My son is just over 21 months. The last week has started to become a battle at bedtimes.
He cries when we take him upstairs and tel him it’s bedtime, he screams when we try to get him into pyjamas, he runs riot upstairs, screams proper tears having his teeth brushed, we try to read with him and he takes the book out our hands and buries his face in it or says “night night book” and won’t let us finish. Then when it’s finally time for him to go into his cot he writhes and goes rigid, throws his soft toys out his cot again and again, flaps his duvet around, bounces around, and screams Mummy until I go back in. Rinse and repeat multiple times with soft toys on the floor. He eventually slows and stops screaming for me and ends up kicking the side of his cot or thrashing for a bit til he falls aslee.
We are taking him up to bed a bit later than we did before as he’s so full of energy, we tire him out in the garden after nursery, he eats well and only sleeps up to an hour in the day - we have to cap it otherwise he’s up in the night. He does normally sleep through. We have a fairly set routine morning and evening due to nursery etc, and we start bedtime routine at the same time every day. This has crept later as he needs less sleep as he gets older.
Is there anything we are doing wrong? We give him choices about books, pjs, bath time toys - as I read it was good for them to exercise choice and he seems to respond well to it.
Is any of this normal and how the hell do we stop it? I’ve been in 6 times tonight and he’s finally starting to look like he’s falling asleep…