Bedtime Hoopla

It has been forever since I have been on here - good to see many of you! We have been fighting bedtime problems for about 2 months now and we need to make a drastic change. We were always 6:30/7 pm bed timers until about 2 years old (we will be 3 on March 10th) and then that switched over a time change and other changes to about 7:30/8. If the girls were asleep at 8 or so that would be awesome, but two major things are happening. One is that Jude is just off the deep end with energy and has no desire to go to bed, says she is not tired, makes up every excuse in the book. After an hour or more of her manic behavior she drops sound asleep - and the rest of us are wasted for the evening. Then it is freaking hard to get them up for preschool the next day. Zoe's issue is she is deathly scared at bedtime right now. I knew this was coming as she was my nightmare girl...poor little thing is scared of everything and screams bloody murder if I leave the room and has begun waking several times a night to come into me - so I end up going back to their bedroom most nights around 3 or 4 a.m. and sleeping there. This is quite an age...lol. I am trying some techniques with Zoe but I am honestly more concerned with Jude. They have been in Montessori for about 6 months now. We have to leave at 8:00 a.m. and we get home about 3:30. They only nap from 1:15ish to 2:45 there - at home they would nap for 2+ hours (well, Zoe would for sure). So they are cranky when they get home - they have a snack and then around 4:30/5 I swear they could go to sleep, we do dinner 5:30/6 and once we head up for bath, etc. at 6:30/6:45 they have caught a second wind and it is impossible. I am REALLY stumped with how to fix this mess but these 2 year olds are getting crankier and so are we. Suggestions? Or do I need to wait this out?

 

Sounds like what we went thru before dropping naps. They were cranky a couple days but the 6-7p bedtime was much better than the 830-9 that was before. Now if they don't feel well or we are staying out they lay down and have no problems taking a nap when I need them too. We dropped naps in oct and they turned 3 in dec. Good luck!!!!

 

Royce was scared of bedtime. Ghosts, shadows, you name it, he was scared of it. I won't say it's completely gone away, but it's a lot better. We let him fall asleep in our bed when needed, we put in a new night light (one that sits on his dresser) and gave him monster spray.

Good luck!

Oh, have you tried putting them down earlier? Skip the bath, eat quickly, for a few weeks until they get caught back up on sleep?

 

I agree with this...they sound over tired.

 

Sounds like either overtired or time to drop nap. You could try the earlier bedtime for a week or so and see if that corrects the problem. If that doesn't work, try dropping the naps. Or maybe just Jude needs to drop the nap. When bedtime became a 1.5-2 hr battle with my twins this summer (at age 2.5 yrs), we dropped the nap and they went back to falling asleep exhausted at night. We moved bedtime up a little earlier until they caught up on their sleep and then moved it back to when we needed their bedtime to be. All my kids dropped their naps around age 2.5-3 yrs old.

 

Ditto the overtired comments. My little ones still go to bed between 6:30 and 7 and they are 6! They need a solid 11 to 12 hours. I hate the early bedtime but they need it. For your little ones, I'd try the earlier bedtime and see if it helps. GL!

 

So here is a question. I really think the earlier bedtime is key, but I have yet to accomplish it this week. Screaming, crying, saying scared, you name it they are doing it. Does it sound like at this point I need a couple of days of CIO? The thing is I truly believed Zoe was scared but now it has become such a big deal that now it is hard telling if it is 100% scared or a lot of two year old temper in there. It is terrible to hear but they are exhausted and so are we!

 

What helped for Royce being scared, was allowing him to fall asleep in our room and giving him the tools (night light/monster spray) to deal with scary stuff on his own. If she's really scared, then CIO is going to be torture for her, monsters coming in the room, tree branches through windows, owls hooting, all of those things are scary and if mom or dad isn't going to save me, I'm totally going to freak out. So if she's really scared, I'd try to reassure her, give her a night light, black out curtains, noise machine, monster spray, and try to work with her through the fears. It took several months, and occasionally he'll have an off day/night, but it's mostly better now.