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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Bedtime Schmedtime

I am at my wit's end.

Brookelyn is 18 months old. When she was 6 months old we started putting her in her bed awake and letting her "cry it out." Usually she would cry for no more than 10 minutes and be sound asleep. Her bedtime has always been at 8 o'clock. We have been doing this same routine for an entire year and she was doing good........until......

About 2 months ago she started climbing out of her bed. Since then bedtime has been a nightmare. I start her bedtime routine between 7:30 and 7:45 so that she is ready for bed by 8. I give her kisses and put her in her bed and she starts screaming. I tell her calm down, lay down, I love you, and shut the door. There is a small hole in the bottom of the door where a vent used to be and it just hasn't got around to getting fixed yet. Within a few minutes she is back in the living room smiling and laughing. She has learned how to crawl through the hole. I pick her up and without saying anything put her right back in bed, and then we go through this approximately a hundred or more times before she is finally asleep. If she doesn't crawl through the hole she plays in the bedroom and gets into things. I have even caught her jumping on the bed watching tv. Yep, she knows how to turn on the tv too.

I have tried everything I know. I have spanked. I have laid in there with her until she falls asleep (her in her bed, me in mine), I have laid in bed with her with both of us in my bed. I have rocked. I have read stories. I have given warm milk. I have no idea what to do next. Her daddy can usually spank her once and lay her down and she goes right down. However he usually goes to bed the same time she does because he gets up so early for work. But what about naptime?

The other day it took me 2 hours....2 hours...to get her to sleep. By the time she was asleep I was so worn out that I needed a nap more than she did I think.

That's my vent for the night but what I'm really needing is advice.....what do you do??????

4 comments:

  1. This is no fun at all!

    I know she's young not to take naps but I had to stop my son's naps by the time he was 2 or I couldn't get him in bed at night & he was still up by 6AM! It really worked for us. The only thing is dad HAD to give me a break in the evenings because I didn't get that naptime break anymore. HTH

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  2. Thanks Jenny. I have tried no naps but she is such a bear it's hard to handle her without a nap. She starts acting out so bad. When I do finally get her down for a nap she will sleep for 2 hours most of the time. Maybe I need to cut her naps shorter and see if that helps with bedtime :s

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  3. I understand. Wyatt starting needing to nap later and later in the day which put him later and later to bed. It's a tough time. It will pass:)

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  4. Yeah, I'm going to echo Suzanne. We had to move naptime back and shorten it. Oli used to go down at 11am and sleep for two hours. Now he often goes down at about 12:30 and sleeps until 2pm. I wake him if naptime goes over 2 hours.
    I'm sorry! This phase will pass before you know it!

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