Controlled crying?

[Twitchett22]

I've previously posted about the struggle we are having with my nearly 2 year old and not really got any answers. I've also tried googling with no luck either so tried to wing it but unsure if I'm making things worse!
Basically she won't go to sleep unless we're in the room. As soon as I try and leave she screams and screams standing up in her cot. I've left her for a few minutes, gone in to lay her back down and walked out again, repeated for about 30 minutes until I've ended up picking her up because she's so upset.
I can deal with the screaming if ultimately I'm doing the right thing and it will help her self soothe. I just don't want to persevere with it if it's not going to help.
Any ideas anyone?

Not too helpful for you but also just trying this and every time I go back in it seems to make him worse because he gets upset again that I'm leaving him!

Ergh it's horrible!!

Could you just stay with her for the moment. And try again in a few months’ time. It might be different then.

@KidCaneGoat that's what I'm doing for now but worried it might make her more reliant on me staying? I don't know lol

Well I tried the leaving thing a few months ago and she just went apeshit at the mere suggestion of me leaving. Now a few months later it’s all good. I stopped trying to leave for a few months as she got so upset and it just wasn’t working. And then when I started trying to leave again recently I just said ‘I’m going for a wee, back in a sec’ and she was fine with that. Don’t know what was different this time. I gradually increased the number of things I had to do. Eg, I just need to go for a wee and then nip downstairs for a drink. So I was out the room for a bit longer each time. But always went back so she didn’t start to get anxious that I wasn’t coming back. And now I can mostly say goodnight and leave her. Sometimes not but that’s ok too.

Some children just aren’t designed to do controlled crying etc and won’t respond to it.

I still cuddle my 18 month old to sleep every single night.

Is she in a proper bed? Sometimes at around 2 they start to respond to a normal bed better, and they can then pick the bed covers etc.

She's supposed to rely on you! She's still pretty much a baby.

DS only needs me for maybe 10 minutes now and is increasingly not bothered and just turns over and falls asleep with Moshi 'sleepy story' on. I've never left him to cry. He likes his big bed and choosing what covers/ PJs etc.

Cosleep with him as needed

And I do nip in and out now/ try to sit in the chair rather than on the bed but it is very much easier as he's 2.7 and we've talked about it. If he's upset/ ill, I don't. But if he's just getting comfy etc, I nip out then back

Thanks everyone. I haven't tried her in a big bed yet, i think I'll give it a few more months and see how she goes. I don't want her to feel like bedtime is something to get upset over so i guess for now I'll just sit in with her as long as needed. Hopefully she'll be happier sleeping by herself in a few more months and if not I'll just revisit it.

I totally sympathise, working with a sleep consultant at the moment and I know what they would say, you're giving mixed signals / sometimes you cuddle her, sometimes you leave, sometimes you pick up etc. If you do want to sleep train it takes a lot of nights of exactly the same thing as hard as it is. If she cries then you eventually pick her up she has just learnt that to get you to pick her up she needs to go ape shit.

You can do gradual retreat which is less harsh but requires immense discipline. Sit with hand on her till she sleeps however long it takes. Do this for two nights. Then sit by cot for two nights, then move away a bit further for two nights and so on until you are out the door. But if she wakes in the night you have to keep the same position you are at if that makes sense.

No judgement at all, it's really very hard - if you can afford it and it's really affecting your life I'd get some help. X

@doadeer thanks I'll definitely bare that in mind. It's not particularly affecting our life too much it's just less than ideal sitting in her room for 2 hours every bedtime. I'm happy doing it i just don't want to 'make a rod for my own back' 🙄 i suppose time will tell and if things don't change as she gets a bit older I'll definitely try the gradual retreat

My DS is 12 months and we've had endless problems. The way I see it now babies need to learn to sleep... In the same way we need to learn to breastfeed. We think of them as "natural" things but some people find it easy others hard. There are techniques.

Some babies seem to just sleep with minimal effort.... The parents can do the same thing but has different effects. Others need to work harder to learn it. As parents there's lots we can do to teach good sleeping but in many cases it isn't easy especially when baby not naturally taking to it well. This is when we start using sleep props... Feed to sleep, rock to sleep - we do these when the babies are little and it's totally fine but as they get older they are dependent on this on don't learn their own methods. My DS cried in cot constantly so I took him into my bed where he didn't cry but he needed me to lie with my forehead to his to go to sleep. He moved around so much that I couldn't leave him in case he fell out of the bed so I was having to lie down with him from 6.45pm. Never saw DH who got home later than this, felt so lonely, couldn't do my work in the evenings so I got behind... I had become the sleep prop.

These are just my ramblings from my own experience - as said, you need to decide what impact it's having on your life or whether you're happy to just wait and see if it improves. You can always find someone who sleep trained with great results, someone who hates sleep training, someone who's little one got better naturally, someone who wished they had had help... It's about what will be best for your family

All people can really tell you is that it worked for them, or it didn't, which isn't particularly helpful for you. For my part, it did work for my daughter, who once seemed like she would never go to bed without being asleep first. She rarely cries at bedtime now.

If you want to try it, all you can do is take comfort from the fact that it has worked for as many people as say it didn't work for them. It may work, it may not, but you should trust your own judgment if you think it's worth a shot.