bedtime issues

[bear]

so we moved our 3 yo to a bed when he turned 3 in August. i swear it is like living with a newborn again. we kept the same bedtime ritual; bath, books, rub back, lights out. we start typically around 8:30. he has not been falling asleep until about 11:00. it SUCKS.

he constantly gets up. i have NO problem rubbing his back but then he starts to play. i tell him if he plays i will leave. and i do. and he gets up and comes downstairs. we have tried ignoring him altogether. we have tried bringing him back up to bed every time. we have tried talking about it. yelling about it. it is dreadful. dreadful. dreadful. a friend suggested putting on of those door handle things on the knob so he can't open it but there is NO way i could/would do that.

i have just recently started to try ignoring him in his room when he starts playing but staying there with him. i lay next to him but turn my back. he seems to eventually settle and sleep and it is faster but argh!!!!

then, every single time he wakes up at night he thinks he needs to get up. he has to have ME not hubby. and sometimes it is 3 times a night of taking him to his room and rubbing his back.

needless to say i am exhausted and frustrated...

any thoughts? suggestions? do you stay with your kids until they are all the way asleep? does your kid seem to need less sleep than average. i swear this child is NOT getting enough but... he never had this problem in the crib.

*whew, ends whining* :D

[angeles]

Well, my son would sleep with me and my boyfriend if we would allow it. When he is at my parents' he sleeps with them. My boyfriend isn't comfortable with him sleeping in the bed with us, so we've set a boundary that when he stays the night with us he has to sleep in his bed first before he is allowed to come in mommy's bed. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, I'll scoot over and cuddle into him. I've never really had any trouble with him going to sleep though. God blessed me with a son who loves to sleep. :D

xo, angeles

[Clementine]

my heart seriously goes out to you.
you and i seem to have had similar sleep issues with the kiddos.
i'm sorry i can't be of much help because my son sleeps with us now. well, more like he sleeps with either me or my husband. the sleep situation has become so dreadul that we don't sleep in the same bed now. there just isn't room. we're workiing on slowly getting him used to sleeping in his own bed....again.

again, [hugs]

[bear]

it sucks doesn't it! [hugs] my daughter would usually come in and go right to sleep with us in situations like this. this boy struggles with that even. last night he came to our bed and then woke halfway through and started kicking me and telling me to get out! my husband has gone and slept on the couch too. it is so hard when you can't pick it apart with the kid because he is TOO young to articulate.

[FaerieDreamer]

so I'm scared now. My son does this already and he's still in his crib!

He will scream and throw his blankets, and stuffed animals out of his crib at least 3 times a night before finally settling down to sleep. Bedtime starts at around 8:30, but it's rare that he's actually asleep before 9:30-10. And he's been waking up 2 and 3 times a night as well. Some nights he's awake for up to 3 hours, wanting to play or be held or whatever. Coming to bed with us no longer works because he sees it as extra playtime with Mama and Daddy. Usually one of us will end up on the couch with him lying on us in order for him to go back to sleep.

It's gotten to the point where I think we are going to just have to let him cry it out on his own in the middle of the night. Otherwise none of us is getting any sleep.

[little blue pea]

A squeeze light + fort is your friend [post02].

Seriously though, we moved Bran into his big boy bed when he was about 3, and it was nightmare city at first. I tried to think of ways to make his bed as appealing as I could for him, so I got him a little key-chain type squeeze light and made a make-shift fort over his bed with a sheet (at this point he was big enough that I wasn't concerned about him suffocating or anything terrible like that) and it totally worked. He never got out of bed after that (sans the occasional 1am trip to the potty, or if he's sick and uncomfortable). Now he's a big music buff and he has a small kid-friendly radio/cd player in his room and he goes to bed listening to music. Every night he'll think of a song he chooses as his bedtime song (this week his newest, greatest musical discovery is "Peaches" by the Presidents of the United States) and I'll put it on repeat for him, go into his room later when he's sleeping and turn off his radio. I don't mind that he does little things like this or whatever to go to sleep-I'm just thrilled that he actually goes to sleep willingly in his own bed!

[FaerieDreamer]

There was an article about this in this month's Parenting magazine. The author had all sorts of problems getting her son to sleep in his bed all night. He found out that it was easy to get in and out of so he'd wake up and come into her room 2-3 times a night. At first she'd do the whole talking/soothing back to sleep routine, but found that woke him up more than put him back to sleep, so she started just walking him back to bed and tucking him in again. But that didn't stop him from getting up so she used a sticker chart for him as an incentive. Basically, she gave him a sticker for every night he stayed in bed and for every 3 stickers he'd get a Hot Wheel. Then she started upping the amount of stickers he needed to earn until he was staying in bed all night every night on his own.

She said now she's using the stickers again for potty training. *laugh*

This is just a suggestion for Bear and Clementine, my son's not quite old enough to understand the concept yet.

[bear]

Thanks!! :) I'll have to think about that! Could work. Last night sucked. He was up 3 times. and he always comes to me. i even tried to tell him he could go to daddy sometimes but... ;l

so frustrating!