4-Year Old and Bedtime

Is she still napping? If so, the old bedtime is VERY early for a 4 yr old. If my 3 yr old naps, he will stay up until 9:30. If he doesn't nap, 6:45/7 works just fine. If she is not napping, perhaps you just need to tire her out a bit more before the old bedtime.

All kids are different. When my oldest was 4 he did nap, and I could still get him in bed by 7:30/8 because he is a VERY energetic boy and is on the go all day long so he gets tired.

Does she still take a nap? My 4 year old is in bed by 7 if he doesn't take a nap, but if he does take a nap he goes to bed around 9:00. Every once in a while he will give me a hard time about going to bed, but I just have him read books or play with a few small toys in bed and he eventually falls asleep. He knows he's not allowed to come out of his room unless he has to go to the bathroom. You could try that with her.

i'm sorry if this sounds harsh. i just get exasperated with people who say they have 'no choice' when it comes to how they parent Very Small People.
you have lots of options other than lying down with her.
really.
you do.
she is 4. she is not old enough to decide what YOU will do at her bedtime. she needs you to be in charge of that.
it seems fairly clear that the bedtime you have set for her isn't working. start there. before 7 is incredibly early. it might work for infants. but she's not a baby or a toddler any more. move her bedtime back to something more realistic.
get a good routine going. bath, story, no tv, lights out, a few minutes of silent back-rubbing, then go.
you're the parent. whining, crying and unreasonable demands are part of being a 4 year old. they're not orders. they're not imperatives. they're what she uses to try and make her world as she wants it to be.
you decide what the reality is and create that, calmly and lovingly and with humor. just because she whines and cries doesn't mean that you are helplessly compelled to obey her.
let her read or play quietly or do whatever she wants in her room so long as she's quiet. tell her you'll be back later to turn out the light if she wants it left on.
walk out and close the door.
THAT's the option you have.
khairete
S.

I think your expectations are a bit unrealistic if you are still expecting her to go to sleep at 6:45-7. Would you be able to go to bed at 6:45? Your daughter's not a baby any more, 8:30-9:30 is a much more realistic bedtime. My kids, 8 and 5, go to bed at 9pm every night.

On the whining & crying & demanding... she's playing you. Who's the parent? No, you do NOT have to lay down with her to help her go to sleep, at 4, she is perfectly capable of doing it on her own. Let her cry & whine if she wants, doesn't have to mean she gets her way. Children can cry & whine, and they will be ok.

I think it's harder in the summer since it stays light out later. Plus, as others have said, you have to take into consideration her activity level and nap vs no nap.

I've always marveled at parents who have kids who go down at 7pm. My girls have NEVER gone down early. My just turned 3 yr old wakes up somewhere between 6am and 7am. Her normal bedtime is around 8pm, but right now she goes to sleep somewhere between 9pm and 10pm (occasionally later, but that's if she has a late nap).

You do NOT have to lay with her until she falls asleep. What we have done is tell our daughter that she does not have to go to sleep, but she does have to lay in her bed and be quiet. She can read books, play quietly with her stuffed animals, etc, but she must stay in her bed. We leave a night light on, turn on her "sleepy" music, and close the door. She is allowed to come out to go potty, and that's it. She feels "empowered" to go to bed when she wants, and we aren't "fighting" with her about her bedtime.

I would agree that at her old bedtime she probably is not that tired yet. My daughter is almost 5 and she is usually in bed between 8 and 8:30 during the school year, while this summer it has been more like between 9 and 9:30 (it's light out here until almost 10 now!). If she's not that tired at bedtime and we've already read stories and all that, I give her the option of "reading" books herself in bed until she is ready to fall asleep. As long as she is quiet, stays in bed, and is not dancing around or coming out of her room, she can stay up. You can't MAKE them fall asleep but you can stipulate that they have to stay in bed! Sometimes DD is tired enough after a very active day that it's not an issue, but even if she wants to look at books some more in bed, she's not up much later - maybe 30 minutes at the most, but at least I can leave the room and she falls asleep on her own!

My 4 year old does something like this too. She crys about not wanting to go to sleep, and askes me to lays with her. I try to avoid this because I did that with my oldest and it was a VERY hard habit to break.
So here is what I do. I have cut out her naps. She still gets rest time where she lays on the sofa for a while and she can read or listen to music. Then at bed time we to a bath and we read a few books. Then I sing to her (poor kid she likes rock a by baby, and soft kitty from big bang theroy dont know why but I think its cute) then I put on soft music. I leave a soft light on the other side of the room. So see has light but it not right by her face.
When she askes if I will lay with her I tell her that I am sorry but I jsut cant right now, but that I will come look in on her in a little bit to make sure she is ok. that works most night. on the nights she is over tired or wants to fight about i I firmly have to put my foot down. I tell her I lvoe her but that I am not going to lay in bed with her tonight and walk out of the room. She might be upset for a bit but she will fall asleep and never rembers that she was upset by the morning.
Be strong sweetie. Breaking this might be had at first, but if you let it go on for much longer it will become even more hard. Being mom is a hard job and I understand why you gave into her to begin with, but its good that you want it to stop. I am sure whatever you do it will be done with love, and your little one does too!

I think her new bedtime hour is more appropriate.
She's most likely not tired enought at 7pm so the later time is best.
Make sure she's active throughout the day.
My almost 4 yr old goes down at either 745 or 9:30 depending up on the day, it's activity level & if she's had a nap or not.
You can lay down with her or stay just outside her room for a few mins.
Again, I think later is better in this instance.

Not to long after my son turned 4 he had the same problem. He was the best sleeper out of my 2 kids then all of a sudden he was wanting to stay up to see what I was doing or to play. I made sure I stuck to a night time routine. He also had a hard time because around the time of his no sleeping problem his dad had switched shifts at work so idk if that had something to do with it. But I do believe a quite radio or something really helps for being 4 years old he liked listening to a lullaby cd I got at my baby shower. Sometimes he will take a couple of his action figure guys to bed with him but I tell him he has to be quite and usually within 5-10 minutes he's asleep. Also I noticed on days he was having trouble sleeping were on days we didn't have much physical playtime. So I started letting my kids go out for a few to run off any extra energy they had after bath time but they were told not to play in dirt or anything because they just got baths but they could run in the yard or ride their bikes for a few. That seemed to help.

I'm at work so I can't read all the responses, if this is a repeat I'm sorry.

My daughter just turned 5 last Friday and since about 4 1/2 she has been doing the same thing. She has always been a great sleeper, by 9ish months she was putting herself to sleep, never an issue. I put my daughter to bed at 7 (I think it's is a reasonable time, I think most kids don't get enough sleep) and she is awake by 6:30/7 every morning (not naps).

What I do that works 90% of the time is tell her "lie down and try to go to sleep. If you are not asleep in 20 minutes you can get up." If you think she will still be awake in 20 minutes you can change it to "if you're not asleep in 20 minutes I'll come check on you and we will read a short book" or something like that. If she starts asking if it's been 20 minutes I tell her we have to start the timer over. She is always asleep within in 20 minutes.

I've also recently found out that my daughter has a rough time with the sun being out as late as it is. We are planning to move her bed so that her head isn't as close to the window.

I hope this works for you as well as it has for us. Best of luck!

Well, I had 3 kids that all turned 4 together! Thats okay though. Don't get worked up about it. Stay open and relaxed in my opinion. Change up the night time ritual than . Bath time, story/song, Maybe a graham cracker and milk mommy and me snack. Tell her your new routine and the plans before hand. Ask her maybe what night time activity she would like to do before bedtime. however let her know you only will do that activity if she agrees to go to sleep at 8:30! or whatever time you prefer. My kids are now 8 yrs old. They are sometimes a handful getting to bed. All they do is giggle and idk what else really. Thats when you really start getting firm Thats all it takes though really. I would make the plan and stick with it. be firm and dont give in. once you give in than it could only get worse.

I have a 3 year old and have been through a similar stage with him. The best thing we did was let him know that he doesn't have to sleep, but he does need to be quiet in his room. He took a couple of cars into bed with him and ended up playing, sometimes for over an hour, until he fell asleep.

When he would call for us, we would have the same 3 or 4 lines to repeat to him. It was something like, "We can hear you, we aren't going to do anything until the morning, we love you, good night." He would fuss and carry on and sometimes we would close the door and let him know that when he is quiet we would open it again.

That, or switch up her bedtime routine to totally throw her off...
Good luck!

Our 4.5 stopped napping a while ago. She's in bed 8:30 ish. She did go through a phase of fighting going to bed and would come out every 15 minutes or so up until 9:30 or later! I lay and snuggle with the kids but only for about 5-10 minutes and then let them fall asleep on there own. Good luck, I know it's tough.

Its probably because of summer that she doesnt want to go down. In the winter my son would go to bed at about 7:30 with very little fuss, but now that it is summer it has been anywhere between 8:30 and 9:30, its just not dark until then. I bet she will be better when the days start getting shorter.

SInce she is getting older she does not need as many hours of sleep.

Unless you are getting her up by 6am each morning she has no biological need to go to bed before 8pm. With no naps she may not even need to go down until 9 or so.

She only needs about 9-10 hours, if she is a sleeper then maybe 11 but she really does not need to go to bed as soon as dinner is over.

I guess what I am thinking is if she actually went to sleep at 7pm and slept 10 hours that would make her wake up around 5 am each day. That's way early for a child, even if she has to be up to go to child care. We usually just laid a sleeping child back down for a couple of hours when they came in that early. They woke up and ate breakfast with the rest of the kids.

Don't you guys do anything as a family after dinner? What about T-Ball or soccer, she's old enough for these and they often don't even have games or practice until after dinner time.

Why does she need to be in bed so early.

Get her moving! During the winter our 3 and 5 year olds stretch it to 9 or a little later. This summer, I can't keep them awake past 7:30-8:00. We have them outside ALL day. They will bike approx 3 miles, then we will go to the pool for a couple hours, and on Sat we did all this plus we roller skated for about an hour. They are exhausted at the end of the day. I do work full time so the multiple activities are always on the weekend, but we still get in outdoor play in the evening after we get home from work. Can't keep the kids up past 8!

Sounds like a phase. Some might disagree but I would avoid laying down with her, my friend still has to do this w her 7 year old! If mine stall, I give a little banana, cup of water, let them look at a book or one of my bathrobes to cuddle with.

I don't know what time she gets up, but 6:45 - 7:00 is too early, IMO, for a 4 year old to go to bed. I'm thinking more like 8:00 - 8:30.

If you adjust her bedtime and she still is having a problem, I'd do the bedtime routine, kiss her goodnight and put a baby gate across her doorway so that even if she gets up, she won't get out. Then just leave her and ignor her cries and pleas. She will probably fall asleep on the floor in front of the door, but that's okay. Move her to her bed. After a couple of nights, I'm sure she'll adjust just fine.

I think it is a phase. My son when he was 4 would try his hardest to stay up as long as he could. I would go in and rub his back and talk to him softly. I would put on the radio on low so that way he could listen to the music and sleep. Every now and then he would be back up wanting to know what we were doing. She will go back to going back to bed for you. Just give it some time and maybe change your nightly routine.