[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by The Big Chill

My little girl is 1.5, so I haven't hit some of the regression stages you have yet, but we have a few strategies that have worked so far.

She likes to do things on her own and make choices, so instead of presenting a yes or no question like 'do you want to go to bed?' we have much better success with 'do you want your red jammies or blue jammies?'. We find that helps with every situation, not just bed time.

For actual sleep time, all the research we've done says they need to learn to soothe themselves. If you rock them to sleep then they don't learn to put themselves back to sleep when they wake up at night. Use the 'reset'. Put him to bed, let him cry for 5 minutes, and then go back in and say goodnight, time for sleep, and leave right away. Stick to that for as long as it takes. It might be a crappy week for everybody, but should be better in the long run

Now that I've given my advice I look forward to my kid rejecting all these techniques!

Sorry for the rant and information dump. I had 4 hours of sleep last night and it's a combo of frustration and caffeine overload.


One thing I tell others is that these little guys all seem to have varied stages of FOMO (Fear of missing out). Conceptually, the behaviours my little guy and a few of my friends made more sense when considering they were freaking out more due to FOMO than separation anxiety. Yes, there's some separation anxiety in general, but the more our parent group navigated certain things, it seemed like it was pure FOMO. There's also weird things too like "wonder weeks" where all the kids (our kids are all within a few weeks/months of each other) will not sleep and behave and demand to be held etc. We aren't sure what it is, but the theories are somewhere along the lines of growth spurts and synchronized events like holidays, day light savings, pre-illness etc. After a few of us tried addressing the fact that we aren't actually having parties once the little ones are off to bed, we kinda found they calmed down a lot and started getting excited about their routines.

I'm not going to lie, my wife and I were "selfish" and our little guy for a while had varied bed times from 5PM to the occasional 2-3AM until around 6-8 months and we decided we needed to figure out a robust solution. Call us bad parents, whatever. But we needed the socialization to keep us sane so that we could be good and normal people best best spouses and parents and not stressed out monsters to each other and our little guy that goes off on hair pin triggers. Lately, our little guy goes down around 7:30-9:00PM relatively close to clock work. We also opted to host more events at our home which allow us to put him to bed, then hang out with friends for a few more hours (rather than bow out at 6:00 every day). With our new larger home, sleep overs are the thing we and other parents have been chatting about and are excited to try out. There's so many other parents starved for a glimmer of social interaction they had before they had their kids. It's also a great method to have a space to just rant and reset and not feel like who we are is completely lost due to parenthood. I mean, we all seem to love it, but we don't want to feel like our spousal relationship and our original personality is completely lost to the orbit of another person... if that makes sense.

Our little guy was perfect in the crib until 1 year, then wouldn't go into the crib at all without freaking out. He would react as if being placed in the crib/ was the equivalent of being placed into a container of horrors. He would also sleep soundly if rocked in the carrier (which was awesome for socializing), but he outgrew it. He slept just fine in the nursery bed and kinda preferred co sleeping (though would occasionally fall asleep himself in the bed) until around 1.5 years old where I tried putting him into the crib and he was no longer afraid of being in the crib. He sleeps in the crib again. My little guy is around 20 months old now. Time sure as hell flies and slows down at the same time once parenthood begins.

The self soothing thing was definitely one of the worst things we have ever had to experience as parents. Pure heart pang guilt and mixed emotions and that sound is horrific and terrifying to have to endure. My wife and I literally would have leave the room, set a timer and just kinda quietly watch him through the security cam feeling like the biggest jerks in the world. It was a brutal process but even if not perfect, he somewhat self soothes now for the most part. The stress and tears were totally worth it (both sides). My wife and I get slightly more sleep on average now and at least we are able to get around 5-7 hours regularly on the weekdays and an extra hour or two on the weekends. It's not enough, but passable. We used to get something like 3-6 ranges hours prior to really figuring out a proper routine. Also, my wife and I generally do everything together, but we literally started sleeping apart much more so that we wouldn't be burning that candle at both ends and that at least one of us could get respectable sleep even if the other has to navigate the next day essentially with no sleep.

There's so many differing opinions on the subject that it's a topic that you can easily get lost and frustrated with, especially since you're often navigating it sleep deprived and well in frustration territory. It's also sometimes frustrating that others will have an opinion and think like they've solved world hunger and be adamant that you're doing things wrong because they have the forever solution for the situation. This is further difficult because we have so much information at our fingertips, "failure" is mainly an outcome due to you as the parents not trying hard enough/choosing the correct method.

What my wife and I settled on that that we think part of the bed routine is that there's rigid aspects and flexible aspects. But it shouldn't be far too rigid because it'll potentially traumatize the kid and make them want to listen less (it'll destroy you, not the kid) and not to flexible as the child will quickly learn to call the shots and disallow you from living a reasonable life (it'll destroy you, not the kid).

"You are going to bed. Grab a toy for bath time. Grab a book to read. Ok, I'll play the song that calmed you more." etc. Also, in general, I think parents shouldn't worry too much about nailing a perfect sleep routine and time. Just try to be as consistent as possible. My little guy started self dictating the routine now. When he's really tired, he wants to be held and take all our attention until we start the bed routine which he then happily navigates. Also, I think his circadian rhythm is strengthening, so we've noticed that he get fussy around the same time (within 30-45 minutes) each day.

Our routine is:
- Bath time and suit up in PJs and sleep sack.
- Warm milk
- Reading if he's not completely ready to sleep yet, skip to bed if he's exhausted.
- Dim lights and close blinds.
- Bed w/ lullaby music or white noise. (The echo is worth every penny and more for this. My little guy also has had music preferences since he was like 10 months old.)
- We will spend 1-5 minutes patting/rubbing the chest or back and head if he doesn't go out immediately when he head goes down. If he cries, parent swap after 5-15 minutes ish. Worst case scenario is after 30-45 minutes one of us preps during the swap that person will stay in the room in the bed until he goes down or we fall asleep in the room with him.

This routine has evolved a few times in the short time we've had this little guy (trial and error plus evolving personality) ranging from co-sleeping/crib, play time/reading, different music/singing, cry out method/soothing etc. There's no perfect routine, even for the same kid.


Good luck to all you other parents! This stuff is freaking difficult. I look back at my upbringing and I realize how much of a jerk I was as a kid and how my parents are like me and wandering through parenthood as inexperienced, lost and confused as I am. Definitely makes me appreciate parents a lot more!