difficult sleeper

[appletiser]

hi - our 10month old has always slept in our room initally in a moses basket now he has a cot bed.Well we spent nearly 2months abroad and he ended up sleeping in our bed during this time.and well he keeps waking in the night wanting to come into our bed.initally i didnt mind but then realised this would make things difficult in the future but am finding it very difficult to get him to sleep in his cot. he is a terrible sleeper anyway - he fights sleep liek anything and i can spend upto an hour trying to get him to have a day time nap when he is obviously exhausted - occasionally i have to trick him into sleeping (games that will make him close his eyes etc )
at the moment everytime he wants to come into bed i hold him but dont lift him out of the ot and make him lay down again in the cot and keep doing this tell either he gets really upset or falls asleep.
so really any advise for getting him to sleep in the cot has anyone had a little one who fights sleep this much?does it get better? i start back at work in 3wks so i really am desperate

being devils advocate here is him coming into your bed really a problem to you? will it really make things difficult in the future? i only mention because i have accepted dd comes into bed and i am happy with it, but then i am the path of least resistance type of person
as such sorry cant help with cot settling at night

hmm, its not too much of a problem at the moment to behonest - its just that when i go back to work, i will be working nights so id rather he sleep in his own room when im home trying to sleep. Since i wrote tht msg i think ive jsut come to terms with the fact that its not going to happen and i should just give up trying.

I had this problem with my 10 month old after he had a bout of croup, when he slept with me because the hacking scared him. Once he was better, he would NOT go in his cot, but it was even worse because when he was with us in our bed, he just wanted to play! After a night of having him crawl all over me and trying to make sure he didn't fall off the bed, I did tough love; reassuring pats in the cot when he woke, every five mins, "sleep time" and leave. First time he woke for 50 mins, next time ten mins and in 4 nights time he slept through, 7- 6. Has been doing so every night for the last 2 months now.

Someone told me the key is consistency - if sometimes you pick them up and sometimes you don't, then they'll always keep trying. (Like when we check emails loads of times a day - on the off chance we'll have one through!)

I'd never wanted to do tough love, but I was so concerned about him falling off the bed and hurting himself as he jumped on our heads at 3am that I felt I had no choice, and I'm glad I did it now. Having said that, when he was much smaller, he used to often sleep with us and I loved it! So if you're getting a good nights sleep with him in the bed and you don't mind, then there's nothing wrong with Family Bed if it's working for you.