Leaving child awake at bed time

[Silverbelles]

What age could you finally put your child in bed, read them a story and then leave while they were still awake and they would go to sleep on their own?

We put our toddler to bed at 8, sometimes she sleeps straight away but some nights she's up for 2 hours wide awake and won't sleep. I'm sick of not having any evening time to myself at all because by the time she's finally gone to sleep at 10 it's time for me to go to bed too. I'm dying to just put her in bed and leave but as soon as I leave the room she starts crying so I have to sit and wait for her to go to sleep.

Just want to know when we can get some evening time back.

Well bully for you! But if they don’t settle themselves, decent parents don’t want to leave their children to cry themselves to sleep.

And OP. My two year old does not settle herself, I feed her to sleep or her Daddy sits with her and sings to her. She would never self settle even as a baby and not all babies will. Most won’t, in fact. And I would never leave her to cry.

I do find she won’t settle if I let her nap beyond 1pm ish so we have to do an early nap.

My children were settled in bed and left on their own but never cried themselves to sleep. When they were tiny they might wiffle a bit for a minute. Always leaving a baby to settle does not involve causing them distress. It is simply about setting a routine where they do not expect to have someone with them. The norm for them is being on your own for a while before dropping off.
Before I left them they had cuddles and all the rituals ... but then I left the room. They just knew that this usvwhat happens.

My little boy is 15 months and goes to bed between 7-7:30pm. We usually read a book in bed, some milk and then he falls asleep cuddled into me and then I carry him through to his cot. We do it this way as it worked for my oldest who we transitioned into a bed at 20 months and then started using the Tonie box.

I have quite a structured routine for my little boy, up at half 6/7am, one nap between 11-12 and no other naps.
we are out and about late afternoon but I give him toys/
books to occupy him and make sure it isn’t long car journeys.

Every child is different and will get into their own routine at their own pace.

I’ve never stayed with my ds until he fell asleep. Actually I discovered when he was newly home from hospital (spent a good while in Neonatal) that he couldn’t be rocked, patted, shushed etc to sleep and the only thing that worked was popping him down and giving him space.
He’s been the same way ever since, even on holiday when we shared a room I had to do his bedtime routine then leave the hotel room, sit on the balcony or corridor outside until he was asleep.
I’ve never been sure if this is to do with his time in hospital early on or just his personality, it’s weird but he seems happy.

Dd1 2.5, dd2 ummmm, 7 or 8 years. All dc are different

At 14 months I think she was still falling asleep ON us! The reason being that we wanted that time to chill out in the evening, and it was the quickest way to make her fall asleep and stay asleep. Now she’s 3 and a bit, she gets into her “big girl bed”, has a story, then lies down with whatever toy is flavour of the week. And I either stay with her if she’s closing her eyes, just sitting next to her bed or patting her back….or, if after 5 mins she’s still fidgeting and trying to start convos, I’ll tell her if she doesn’t go to sleep then mummy has to go out of the room. Which….i mean is a bit of a scam as I’d be going out if she DID fall asleep, but she doesn’t need to know that 🤣 and at that point she either calms it or I give her a big hug and kiss and tell her I’ll be back to check on her in a few mins. Usually she’s dropped off by the time I go back in. She did use to cry when I did this, got up out of bed etc., but we just kept calmly bringing her back to bed and making it the most boring thing in the world. Eventually it morphed into her staying in bed and accepting it was bedtime. Not sure when that revelation happened…probs closer to turning 3.

My point being, having a baby (and tbh I’d still term a 14mo a baby) fall asleep literally on you doesn’t mean they’ll be inconsolable when they’re older, or that you’re spoiling them. The name of the game is getting them down so you have peace for a few hours in the evening, imho. Do what you need to, don’t think too far into the future.

Hope it gets easier! Hang in there.

😂 I wasn’t on Mumsnet at the spa you absolute dafty. I was having a swim and then using the steam room.

No, we didn’t (for a short period of our lives) stay in the house every day for 3 hours (the horror!!). We just didn’t use the car at the time as it would have caused him to drop off to sleep. We either stayed at home after being out the entire day, or sometimes played in the garden, or went to the park, beach, out to see friends, out for a walk. We stayed at home or near home.

You’re really angry and want to frame your way of doing things as somehow living life to the fullest. But at the same time you’re apparently struggling so much with how long your child takes to fall asleep (I know, I know, magically now it’s only an issue very occasionally so it’s all fine)

Someone so happy with how things are wouldn’t be complaining about it on Mumsnet.

So someone who is posting on Mumsnet has to be miserable and desperate. Right.

I posted asking for information. Not advice. Because I wanted to know when other people's children were ready. It's a question Google can't answer and I don't know many other people with young children. So I asked here.

I also wasn't complaining about how long it takes her to fall asleep, I was complaining about having to sit with her while she does it. She can take as long as she wants to fall asleep when she's happy to do it alone, the whole"you don't have to be asleep but you have to be in bed" rule most parents have. You clearly haven't understood the OP, where it's "some nights" and "WHEN we're your children ready to be left alone". You really have got your knickers in a twist over questions I never actually asked! I'm not perfectly happy with how things are because I want her to be ready to be alone in bed soon, but I'm certainly not wasting my life on the floor next to the cot like a miserable martyr like some people are making out.

God forbid would someone ask a question without being desperate! 🙄

This is peak Mumsnet. Didn't understand the OP, waded in with advice that wasn't asked for in the most condescending manner possible, crow about your own superior parenting, wag a finger, get strangely invested in someone else's thread and dominante it to try to prove a point, then complain "I was only trying to helllllllllp! You clearly don't want help! Enjoy your misery then!" when it's pointed out none of it was required or asked for. Brilliant 😂. It's hilarious how desperate some people are to be The Best Parent Ever.

Yes I’m familiar with the rule. That’s what we do. Occasionally he is awake for up to half an hour in his bed and we hear him shuffling about, but we don’t sit with him in the dark waiting. It’s a bad habit to get into and prolongs how long they stay awake for.

You have to make the effort to have a child who can be put to bed and left to their own devices. You’re happy with your set up and contrary to what you said in your OP you’re clearly not “sick of it” and “dying” for it to change. Sounds like everything’s just peachy. Weird to post otherwise when you’re happy with the set up and simply idly wondering when it will magically change.

I posted asking for information. Not advice. Because I wanted to know when other people's children were ready. It's a question Google can't answer and I don't know many other people with young children. So I asked here.

The answer to your question is simple.
If you always put your baby down in the cot awake, and leave the baby to fall asleep on their own, the baby won't ever need you to stay with them.

Therefore, there isn't a question of "ready" because the baby will always be used to falling asleep. So will the older child.

If, on the other hand, you always rock your baby to sleep, you'll gradually end up with a situation where the baby, then the older child, cannot fall asleep unless you're there. They haven't learnt to do so. You haven't taught them.

Rods and own backs come to mind.

We still sit with our nearly 8 year old BUT we enjoy that time so haven't tried to remove it. It's only 10 -15 mins of our evening now and I'd rather that that 2 hours of constant getting ups. I know he will grow out of it eventually so making the most of it to be honest.
He goes to bed at 730 tho so we still get our evenings.

I'm sick of not having any evening time to myself at all because by the time she's finally gone to sleep at 10 it's time for me to go to bed too.

Just quoting from your OP @Silverbelles

I'm dying to just put her in bed and leave but as soon as I leave the room she starts crying so I have to sit and wait for her to go to sleep.

Yes, this is unfortunate. I have to say that you don't sound happy with this situation, contrary to your later posts.

If you had read my posts, you would know that we put her in the cot awake and she puts herself to sleep. She doesn't need to be rocked, or fed to sleep. It's not an issue of needing to actively be put to sleep with sleep techniques.

However she gets upset if you leave her on her own, because she's a small child and that is quite normal. At some point she won't be scared to be left alone at night, because she will grow up. As other posters have said, at 2, or 3 or whenever, their children have stopped crying when they leave the room or told their parents I'm ok on my own you don't need to stay. Which is normal.

Or you know, I can just leave her anyway and let her cry herself to sleep and call it a parenting success.

But that's the whole problem were having, if I leave her alone she gets upset which actually wakes her up more and makes the whole thing take longer.

I'm happy to leave her shuffling around in bed on her own babbling to herself, I'm not happy to leave her on her own crying hysterically. I don't sit with her because she won't go to sleep without me, I sit with her because she is scared to be left alone. If she wasn't upset, like your children aren't, then I would leave her.

What are you worried about then? Just wait until one day she says “I’m fine mummy, you go enjoy your evening, you deserve a rest.”

Most people teach their children to fall asleep on their own without leaving them to cry. As always with these types of posts you think the only options are to stay with her until she falls asleep, or leave her screaming until she vomits and is in therapy as an adult with abandonment issues.

We’ve been through the upset. He didn’t magically become a child who goes to sleep on his own out of nowhere. Your definition of her falling asleep on her own is strange. She doesn’t. She needs you in the room with her, often for hours.

I taught my child how to be put to bed with a story, kiss and a cuddle and be left to fall asleep on his own. At no point was he left screaming and traumatised in that process. He’s my world, I wouldn’t hurt him and abandon him.

You have to put the work in but you don’t want to hear it because you’re getting defensive.

You have to teach them from a young age to fall asleep alone. I never left my kids to cry or become distressed and they were all in their own cots in another room from birth with a baby monitor.

OP I think it is fine to just carry on with what you are doing if you don't mind, and if you think there is an average amount of time it takes her to get to sleep which is not gradually creeping longer and longer. If you do end up finding that the 'falls asleep straight away' nights are getting rarer and the '2 hours' nights are getting more frequent, or the average amount of time is going up, it's worth considering that - as in the case of my DS - you staying may start to make her more anxious rather than comforting her. We initially thought 'oh he needs us' and we didn't mind because it was only 10-15 minutes. But eventually it got longer and longer and he was not relaxing because he was hyper-vigilant waiting to see us leave the room. At that point, we felt it was kinder to just make it really clear that we were going, as well as why and when. There were some protests at first, but it took away all his worries about us leaving/not being there, because he knew where we were supposed to be. I guess the only other kind way of taking away that worry would have been to co-sleep. Basically it was the sneaking out part that was the problem for our DS.

I'm not worried about anything! I intend to stay with her until she tells me she's fine on her own, I'm just wondering when that might be which is why I'm asking when it was for other people's children!

Thank you this is really helpful