My 2.5 year old won't go to bed

[Lanny_McDonald]

Sounds like general separation anxiety. Do you have other children? If so, how is socialization between your child and their siblings? If not, are you or your significant other helicopter parents? Do you hover and never give your child space to explore their environment by themselves. If you are always with them, and then respond to them when they cry by immediately going to them, you reinforce the attachment and make it more likely this drags on. It is tough for parents to do, especially new ones with only one child, but part of cognitive development is giving the child space and let them become aware of their surroundings in their own way. This doesn't mean leave them completely alone and have free range to dangerous situations, but opportunities to crawl around and display some independence will help with this issue. Be around, just don't be in eye shot of your child all the time.

[blankall]

^^^^^^

From my observations, it's a lot simpler than that. Some kids can just be kind of jerks. They think they should call the shots on when they go to bed.

[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!

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

I'm only 4 months into this parenting thing, but we've been using the (paid) Huckleberry App to track and "schedule" naps/sleep times. It's actually fantastic at helping avoid overtirednesd and rejiggering sleep schedules on weird days (drs visits, seeing family, woke up early, etc.)

Works up to 5 years old I believe, uses AI learning and historical sleep patterns to determine the best sleep times for your kid.

Holy #### balls, an app for sleeping.

Wow.

OP, it has been said he lots, but routine is important.

This worked for us (our kids are now 14 & 16).

-bath, kids love bath time and it allows them some good play.
-we then allowed them some play time, no electronics.
-a set bed time, within reason, their little bodies like a clock, but allow 15 mins either side of the bed time for flexibility.
-this is the most important point. read, read in bed with your kids. we would spend a good 30 mins reading with them, different books. this will at some point progress to them reading to you and then to themselves. My kids still read 45-60 a night before bed.

Kids will get out of bed. You need to be firm and take them back to bed.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

I'm exhausted at the moment as our almost 3 year old woke up screaming, and wanted to watch TV in the living room.

I got up, got him some milk, sat with him in the living room couch (no TV, lights off) then went he calmed down, we transitioned back to his room (he still wants happy though). Then I laid down in his bed with him untim he was just about asleep, got up, ticked him in, and back to my own bed.

Biggest this is waiting until they're ready, "do you want to go to bed now?" If the answer is "no" I wait a minute or two then ask again giving two options one I want and one I know he doesn't. Makes him think he's making the choice haha.

[dubc80]

I feel for you, man.

My son was absolutely terrible at around that age when we first transitioned him to a big boy bed. Bedtimes would seriously take around 3-4 hours no matter what we tried.

As soon as we'd go to leave the room, he'd just get up and follow us out.
We'd try to be firm and say "no... bedtime" and put him back. Repeat 10x, if not more. Super frustrating.

There were countless times when my wife woke me up (with my son in her arms) as I had fallen asleep and he had snuck out of the room. Or vis versa if she was on bedtime duty.

We pretty much had to wait until he was asleep, then sneak out.

Nothing really helped... except for time. We battled for probably a year, or year and a half. Not fun.

My son is turning 6 this year and we've been over the hump for a while now as bedtime is now much easier. We now leave and allow him to play quietly in his own room if he doesn't want to sleep and he magically crawls into his own bed and goes to sleep after a while.

Thankfully we didn't have this problem with his younger sister.

[dubc80]

And I was once complaining about this to an older co-worker and he started laughing.

He has 3 teenagers and he says he can remember those early days, but now has the opposite problem.

Instead of pestering them to go to bed, he now has to pester them to hurry up and get out of bed and get ready for school, or whatever activity they have in the morning.

So, I guess the bedtime problem never goes away. It just evolves. LOL.

[surferguy]

I’m playing the long game. All of the annoying yell screams and can’t control my voice noises my sons make at the dinner table, I’ve recorded. Once they hit the can’t get out of bed teenage years I will uses these recordings as their alarm clocks.

I’ve got about 12 yrs or so to go.

[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!

[8sPOT]

My son went through this too when he was that age, once we had the big boy bed it seemed bedtime became a chore. At the time (he's 10 now) my parents recommended just putting him to bed and forcing him to stay in his room. Which meant basically holding the door closed and ignoring him crying and screaming.

It was awful, like really awful, but after 3 nights I didn't have to do it anymore. As though he learned there's no point in fighting it, its bedtime. Never had an issue since.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by surferguy

I’m playing the long game. All of the annoying yell screams and can’t control my voice noises my sons make at the dinner table, I’ve recorded. Once they hit the can’t get out of bed teenage years I will uses these recordings as their alarm clocks.

I’ve got about 12 yrs or so to go.

That is diabolical. I love it.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by dubc80

I feel for you, man.

My son was absolutely terrible at around that age when we first transitioned him to a big boy bed. Bedtimes would seriously take around 3-4 hours no matter what we tried.

As soon as we'd go to leave the room, he'd just get up and follow us out.
We'd try to be firm and say "no... bedtime" and put him back. Repeat 10x, if not more. Super frustrating.

There were countless times when my wife woke me up (with my son in her arms) as I had fallen asleep and he had snuck out of the room. Or vis versa if she was on bedtime duty.

We pretty much had to wait until he was asleep, then sneak out.

Nothing really helped... except for time. We battled for probably a year, or year and a half. Not fun.

My son is turning 6 this year and we've been over the hump for a while now as bedtime is now much easier. We now leave and allow him to play quietly in his own room if he doesn't want to sleep and he magically crawls into his own bed and goes to sleep after a while.

Thankfully we didn't have this problem with his younger sister.

For the door thing and preventing a little one from opening the door, I don't know if others are running into the same issues and like me didn't find a solution that seemed to make sense, but I'll share a solution I tossed together.

I have levers in my home and my little guy learned to open them soon after he started walking. There are seriously poor options for child proofing door levers. Those swinging plastic pieces of crap are ugly and look like they could potentially jam and you'd have issues getting into the room which would be a terrifying scenario. I also want it to look nice and those plastic things look like pixelated slingshots. I saw many front doors that have knob/lever/pinch combinations and thought, "Why not for bed rooms as my little guy can't open knobs yet?". Unfortunately, I could not find a product like this, so I decided to hack my own. On the outside it'll be a nice looking lever, on the inside it'll be a knob with those child proof things that are hard to open without significant adult level gripping force.

I did some boxing day shopping and acquired, then combined two Schlage F40 locks (privacy button lock knob and lever) and it looks like it's working great. (The Schlage F10 knob and levers are without a privacy lock if any of your prefer that.) I specifically chose these because it seems like Schlage is high quality and their products are very well standardized. The internal workings/hardware is the same as long as the hardware code is the same as far as I can tell. To me, I hope this means significantly less risk of the door knob/lever seizing due to incompatible hardware. The components look identical to me and I made sure to look at over a dozen other internal workings of Schlage and other branded knobs/levers before I felt confident in saying that. The hallway side stays a lever to keep the aesthetic of the home, the room itself has a knob which is more practical and easier to child proof.


I'm also glad to hear you're over the hump for sleep training. It's always nice to hear successes of other parents. My wife and I are contemplating another and not looking forward to the increased stress loads. Kids are awesome, but spousal relationship suffers huge. It's kinda like openly having mistress in the relationship that sucks away all your affection from your spouse and you yourself are reduced to having to serve the mistress with a fricken smile on your face.

Some may disagree, but to us, it feels like so many people pretend all is sunshine, unicorns and rainbows and how dare you have any negativity because you're in this beautiful situation called raising children. Look how freaking cute they are. Nah, these are separate issues/problems. My wife and I want to properly deal with issues as they arise in an effective and efficient manner and then things are fine. We don't want to feel like we're on crazy pills because we're struggling and everyone keeps acting like these stresses and struggles should exist at all. We don't want to be people who disappear for years after the children are born. We don't want to have a meh relationship and just wake up one day wanting out.

Through trial and error and a ton of tears, words and stubbornness, I think my wife and I have finally figured out how to be good spouses to one another with our current. We definitely had to completely re-invent how we interact as spouses. To be proactive, we're thinking to go to relationship counseling. We hope that we can learn a ton to improve each other and that we can take these learnings and experiences and help others parents as well. We think we can't be the only ones struggling with this and it's sure as hell is hard to muster up the energy at times to truly resolve spousal relationship stuff when you've burned through all your energy + reserves just on the parenting, work and miscellaneous side, so better to start while we aren't at the brink. Counseling also seems like something with pointless negative stigma that perhaps should be normalized. It's really just some form of self improvement.


Sorry for my blah. Just wanted to get it off my chest.

[Plett25]

Best as I can remember, this is what we did for our 3 kids

Routine. Same time, same routine. Bath and story time, ugh, too much work. Some people do that, but not us. Our routine was jammies on, light off, goodnight, close door.

Choice. Give them the illusion of control. Kids are stupid. Do you want Mommy to take you to bed, or Daddy? Red jammies or blue? Guaranteed they don't choose the last parent that nagged them or did something they didn't like. And they go to bed happy to have stuck it to that one parent.

Warning. 30 minutes to bed time, what do you want to do? 10 minute warning. 2 minute warning. Bedtime. Use different numbers everyday, it doesn't matter, remember kids are stupid. If you say 10 minutes and it winds up being 18 minutes, no problem, they don't know the difference.

Stubbornness. They'll test you every once in a while. Out stubborn them. You might have to camp out outside their room every once in a while. They don't get to win.

Bedtime, not sleep time. "I don't care if you go to sleep, but stay in your bed" This night require stubbornness. Again, kids are stupid, more likely than not they'll happily stay in bed but try to stay wide awake just to stick it to the man.

Bedtime is never a punishment. Bedtime helps them grow up big and strong. Kids are stupid, they don't know that until we teach them. "Do you want to be tall like daddy? Well, you need sleep." "Do you want to play with your friends tomorrow? You need sleep to have the energy." We basically taught our kids that sleep fixes almost everything, or at least makes it better.

Good luck.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Plett25

Best as I can remember, this is what we did for our 3 kids

Routine. Same time, same routine. Bath and story time, ugh, too much work. Some people do that, but not us. Our routine was jammies on, light off, goodnight, close door.

Choice. Give them the illusion of control. Kids are stupid. Do you want Mommy to take you to bed, or Daddy? Red jammies or blue? Guaranteed they don't choose the last parent that nagged them or did something they didn't like. And they go to bed happy to have stuck it to that one parent.

Warning. 30 minutes to bed time, what do you want to do? 10 minute warning. 2 minute warning. Bedtime. Use different numbers everyday, it doesn't matter, remember kids are stupid. If you say 10 minutes and it winds up being 18 minutes, no problem, they don't know the difference.

Stubbornness. They'll test you every once in a while. Out stubborn them. You might have to camp out outside their room every once in a while. They don't get to win.

Bedtime, not sleep time. "I don't care if you go to sleep, but stay in your bed" This night require stubbornness. Again, kids are stupid, more likely than not they'll happily stay in bed but try to stay wide awake just to stick it to the man.

Bedtime is never a punishment. Bedtime helps them grow up big and strong. Kids are stupid, they don't know that until we teach them. "Do you want to be tall like daddy? Well, you need sleep." "Do you want to play with your friends tomorrow? You need sleep to have the energy." We basically taught our kids that sleep fixes almost everything, or at least makes it better.

Good luck.

This.

Oh man, I forgot how important it is. Same thing goes for eating vegetables. My boy now believes that he's going to be the "green hulk" one day just by eating vegetables.

As you said, kids are stupid. Well not really, but on some things they are.

[troutman]

Did you try reading the Income Tax Act to the little one?

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-3.3/

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

For the door thing and preventing a little one from opening the door, I don't know if others are running into the same issues and like me didn't find a solution that seemed to make sense, but I'll share a solution I tossed together.

I have levers in my home and my little guy learned to open them soon after he started walking. There are seriously poor options for child proofing door levers. Those swinging plastic pieces of crap are ugly and look like they could potentially jam and you'd have issues getting into the room which would be a terrifying scenario. I also want it to look nice and those plastic things look like pixelated slingshots. I saw many front doors that have knob/lever/pinch combinations and thought, "Why not for bed rooms as my little guy can't open knobs yet?". Unfortunately, I could not find a product like this, so I decided to hack my own. On the outside it'll be a nice looking lever, on the inside it'll be a knob with those child proof things that are hard to open without significant adult level gripping force.

I did some boxing day shopping and acquired, then combined two Schlage F40 locks (privacy button lock knob and lever) and it looks like it's working great. (The Schlage F10 knob and levers are without a privacy lock if any of your prefer that.) I specifically chose these because it seems like Schlage is high quality and their products are very well standardized. The internal workings/hardware is the same as long as the hardware code is the same as far as I can tell. To me, I hope this means significantly less risk of the door knob/lever seizing due to incompatible hardware. The components look identical to me and I made sure to look at over a dozen other internal workings of Schlage and other branded knobs/levers before I felt confident in saying that. The hallway side stays a lever to keep the aesthetic of the home, the room itself has a knob which is more practical and easier to child proof.
.

I swear by the door monkey. Literally takes one second to put it on or remove it. Works perfectly. You can put it as high as you want so you can get in and out but your child can't.



https://www.amazon.com/DOOR-MONKEY-D...45845900&psc=1

[bigtmac19]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

For the door thing and preventing a little one from opening the door, I don't know if others are running into the same issues and like me didn't find a solution that seemed to make sense, but I'll share a solution I tossed together.

I have levers in my home and my little guy learned to open them soon after he started walking. There are seriously poor options for child proofing door levers. Those swinging plastic pieces of crap are ugly and look like they could potentially jam and you'd have issues getting into the room which would be a terrifying scenario. I also want it to look nice and those plastic things look like pixelated slingshots. I saw many front doors that have knob/lever/pinch combinations and thought, "Why not for bed rooms as my little guy can't open knobs yet?". Unfortunately, I could not find a product like this, so I decided to hack my own. On the outside it'll be a nice looking lever, on the inside it'll be a knob with those child proof things that are hard to open without significant adult level gripping force.

I did some boxing day shopping and acquired, then combined two Schlage F40 locks (privacy button lock knob and lever) and it looks like it's working great. (The Schlage F10 knob and levers are without a privacy lock if any of your prefer that.) I specifically chose these because it seems like Schlage is high quality and their products are very well standardized. The internal workings/hardware is the same as long as the hardware code is the same as far as I can tell. To me, I hope this means significantly less risk of the door knob/lever seizing due to incompatible hardware. The components look identical to me and I made sure to look at over a dozen other internal workings of Schlage and other branded knobs/levers before I felt confident in saying that. The hallway side stays a lever to keep the aesthetic of the home, the room itself has a knob which is more practical and easier to child proof.


I'm also glad to hear you're over the hump for sleep training. It's always nice to hear successes of other parents. My wife and I are contemplating another and not looking forward to the increased stress loads. Kids are awesome, but spousal relationship suffers huge. It's kinda like openly having mistress in the relationship that sucks away all your affection from your spouse and you yourself are reduced to having to serve the mistress with a fricken smile on your face.

Some may disagree, but to us, it feels like so many people pretend all is sunshine, unicorns and rainbows and how dare you have any negativity because you're in this beautiful situation called raising children. Look how freaking cute they are. Nah, these are separate issues/problems. My wife and I want to properly deal with issues as they arise in an effective and efficient manner and then things are fine. We don't want to feel like we're on crazy pills because we're struggling and everyone keeps acting like these stresses and struggles should exist at all. We don't want to be people who disappear for years after the children are born. We don't want to have a meh relationship and just wake up one day wanting out.

Through trial and error and a ton of tears, words and stubbornness, I think my wife and I have finally figured out how to be good spouses to one another with our current. We definitely had to completely re-invent how we interact as spouses. To be proactive, we're thinking to go to relationship counseling. We hope that we can learn a ton to improve each other and that we can take these learnings and experiences and help others parents as well. We think we can't be the only ones struggling with this and it's sure as hell is hard to muster up the energy at times to truly resolve spousal relationship stuff when you've burned through all your energy + reserves just on the parenting, work and miscellaneous side, so better to start while we aren't at the brink. Counseling also seems like something with pointless negative stigma that perhaps should be normalized. It's really just some form of self improvement.


Sorry for my blah. Just wanted to get it off my chest.

Love this post. I agree too. It's been a long time since my kids were this age, but I was having flashbacks reading this thread. Anything that strengthens your marriage during these stressful years is a good thing.

[pseudoreality]

My 6-year-old never slept right. It's hard getting her down, hard getting her up in the morning, and she gets us up in the middle of the night 3-4 times a week. It's brutal. My 2 year old is a dream. Goes down no problem, wakes up easy, and always a smile on her face. Every kid is different. I have no advice, just support. Lots of people will give you advice that might have worked for their kid, but that doesn't mean it will work for you. Maybe when they move out of the house you might sleep again.

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Holy #### balls, an app for sleeping.

Wow.

Haha, right? That’s such a “new parent / first kid” thing though. Add even one more kid in and the app goes out the window.

[SeeGeeWhy]

We did this with our littlest and it worked well. The Facebook group was also really helpful. I believe we had the 0-12 month old book.