How do you teach a child to fall asleep?

[HairyMaclary]

My DS2 is a terrible sleeper, he's now 14 months old and cannot fall asleep by himself. I'm still bfing but even that doesn't always send him off. In desperation last night at 11.45pm DH took him for a drive, it took him 40 mins to even close his eyes! Does anyone have any suggestions to help, we've tried sitting with him and everything we can think of, and are now getting desperate. How do you teach a child to fall asleep when they seem unable to 'switch of'. Please help!

sorry for the double post, I don't know what happened.

do you have a bedtime routine which focuses on winding him down? Sorry if that is an obvious question?

The other thing that really helped DD was having gentle lullabies on her in room, or a story CD. It seemed to give her the comfort/company she needed.

Not many other suggestions because DD has never been a great sleeper but didn't want your post to go unacknowledged!

If you are prepared to put a bit of work in the No Cry Sleep solution for toddlers is really good - not a quick fix though but might give you some ideas.

We found that dropping one of ds naps around this age helped to get him to sleep at night. How many naps for how long does your ds have?

thanks for replying! we have had a suggestion of the CD of lullabies or a story tape but DH has not been very keen. I think I will have to push this one! I have a friend who also recommend the no cry sleep solution so may take a look on amazon for it.

Phdiva, he naps for a maximum of 3 hours over 2 sleeps, it is often less though and yesterday he only had 1 hour, he was then overtired and although he crashed out very quickly he was up from 9.30 to half midnight very unhappy!

bath, soft lights, soft voices, soft story, snuggle in, kiss and calm 'goodnight, sleep time' leave room and hang around outside to listen

at shrieking keep going back in and just continual returning to bed with no eye contact and no more noise .. soft sidelight if any light at all

Hairy, I would push for it if you think it would be worth a go - it really helped DD. She is now 2.3 and when she wakes up at 5.30 I send her back to bed with Cinderella on repeat - it buys me at least another 45 mins!

can't do that twiglett as he shares a room with DS1 who has SN and really needs his sleep. I do think we should try CD and nightlight. We have a solid bedtime routine but as we progress though it I can see him getting more and more upset.

you could consider putting a travel cot in your room and doing it there for a couple of weeks then once established move him back, maybe?

That's what we have decided to do twiglett, I don't know if it will work for throughout the night but it's worth a try for bedtime. I have just come back from taking him to a cranial osteopath so we'll see if that helps also.

Agree with Twig.
Hope night time peace will come soon to Donaldson's Dairy