Talk to me about sleep training 18m old

[captaincake]

I am going to sleep train ds who is 18 months. To give background he had severe reflux disease so it has been impossible to do anything other than whatever got us some sleep. However now this is significantly better and we are dropping down on medication. At the moment he falls asleep being cuddled in a chair next to his bed and sleeps for a few hours before waking up and coming in with us. Any attempt to get him back to bed is met with screaming. Even if he is asleep he will wake as you lower him into the cot. I guess we need to do gradual retreat for bedtime which I imagine would go ok with lots of patience but I can't imagine ever getting out of coming in with us in the middle of the night. I wondered if anyone has got through similar?

If you really want to stop him coming in with you then persevere in settling him in his cot. Don't pick him up but do anything you can to settle him. Our 19mo still wakes 3 times a night (even when self settling alone at bedtime!) When he wakes at night we do the minimum we can get away with, sometimes it just takes laying him down and telling him to go back to sleep, other times we have to pat him for a few minutes. We haven't picked him up during the night since about 5mo so he knows it's not going to happen!

It will be hard but he will get the message after a few days that he isn't getting picked up or brought to your bed. Like I said, do ANYTHING to settle him in the cot - tickle his face, rub his back, sing, anything you know relaxes him. You can work on cutting back on the comfort once he is used to staying in his bed.

Thank you very much for the advice. He basically screams while standing up. I wondered if getting a toddler bed might be better so it's easier to comfort him but that obviously means he's able to get out. I'm going to struggle short term, I'm not sure I can cope long term getting up 3 times a night

We set up comfy beds in our DCs rooms so we could sleep in with them. They don't ever come to our beds in the night. As they've got older they've got better st settling.

They were awful sleepers - it didn't really get better until the worst of the teething was out the way.

They both had reflux I should add so we didn't sleep train as they were still troubled by it as toddlers.