I cannot take it anymore

[Givingup2025]

My 4yr old child has just broken me. I cannot take it anymore. Every day is lovely, bit of bad behaviour but listens when told and most days together are nice.

then it comes to nighttime. We have a routine. Teeth, pjs, bedtime stories then bam he turns into this horrible monster you can’t control. I’ve tried being firm, very firm, leaving him to it , keeping everything calm and just repeating its bedtime time to sleep. This has been going on for nearly a year.

he jumps on his bed, he runs around the house, he’ll throw his toys everywhere and the last two weeks it’s turned into him biting, kicking, spitting and slapping me. He finds this funny whilst I’m sitting there trying to remain calm.

I have tried different bedtimes, no screen time, tonie box, reading books , cuddling him to sleep. When he misbehaves I am firm with him telling him it is bedtime. But it doesn’t stop. He will sit there singing, I leave him to it and he trashes his room.

i cannot take anymore. I just want to leave and give up as I’m clearly failing as a parent.

I just want to disappear. I’ve had enough

This sounds incredibly hard, and you sound like a loving parent who is trying their best in a really hard situation.
Can I ask if there's anyone else who can try bedtime?

What does he have in his bedroom? My Ds was an absolute nightmare with bedtime and I ended up taking everything out aside from furniture (I put child locks on all the drawers and the wardrobe so he couldn't empty them). I left two books in the room that he had the option of reading.
I did his bedtime routine with him, put him to bed and then left him to it. There was nothing for him to do aside from either sleep or look at the books. It took a couple of weeks but he stopped.
It's really tough x

Yes his dad takes over most nights and then I feel like more of a failure. He is just jumping and laughing at us both.

We have locked his drawers and his wardrobe. His toys are in there but our flat is so small that we couldn’t put them anywhere else. It is so tough and I just want to walk out

Wow. That sounds a nightmare. I'm just a person not some kind of parenting guru, but this is what I'd do.

Once he's in bed, that's it. There's no getting up again. Unless you believe he genuinely needs the toilet. I don't care if he's hungry or thirsty, it's bedtime, he's been fed etc and now it's time to sleep.

I'd shut the bedroom door with you inside the room sitting by it to prevent him opening it. Take a book, you might be there some time, especially at first. No more running round the house etc.

No interaction. Don't speak if he does anything.
If he's playing with toys remove them from the room "we can play with toys tomorrow, it's bedtime now".
If he's jumping on the bed ignore it. If he has a bouncy bed, dismantle and remove that and just have a mattress on the floor to minimise bounce and therefore fun. Quiet reading until he falls asleep I'd accept.

But other than that, whatever he says my response would be "lay down and go to sleep" said calmly and boringly. Give him no attention, whether positive or overly negative, to his attempts to start a conversation or get a reaction from you. Just "lay down and go to sleep" always. If you've said it a few times in short succession, I'd try "I'm not going to speak any more now, it's time to sleep" then literally ignore anything he says. Give him no options other than to lay down and sleep. Bore him into it.

Enough with the violence, if winding you up and making you upset is some kind of game for him, shut it down. I'd use physical restraint to minimise him hurting you. Hold him from behind with his arms crossed against his torso so he can't hit you or really move much. Explain why you're doing it and do it every time he is violent towards you, after one warning eg he hits you, tell him no, he hits you again, restrain him until he stops struggling. Don't react just stay calm no matter what he does even if he's hurting you with kicks etc. Don't give him the reward of attention for his bad behaviour, just hold him until it stops. I assure you he isn't going to find this new version of his game much fun. I really don't care what any parenting manuals might say about this, before anyone jumps on me, I'm not willing to tolerate physical violence.

Have you tried a night lamp like the link i’ve added
https://amzn.eu/d/gGNipMm
It really helped my son focus and it’s quite soothing … worth a try

Thanks I’ve tried a lot of this and he doesn’t stop. He has just trashed his room again. I tried to stop him he screamed and ran off I shut the door but he just bounced and won’t stop and is screaming and I can’t take it anymore

Thank you yes we’ve got one but has made no difference. Got him a nightlight as well. Nothing works

Any chance of ADHD?My son struggled A LOT with sleep, bedtime, etc. Diagnosed at 6.He didn't sleep through the night until 4 years old. Believe me, I tried EVERYTHING. Every bedtime was an exorcism. I was scared neighbours will call SS.

Blimey op, this sounds so tough, no wonder you are broken. I got to that mind of stage with DC2's lack of sleep in the earlier years, he didn't sleep more than about 3 hrs at a time until he was nearly 3 (and a lot less than that before then), years on I still don't think I've recovered it genuinely did break me.

I'm wondering, at a carefully chosen time in the day, can he tell you anything about why he does this? Once he's asleep, does he stay asleep? Could it be he's actually scared of something? I've realised that young children do kind of "displace" their feelings and behaviours sometimes.

My daughter was a bit like this, and my life around that time was awful due to nighttime’s.

I wish I had gone to the GP or health visitor, I just kind of muddled through, but maybe you should, I don’t see what else you can do.

What does he want specifically? That’s probably the solution tbh.

does he want to stay up later? Have more food? Watch tv? Look at an iPad? Have you with him?

what would happen if you just … didn’t put him to bed? So do his whole routine and then pop him on the sofa under his duvet or whatever and wait until he’s tired?

I mean, it’s no long term solution but it seems you need to do something completely and utterly different to what you’re doing now.

and it’s easy for me to say, as a parent to young adults now, but trust me on this … everything is a phase and this will be one too. But you need to just break the cycle for now as it’s been going on for a year and you’ve done the whole calm/ ignoring/ angry / firm thing.

just don’t put him to bed at his usual time and see what happens. Can’t be any worse than your current nightly situation

What time are you starting bedtime and how much sleep overnight are you aiming for? Assuming no nap for some time already?

We try talking to him about it but it’s like he doesn’t remember and then says sorry and gives us a cuddle. He stays asleep once he has asleep thankfully but it’s taken nearly 2hrs now to get him down. His room is a mess. I just don’t know what to do. Maybe a later bedtime might help but I think he is overtired as he sleeps from 9 and wakes up at 6.

We start routine at 7- brush teeth pjs and stories and am to be in bed for 7.30 with a few more stories and cuddles. No naps- stopped them just before he turned 2

This.

ADHD tend to have much later sleep cycles. When Dd was little we tried EVERY thing, and she never went to sleep early.

In the end we gave her an iPad. She’d play with that and drift into sleep. Bloody nightmare time. She still goes to bed at 3 am now. Dh is the same.

She slept through the night either. Until she was about 13. We just took her in with us in the end.

Break the routine. Don’t do bedtime. Let him stay up until you go to bed. No screens though. Go for a walk at 9pm for an hour.

I’ve mentioned this to various people and no, no adhd. He has the tablet for one hour at the weekend but I don’t want to fall into the trap of him going to sleep with it. I just don’t know what else to do

This sounds so hard - have you spoken to the GP about it? It sounds very extreme behaviour. How much time outdoors does he get during the day? Does he watch anything on a screen in the afternoon/evening? Does he eat well?

On a practical note, can you make the room pitch black at bedtime so that he can’t see to mess it up/mess around?

But he won’t always go to sleep with it. It will change. But at this moment it’s about a battle to survive.

He’ll be able to read or watch tv when he’s a bit older to get him to sleep.

DD didn’t sleep all night till she started secondary school! I gave in and just let her sleep with us from around 4 because I couldn’t fight it anymore. Coward’s way out probably. Once she was in with us she was fine and the bedtime carnage stopped. When she was 11 she took herself into her room and now at 15 she barely comes out!

Have you had him assessed?

This is what we did in the end.

It sounds like demand avoidance.

We had to remove everything from my son’s room apart from his bed and clothes. It worked after a few nights - realised the toys and fun stuff being nearby were over stimulating and he couldn’t shut off and accept it was bedtime. He’s now a teenager and still likes a more minimal bedroom.

Also, try giving your local health visitor a call - they work with children until they’re 5 yrs old. Ours was really helpful with sleep issues.

We had the same, we were recommended a sleep consultant who was absolutely life changing and I do not use that term lightly.
Our now 7 year old is unrecognisable from the 3.5 year old who nearly broke me. It was around £170 if I recall, I'd have paid ten times that.
Ask around for recommendations.