My 2.5 year old won't go to bed

[Hemi-Cuda]

My almost-3 year old daughter is a total night owl, and there seems to be nothing we can do to change that. On a normal day she'll wake up between 8-9 am, take a 90 minute nap sometime between 2-4 pm, and then she'll be up until at least 10. Doesn't matter if we shorten the nap or if it happens earlier, even with a 15 minute nap in the car she'll still be wide awake in the evening. Even if we lie down in bed with her with the lights off at 8, she'll talk and sing to herself for 2 hours before finally falling asleep.

The only thing that will make her fall asleep before 10 is if she gets no nap, but that's a hard gamble. With no nap if we can keep her awake until at least 7 pm, then she'll sleep the whole night. But most times she'll pass out around 5-6 and wake up 90 minutes later, then we get a wide awake toddler until 1 am. The good thing is when she finally is asleep for the night, she's out. No midnight wandering or worrying about making too much noise, she won't get out of bed until 8

I'd rather have this than my buddy's situation though. His two year old goes to bed like clockwork every night at 7, but then awakes like clockwork again at 5 am. He says it's fine since he's a morning person anyway, but anytime I'm awake before 7 am I'm a miserable SOB

[tvp2003]

Originally Posted by troutman

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

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

And have the little one turn into a lawyer?

Then you've got a real problem on your hands...

[bigtmac19]

Originally Posted by 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.

You don’t unfortunately. There are always things to worry about with respect to your children.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

I'd rather have this than my buddy's situation though. His two year old goes to bed like clockwork every night at 7, but then awakes like clockwork again at 5 am. He says it's fine since he's a morning person anyway, but anytime I'm awake before 7 am I'm a miserable SOB

This is literally me. Both my kids are in bed by 7 and up between 5 and 6. I used to be a night owl but I've become a morning person over the years. Mostly it had to do with grad school where my classes started at 7:30 am every day. I had to adapt or die.

Not only did it prepare me for my career, but it unknowingly prepared me to be a parent. Thank god for that.

[Manhattanboy]

Glad I don’t have kids but best of luck.

[marsplasticeraser]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

My almost-3 year old daughter is a total night owl, and there seems to be nothing we can do to change that. On a normal day she'll wake up between 8-9 am, take a 90 minute nap sometime between 2-4 pm, and then she'll be up until at least 10. Doesn't matter if we shorten the nap or if it happens earlier, even with a 15 minute nap in the car she'll still be wide awake in the evening. Even if we lie down in bed with her with the lights off at 8, she'll talk and sing to herself for 2 hours before finally falling asleep.

This one is easy. Stop the nap. Even a 5 minute nap in the car will mean not sleeping at night.

We spent $500 on a sleep therapist to get that nugget. Worked like a charm.

We’ve now had 7pm bedtime and sleep through to 6:30am for 3 years.

[marsplasticeraser]

I’m late to this game.

We Had very similar issue. We couldn’t leave room or chaos. I’d lie in room in other bed or on floor for3+ hrs.

Got a sleep therapist. Solved the issue in 2 weeks. Solution was so simple and intuitive. Felt dumb for not figuring it out. If you want to know what we did, I’ll reply and save you the $$$$

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

There are so many resources out there in the world, but I've had the most success just talking to other parents in the past.

My boy is 2 and a half years old and it has become a struggle to get him to go to bed. Google reveals that it is common for 2 year olds to have a 'sleep regression' , which I thought we already experienced right after he turned 2. Back then he was just waking up a lot, crying in his crib, calling out for us. Right now it is actually a fight to get him into bed. He is literally kicking, screaming, wriggling, and doing whatever he can to get out of that situation.

It got to the point in his crib where he was jumping up and down on his mattress and basically clearing his waist over the top of the crib. I actually caught him falling out the one time I came in to check on him. At that point we decided to move to a big boy bed as I was worried for his safety.

So we transitioned him to the big boy bed about a week ago, its a Jeep and he loves it. But we still struggle to get him to go to bed.

It used to be so easy, he'd come up, drink a bottle, sit on our lap in the rocking chair and read 3 or 4 stories then just lay him down say good night, give him his stuff animal and bam he's out. We had this for over a year and it was amazing.

Then a switch just flipped, he got difficult, then better, and now extremely difficult. We've been weening him off the bottle, so that might be part of it, going down to half and watered down milk. He still uses a soother at night time, but not during the day. But he won't even come sit with me for story time, he hides in the room somewhere because he knows if he sits on my lap its going to lead to bed time.

We put him in the bed and he might be fine, laying there, but as soon as we lave the room hes up and at the baby gate we have on the door way yelling screaming and crying.

Just curious if others have gone through this and what they did to try and work through it. Most things I have experienced with babies was 'just wait' because they are always changing so fast, but this has been going on for months..

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan

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

Screams and crying from the other side of the door in a dimly lit hallway with a hook sticking out from behind a rattling door...

"I know what you did last slumber"


The door monkey concept is pretty neat. I don't think I need it, but I'll keep it in the back of my mind to recommend to other parents who need a door solution. Thanks for the recommendation!

[TheSutterDynasty]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

My almost-3 year old daughter is a total night owl, and there seems to be nothing we can do to change that. On a normal day she'll wake up between 8-9 am, take a 90 minute nap sometime between 2-4 pm, and then she'll be up until at least 10. Doesn't matter if we shorten the nap or if it happens earlier, even with a 15 minute nap in the car she'll still be wide awake in the evening. Even if we lie down in bed with her with the lights off at 8, she'll talk and sing to herself for 2 hours before finally falling asleep.

The only thing that will make her fall asleep before 10 is if she gets no nap, but that's a hard gamble. With no nap if we can keep her awake until at least 7 pm, then she'll sleep the whole night. But most times she'll pass out around 5-6 and wake up 90 minutes later, then we get a wide awake toddler until 1 am. The good thing is when she finally is asleep for the night, she's out. No midnight wandering or worrying about making too much noise, she won't get out of bed until 8

I'd rather have this than my buddy's situation though. His two year old goes to bed like clockwork every night at 7, but then awakes like clockwork again at 5 am. He says it's fine since he's a morning person anyway, but anytime I'm awake before 7 am I'm a miserable SOB

I doubt these things are coincidence.

[OMG!WTF!]

Anyone else reading this for insomnia tips? I totally need to schedule my bedtime better and stick to it. And also get over my FOMO. CNN will show the same stuff blowing up in a loop tomorrow too.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

Anyone else reading this for insomnia tips? I totally need to schedule my bedtime better and stick to it. And also get over my FOMO. CNN will show the same stuff blowing up in a loop tomorrow too.

As a fully grown adult, I hope you rely more on spanking the money than the aforementioned door monkey.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

Anyone else reading this for insomnia tips? I totally need to schedule my bedtime better and stick to it. And also get over my FOMO. CNN will show the same stuff blowing up in a loop tomorrow too.

Waking up earlier made me just have to sleep. Solved my Insomnia. Up at 5 - 530 every morning now.

[GreenLantern]

This thread is pure gold, the CP collective has really come out to play.

So many things to respond to, but generally I think it all started in the summer when we went to the lake in a camper for 10 days and routine went out the window. He had so much fun on the beach playing all day, but wouldn't nap, and it was +30 in the camper, then come night time it was full on melt down mode. Mistakes were made, and I knew they were mistakes in the moment.

Carry this forward, things got a bit better, but then over Christmas things went back to the lack of routine for the sake of late nights with family. Again I knew this was a mistake in the moment.

I think the biggest thing will be me learning to sacrifice those nights for the sake of my kids sleep and my own sanity. We got him down pretty good last night after we could convince him to get in his bed. He has a jeep bed with a night light that he can turn on, so I gave him Woody and Buzz and said you can play as long as you want, but don't leave your bed. He was out after about 15 minutes of playing.. but it took about 45 minutes to convince him to stay in his bed.

Also the grow clock has been a complete bust, he hates it. He likes watching the sun wink then the stars come out, but after that he says its to bright and wants it unplugged.

He is a ball of energy, as I was at that age, my parents always said it would come back to haunt me, they were right!!

We were battling before to get him upstairs, so now we ask if he wants to go hide from Mommy, which of course he does, so he runs upstairs, hides in our bed, then hides behind the chair in his room. But I think from reading posts in here this is a mistake because I am amping him up. It's great to get him to go upstairs and put on PJ's without a fight, but now hes all hopped up on mountain dew and excited. Need to curb the hiding, get him upstairs with the promise of stories and snuggles.

He can't get out of his room because of the gate at the door, and without the mattress spring he doesn't have the momentum to launch himself over it, yet. But part of me wonders if that is a mistake as well.. because I'm basically replacing the crib with the gate, and he's still not learning to independently stay inside his room and in his bed..

[Plett25]

Looks like you're on the right track, it'll all work out fine. Making conscious choices and changes about parenting is IMO the only real test of good parenting.

We're all just making it up, making mistakes and flying by the seat of our pants.

[red sky]

Originally Posted by 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.

Same with me. One amazing sleeper one not so good sleeper.

We sleep trained my daughter and she is a dream to put to sleep and very rarely wakes during the night. My son had re-flux so it was hard to sleep train him because he was in obvious discomfort. Now at 6 he needs someone to lay with him until he falls asleep and he ends up waking in the middle of the night 4/7 nights a week. Oh well, eventually he will grow out of it...

[Mccree]

I guess we are lucky, both our kids slept well. Our biggest fight was over Nap time with my daughter. At 18 months she was done with naps. We did not do anything special just the same routine every night just not necessarily at the same time. Best of luck to those parents out there fighting it.

[jeffporfirio]

we have used these in the past

Spoiler for size

Spoiler!

[BigNumbers]

wow... I feel for you OP and others, that's tough. We lucked out I guess, all three sleep from 730pm to 7am. I find lots of exercise and outdoor time tuckers them out, and they sleep well. Having lots of friends nearby is great, they can run themselves ragged and flop into bed!

[topfiverecords]

Just to make all of you jealous mine asked if he could go to bed tonight before it was even bedtime.

[stang]

Best move we ever made was not allowing the kids to sleep with us. Obviously they come in our room and sometimes they need to lay for a bit to be soothed but then it’s back to your bed.

Right from day one that was our expectations.

Our oldest was terrible for going to sleep, always up yelling, scared etc. The tough love worked and she eventually outgrew it. She’s 13 now.