Please help - how can I get my 2.6 yr old to stay in bed??

[Ceebee74]

DS1 has always been a fantastic sleeper and never had any problems with him - until DS2 came along 8 weeks ago!

Now DS1 won't stay in his bed! He is not so bad when we put him to bed in the evenings but he gets up in the middle of the night and last night, it took me an hour to get him to stay in bed...I thought the sleepless nights would be because of the baby, not DS1!!

He goes to sleep with a story CD on and gets up in the middle of the night to ask for that back on...rod for my own back I know! He used to stay in bed once the CD was back on but now he just gets back up and hovers in our bedroom doorway, asks for a cuddle etc. Have tried just putting him back to bed but after about the 10th time I realised that he thought it was a game.

Last night, after an hour, I used bribery and told him that the story CD would be switched off unless he stayed in bed....it worked but I don't know if I have the energy to have the same discussion every night.

Any suggestions as to how I can just make him stay in bed so we can all sleep???

Bump

It sounds like he's getting quite unsettled by no 2's arrival and calling out for your attention in the middle of the night when he can deinitely get it - some suggestions would be to try to spend abit more quality time just you and him during the day (next to impossible I know with a tiny baby around)so he feels less unsettled and perhaps also getting your DH to resettle him at nights for a bit (no stories or anything - just telling him its bedtime and putting him straight back to bed - he may think its a game but will eventually realise its not working any more).

Best of luck.

Dinky - thanks for the advice. I really am trying to put DS1 first as much as I possibly can and, when DH is around, we both try and spend 1-2-1 time with him doing various activities.

Unfortunately DH works away 2-3 nights a week so it is often just me - maybe tomorrow night when DH is back, I will get him to do it.

We both wonder if it also has something to do with the baby being in our room?

Oooooh, Ceebee74! We have a similar problem with our 2.2 DS and I was just about to post so I'll watch this thread with interest!

He's getting out of bed 1-5 times during the night. Usually he's just out of bed and hovering in our doorway too! Sometimes there's a reason (he does sleep walk on the very odd occasion); sometimes he just gets up to 'see mummy', when asked. He can sleep through for a week or so and then he'll start getting out of bed again. He's not ill, he's not teething, he's not hungry or thirsty... It's driving us nuts!

He also went through a phase where he wouldn't go down to sleep in the evening straight away. We'd often have to go up a number of times to put him back to bed so I cut back his lunchtime nap. When he got out of bed, we used to go up to him, put him straight back into bed and then leave - no speaking, no eye contact etc. This worked most of the time.

Recently, we told him that if he got out of bed, we wouldn't be going up so that he'd have to lie on the floor unless he went back into bed himself (which he doesn't/won't). This happened once and then he settled down. However things have started up again. We've not changed anything so I feel it's just another phase of him testing us again.

Ceebee - it may well be to do with the baby being in your rom. My friends little boy (similar age) started doing this when his little sister came along and stopped when the baby moved to her own room at around 3 months (though think he was also much more used to her etc.).

If is any consolation, I think alot of mums with toddlers and new babies have this issue (am about to go through it myself in 4 weeks or so's time) and from what all of my friends have told me it is down to insecurities for the older child and the only way to deal with it is consistency at bed time, and lots of extra attention and cuddles during the day time.