Our daughter is 2 years old. We sleep "trained" her around 10 months and she has been sleeping through the night ever since. In the past, she would wake up occassionally throughout the night but we would never tend to her so she would self-sooth and put herself back to sleep. From our perspective, she has slept from 7 pm to 7 am for over a year. In August of this year we moved her to a big girl bed and in October we had our 2nd child. The eldest daughter continued to sleep "through the night" in her room until recently.
Our 2 year old can now climb out of her bed, open doors, climb out of cribs and climb over gates. Our nighttime routine now includes a battle for up to 2 hours before she finally goes to sleep around 9 pm for the night. Because she thinks this is a game, we sit on the floor outside her door and tell her she must return to bed every time she tries to leave her room. This at least alleviates her running into the family room giggling and has seemed to help.
Any ideas on how to get her to stay in bed from the onset? She also comes in our room now whenever she wakes up in the middle of the night which we would like to stop.
We are having the same problems with her nap. Our battle usually begins around 1 pm on the weekends and after 1.5 hours we usually give up which means she is only getting naps during the week at daycare. She still "needs" the nap but any thoughts on letting her give up the nap or should we keep fighting her on this? And - Any ideas of how to keep her in her bed?
I was directed to the supernanny website by a friend. http://www.supernanny.com/Advice/Search.aspx?_pbg_page=1&...
We were already moving in the right direction with our physical presence at bed time. In other words, we started by sitting by the bed, then moved to sitting outside the door and are moving further away each day. Supernanny says not to verbablly respond to the child. So last night I did not acknowledge her when she called out and if she comes to our room in the middle of the night we will not verbally acknowledge but simply return her to her bed. Last night she fell asleep in 20 minutes! And came to our room only once around 10:30 and we quickly escorted her back to her bed! Things are definately moving in the right direction.
Thanks for all the advice on quiet time. I think we will move in that direction this weekend.
Thanks to everyone who responded.
Tivo Supernanny. She has tackled this exact issue several times. She also has a book or 2 out check them out. She's got a great strategy. Its a lot of work, but it works in the end.
Good luck. Don't give up :)
She may be a little young yet, but you could try to set up some type of a reward system with her. If she goes to bed and stays in bed she gets to do a special activity with you. Being a new big sister the extra one on one attention may be just what she needs.
As for nap time it may be time to switch to "quiet time". When my son was this age I only required him to spend one hour in his bedroom. He could play quietly if he wasn't sleepy. If you feel she still needs a nap, let her choose a couple of quiet toys to play with on her bed and limit her movement to staying on her bed.
Much to my chagrin, my son stopped napping regularly shortly after he turned 2. I ended up introducing quiet time. Each afternoon he is gated into his room with some low stimulation toys/books and a non messy snack for one hour. Sometimes he sleeps, mostly he doesn't. I have come to discover that what he needs is downtime but not always sleep. After we stopped pushing actual sleep in the afternoon the bedtime issues just disappeared. At first he did not like being stuck in his room but in a couple of weeks it became routine and he got used to it.
i would love to read what others have to say. we are having a similar situation. for weeks we have been fighting at nap time. 2 days in a row now i've put off nap time from 1pm to 2:30. she was tired enough that she slept for an hour. i told her she didn't have to sleep but had to rest and be quiet in her room. she was out like a light. she's never been a good sleeper at night. since we pushed the nap time out, bedtime is about 30 minutes later and we haven't had a problem with it. good luck!
I wish I could give some advice but I am in a similar situation... I would love to hear any ideas in how to keep them in bed after they are physically able to get out of bed by themselves
