Please Help ! Toddler screaming when bedtime comes.

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Please someone help, we do not know what to do !!!

My DS is 20 months and has just started to scream when we put him in his cot to go to sleep on a night time. This happened all of a sudden when we take him up he screams our names and will not go to sleep even lay down in his cot. We have tried cuddling him to try to get him back, sitting in his room, moving his cot around the room, and lastly we have even tried to bring him into our bed, just to get a little sleep. He woke the other day and would not go back to sleep so i had to bring him down at 5am, the next night my husband did the same.

We do not know what has caused this sudden change and do not know how to resolve it, please someone help !!!

have you tried the rapid return thing - just keep repeating the same phrase 'time for sleep now' in a calm voice,avoid eye contact and lie him down , leave the room for as llong as you can bear and then repeat through out the night!
can he exprerss if anything has scared him or unsettled him -has something in his life/ routine changed or even just in his room?

No can not let us know if something has scared him, nothing in his lifestyle changed. He is in his room at the moment screaming for us we have left it half an hour will try the repeat thing.

I think they just do this when they get to this age, probably nothing has scared him or anything, it's just his age. Not very useful answer perhaps but I think these phases come along just when you think it's all going swimmingly.

I remember when we moved to this house when DS was 1.5. He was ok for a few months then suddenly started screaming at bed time, pointing at the door etc etc and it was all quite stressful.

The phase passed after a while and I put him in a bed when he was 2 and had no more problems after that.

HTH

Yeah sounds the same he is pointing at the door and saying bed, to come into our bed.

Do you think he is too young to go into a bed, he still rolls around in his bed a lot.

Think about getting a bed maybe, with a bed guard so he can't fall out and perhaps a stairgate across his door so you know he can't go wandering and is safe while you're asleep.

Mine were in beds by 2.

Agree also with putting bed time back for half an hour and lots of stories and time in his bedroom for him to potter about playing with his stuff. Maybe he goes in there at bedtime, sees his toys and thinks "I want to play with them and she's putting me in the cot so I can't - WAAAAAH". Maybe?

Yeah, we put him to bed at eight but at the moment he is downstairs with my husband, so yes suppose half an hour wont make much difference, i dont think it is that he is not tired though as when he wakes during the night he does the same thing. Also with the toys in the bedroom he has never really played in his bedroom most of his toys are downstairs so i dont think he relates his bedroom to playtime but i could take him up there half an hour before he goes to bed and read to him in there.

Really dont know what to do. It is so hard as he can not tell us what is wrong.

When dd used to get like this we did the reverse, we put her to bed earlier. For her it meant she was over-tired and wouldn't go to sleep.

I though about that myself, how much earlier did you put her to bed ?

Did you stick to a routine ?

We went half an hour earlier each time we did it. Everything else was exactly the same routine. Bedtime for dd now is 7pm and has been for a good couple of years (she's 4).

Do you think he would be ok in a bed now ?