Toddler bedtime nightmare

[bez91]

Hi all

Just wondered if anyone had any advice/experience? My
daughter is 2.5. For the past month bedtime has just been a nightmare, it takes approx 1 hour for her to fall to sleep and in that hour has every excuse imaginable as to why she's gotten out of bed for the 70th time.

She wakes up around 5/5:30am (always has done) naps for about an hour and a half at dinnertime (half of the time, some days she won't nap) then we put her to bed at 7:30pm, we're lucky if she's asleep within the hour. Her routine with the covid pandemic hasn't drastically changed as she's still going to nursery 2.5 days a week as we're keyworkers but every night is a battle. There's usually always "something" in her bedroom..... Dolphin's; giraffes, ants etc but she's not scared just thinking up an excuse I think 🙈

Each time she gets out we tell her it is sleep time and put her back in bed which usually ends in us getting sick of telling her and just walking her back to bed. Any ideas?

Do you stay with her in her bedroom or go back in when she's up?

It you're not in the room, I'd probably stay with her a bit longer just to settle her more.

@KatyB222 thank you. We generally just leave the room because if you stay with her she doesn't get the idea it's bedtime.
I think it's definitely behavioural as she'll mess around until one of us throws the towel in and swaps with the other.

My 15 month old is the same she always gets up after an hour though and I spend half the night trying to get her to go to sleep

could you trý a different cue rather than you switching..do you have a bedtime routine so she knows it's not playtime?

I think the problem is with the lockdown they aren't getting as tired as normal. All my friends are finding bedtime harder.