My child won’t go to bed

[Amyj12]

Hi, any advise on sleep training? My 2.5 year old NEVER goes through the night and has now started fighting bedtime all together !! Bedtime takes 2 hours sometimes and then couple of hours later he’s up asking to come in bed with me.

What's his bedtime routine like? Have you tried moving his bedtime later if he's not sleeping through the night?

We were always strict about the dc's bedtime routine and after a couple of weeks it stuck. So we roughly did:

Dinner
Bath + Pyjamas
20 mins of bedtime tv (nothing overstimulating- cbeebies bedtime stories or similar)
Upstairs, story read, tucked into bed
Reminder not to get up until the clock turns yellow (we had this one Tommee Tippee Groclock Sleep Trainer Clock)
CD player on. This was a good few years ago now so could be subbed for a yoto player, but something without a screen. We had this CD and it was great, no sudden crescendos etc Ultimate Most Relaxing Classics For Kids In The Universe: Amazon.co.uk: CDs & Vinyl

The most helpful/effective things from that routine were the trainer clock (since it provides a visual cue that's easy to understand, clock is blue when it's sleep time and yellow when it's time to get up), and the music (dc learnt to associate it with sleep and so calmed them enough usually to drop off to sleep).
Also, is he warm enough if he's waking in the night? I don't know if it's a coincidence but my youngest started sleeping so much better after we got her a fleece duvet like this Olivia Rocco Safari Teddy Fleece Duvet Cover, and I've seen other people on similar threads saying the same.

Thank you! He has a Teddy fleece duvet!!

And we have the same routine every night but he just doesn’t seem to want to go without a fight!

love the idea of the training clock! Will look into this! Thank you for your help xx