feeling defeated

[Baby2018]

Hey everyone

any help here would be greatly appreciated, I have an almost 2 year old who has NEVER slept through past 4. He knows how to fall asleep on his own ( Id put him down at 7pm leave and he'd go to sleep all was well) but he wakes at 4/5 full of beans and ready to go there is no chance of him going back to sleep he is a live wire at that time.

That was sort of ok but recently he is also now suddenly refusing to go to sleep on his own, I can put him back in his bed up to 26 times before he goes to sleep some nights (he has a toddler bed now because he could climb out the cot - he's tall) or now more recently he's grabbing onto my neck when I try to leave and wants to be cuddled until he sleeps, he also wakes at 3am for a cuddle to go back to sleep ( I know he can self soothe but if I ignore him he gets out of bed and empties his chest of draws , strips his bed of bedding and throws toys everywhere... (he can be doing this for 2 hours, he doesn't get tired)
when I walk him back to bed he giggles at me, kicks his legs and jumps out immediately, I keep up with the no eye contact no speaking just back in bed and he keeps up with the jumping on the bed, playing, squealing, banging on the walls of his room....he doesn't cry he just keeps playing and shouting and making a mess... he has the will power to go and go and go... and Im working full time Im shattered.

(FYI his routine is bang on I think? in the day he naps for 1.5 hrs at lunch then we do the same bath pjs bed lullaby every night and we've done this since he was born. He's then in bed at 7 we've tried extra food at night, lavender, baby massage etc it hasn't done anything to help)

Does anyone have any suggestions for help please?!

Cut the nap?

Even with the nap he's actually really tired come 7 and he's tired at 12 at nap time but he just mucks around until I let hold him or sit with him for him to sleep. With no nap he can't make it to bedtime :(
Thanks for the suggestion though :)

Sorry, i meant cut it down, not cut it out. Make it a cat nap?

I will give it a go, he sometimes has shorter naps when he's at the childminder but it doesn't seem to make a difference, willing to try anything though at the moment I feel like he knows he can take the mic out of me a bit at the minute! even if I use my trying to be stern voice he giggles at me!

Could you stay with him as he goes to sleep? The idea is to keep him in bed, lying down and quiet.

So have a mantra: "Sleep time now, we lie quietly in bed at sleep time. Nan night". And be a broken record about it. Every time he goes for sitting up (before he even gets to getting up), say the mantra and get him lying back down. This also requires you to get to him very quickly in the night, to repeat the process.

We had a similar issue at the start of lockdown and we actually moved her nap earlier. I didn't know if she'd be ready for an earlier nap but most days I put her down between 10.30 and 11. We have lunch when she wakes up then she goes down better at bedtime because she's been up longer!

Thanks @littlehouseinthebigcity I will try that, did it take a few days to make a change or did it happen the day you changed the nap? I'd be happy if he made it to 6am but I can't handle 4.30! X

Could you try and push his bedtime back a bit each night?

It was a gradual process over a few days and we still have some off days so not a magical cure but definitely a big improvement

Thanks @grumpytoddler1 we did try that but for some crazy reason he still woke up just as early regardless 😴 even when going to bed a full hour later... People just tend to say to us "well can't think of anything else so he just must not need much sleep" almost 2 years of not sleeping through and I'm starting to worry they may be right! Lol

@Baby2018 I definitely feel your pain. My DS is about the same age and has always been a useless sleeper, up 7 or 8 times a night, until a couple of months ago. Now he is better but still doesn't sleep through. He doesn't get up early but he doesn't go to bed until gone 9 most nights! I could wake him up earlier in the morning if I wanted to 'solve' it, but I do prefer it that way round, even though it means we don't have a child free evening. I wonder whether, if you kept pushing it, it might eventually catch up with him and he'd sleep in later. Do you have blackout blinds? Is the light waking him up?