it’s long but i’m desperate - anyone cracked a bedtime nightmare and want to tell me how?
DS is 5.5, he has always been an awful awful sleeper - as a baby he took hours and hours to get to sleep - He would scream and scream and just wouldn't settle. Nothing worked consistently - for the first six months i spent most of each 24 hour period trying to get him to sleep - rocking, feeding to sleep, carrier, buggy, white noise, a gazillion 'magic' sleep aids bought from Amazon late at night (Ewan the sodding waste of space / glowing seahorse / bear with a recording of my own voice !?!?). It was desperate and I was falling apart.
It got a little easier once we started bringing him into our bed because at least there was some sleeping going on and i started to be able to think, but from 1 year old we have tried everything to help him to sleep independently and nothing has worked.
A year of the no cry sleep solution, no improvement. Six months of gradual retreat was pretty good but we couldn't get further away than the top of the stairs, we still had to be in sight. after three months (!) of putting him back to bed with no eye contact or speaking i was ready to kill the 3 day Nanny. We’ve tried relaxation CD’s, guided meditation, The Rabbit who wanted to Fall Asleep, massage, lavender baths, whale song. We have a consistent routine, bath, stories, kisses, bedtime. He gets lots of love during the day and he is able to play by himself to a degree but it all changes at night and he fights sleep so violently, screaming for us to sit with him, out of his room, and i’ve run out of ways to help him. We make sure he has time of physical activity each day. Starting school - which loads of people promised would sort him out has not, and he’s about to his second year. He’s not afraid of Monsters or Ghosts, he just doesn’t want to fall / can’t asleep by himself.
Whilst he now at 5.5 he generally sleeps through the night, bedtime is an awful screaming headache from start of bath 6:30pm to when he finally falls asleep, usually between 9;30pm and 10:30pm. He definitely needs less sleep than other children, but he quickly racks up a deficit and because he can’t nap, it just affects his behaviour - he is becoming increasingly aggressive and it’s really upsetting. For three months this year DH and I took it in turns to sit with him every night until he fell asleep and he was probably asleep an hour earlier on average - behaviour improved, smiles all round - but that’s still 1 - 2 hours each night after bedtime- and I find it hard to be affectionate to him at this time as i’m so frustrated that I can’t get on with what i need to do ( exciting stuff like cleaning / washing / occasionally having a conversation with DH etc). We are currently trying a star chart - he has got 2 stars in three weeks for falling asleep by himself by 9pm - the reward is something he really wants.
What else can I do to help him sleep? Should we just sit with him every night and hope that eventually he will be able to do it by himself? We need a new angle or perspective on this, I love him so much but it’s starting to wear down our relationship and our family.
(Probably not relevant but DD is very different, but calmer, happier to be alone, she just tells us when she has had enough stories and chats to her toys in her own room until she falls asleep)