually), similar to the poster above she'd only get it if she stays lying down. because she was exhausted she'd fall asleep provided she was lying down long enough usually before I'd returned 5 mins later. That eventually turned into her being able to be read a story and then left to go to sleep. It wouldn't have worked before she dropped the nap though.