Our 3.5 year old has gone to sleep independently since she was 6 months old and has a good bedtime routine. This year she’s started delaying bedtime with multiple requests for drinks, wees etc but just over a week ago seems to have completely lost the plot and the requests literally don’t end until you leave the room, at which point
she starts screaming and gets out of bed. After cajoling, and trying nicely we’ve had some not so proud parenting moments, shouting at her to go back to bed, threatening consequences, bribing but none of it worked so the last 3 nights we’ve tried Super Nanny’s separation technique where I kept putting her back in silence and stayed on the landing. The first night she was crying and shouting at me to turn her pillow over I put her back over 100 times, the second night was about 90 with more crying, tonight she was absolutely knackered from missing so much sleep the previous week but still took about 60 goes to go down (she was silent this time and I’m also worried she thinks it’s a game and potentially confused by me staying on landing?) the last time I put her back I said if she got up again daddy was going to come and shut her in her room if she got out of bed again (again, not proud - desperate). I think she only gave up because she was so tired, not because of the threat. I feel like I’m failing and want my sanity back. My question is, how do we get our child to go back to going to sleep independently?
Any input or feedback welcome - esp from others who’ve had a similar experience or used sleep separation technique.