Almost 4 being a nightmare at bedtime

[Gardenclems]

Since just before Christmas my 3, almost 4 year old has been a nightmare at bedtime.

Routine is home from nursery about 6, snack and tv or games till half 7, teeth, stories then we’d sit with her till she fallls asleep, which didn’t bother either of us. Used to take 10-20 mins for her to fall asleep.

But since December she will not sit and listen to her stories. She messes around or talks to see how far she can push it before we stop stories. Then she will not lie down and go to sleep. She messes about with her covers, flings herself at me to get cuddle and it’s taking an hour or more to get her to go to sleep. I feel like I spend an hour every night telling her off.

Taking her stories away seems counter productive because then there’s no wind down time. But then it seems like there’s no consequence for messing about.

what can I do to make bedtime a pleasant experience again?

Remove screen and don't play games. Play audio books or similar. TV until gone 7 is late and we've seen improvement in all our children sleep by ensuring no screens 2 hours before bed.

Does she only have a snack in the evening, no meal? Her bedtime seems quite late with TV/games not stopping until 7:30. With our just turned 4yo we typically allow screens for half an hour after his dinner, off my 6 at the latest. He then has a story downstairs, bath and bed, sometimes an extra story in bed, then asleep by 7/7:30.

Stop the TV going on so late and start bedtime earlier.

Although we’re in a similar position with our nearly four year old and she’s just as annoying at bedtime, so suspect it’s an age phase.

She’s home from nursery at 5.30/5.45 (depends on how slow she dawdles) and has a cartoon with a snack, then TV off and we hang out talking about her day til 6.30 for bath, 6.45 to bedroom. If she’s tired enough she’s asleep by 7.30. If she’s overtired or it’s a day ending in Y, we get the same shenanigans as you.

DP is doing bedtime at the moment while I clusterfeed a newborn and he’s softer than I am: I will leave the room if DD messes around. Rather than cutting off stories, I cut off her access to me. It only takes one warning usually and one walk-out for her to settle (albeit with a crosspatch face) under the covers and listen nicely to stories.

We’ve also had luck with adding in bedtime things IF she lies under the covers. So stories are a given because I never want to use them as threats/punishment, but I’ll offer her singing to sleep or “facts” (she’s heavily into being told about medieval times?!), but only if she’s lying down under the cover. And because those things aren’t a standard part of bedtime they can be added in/taken away without affecting anything. She’ll usually fall asleep after a couple of songs, or midway through an explanation of the Black Death.

We used to give her a meal of an evening but she’s full from her mid afternoon snack at nursery and never ate much. Non nursery days she eats a meal with us because we give her a smaller snack mid afternoon.

We did try a few evenings of no tv and it didn’t make a difference but I think I’m going to try heading up to bed earlier. If nothing else at least then if it takes an hour I’ve still go some evening left.

I do like the idea of an “extra” if she’s good. I don’t like taking stories away but half the time she’s too busy messing around to even listen to them