A place to talk about parenting.
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I told my kids to pretend to sleep, that I couldn't tell if they were really sleeping or not, so they could trick me by just pretending, laying still with their eyes closed, that was fine, as long as I couldn't tell they were awake.
They of course ended up asleep but I never mentioned that.
Like anyone, actually being tired helps a lot too. Exhaust them in the daytime.
At 2, we reverted to me having to hold her in my arms and rock back and forth for like an hour. It lasted a couple months. It wasn't easy, but with earbuds I got to watch all of The Expanse on my phone, so that was nice.
For the other child we tried melatonin. Then at some point we switched to placebo. Get some random crunchy candy that they wouldn't otherwise recognize but will enjoy. Tell them it helps them sleep and relax. It kinda worked for a bit.
But ngl, I still sit on my daughter's floor for an hour, and she's 8. Sometimes there's no easy answer and it's about finding a way to make it tolerable.
Yeah, just talk to them about it in a transcendental way. Tell the kid:
"Your brain needs to rest. At night is when your brain does all the important work if remembering all the new words and places and people in your life. If you don't let your brain rest, you won't remember any those things and you won't learn all the new stuff you want to do. Most of your brain is busy working your eyeballs, so the first thing to do is close your eyes and keep them closed. This will let your brain start to wrap up your day. Tell your brain what you want it to do, and it will do it, say to yourself: brain, it's time for me to go to sleep now and for you to do your thing; I hope you make me some cool dreams and that you'll let me remember them in the morning." That's the transcendent thought, the idea that your conscious mind is actually in charge of your unconscious mind. You can tell it what to do and it will listen, and you can ask it questions about your ego and id and it will answer.
Starting this trancendent ways of thinking early is key to a happy stable life. Some people never learn it and they're fuck ups.
9 pm and or 11 pm is way too late for a kid to be going to sleep. It's stunting, no doubt. Their brains need like 11 to 14 hours of sleep to handle the exponential sensorial, motor, and cognitive growth they are experiencing. Their brains are sponges.
Sometimes with my kids they'll say they weren't tired and I'd say "okay, your not feeling tired, but let's ask your brain if your brain is tired and ready to sleep?" And then pause for a second and I'd say "what did your brain say?" And they say "my brain says it's ready for sleep." If brain says no, tell them "hey it should be, it will be soon, take a few minutes and think about places you like to go, who you might see there, and what you might do, and then check in with yourself again."
Use a white noise machine; don't need any bullshit waking them up. Definitely no screens in their room.
Another helpful thing could be to just reassure them that "mommy and daddy are going to bed in a little while too, we just have to clean up the house and get ready for tomorrow." We'll be around for a little while if you need one of us, but then we're going to sleep too."
Before bed I read three to five books with my kids, and it's mostly just to learn and talk, and to focus their brains on something. Tonight one of those books was flipping through the ULINE catalogue and talking about some of the pictures of the different things they sell (that's an industrial and office supply, business catalogue). We have a lot of great kids books in the rotation but also the kids dictionary, kids thesaurus, kids encyclopedia. We go to the library every few weeks and get like 25+ books. There are lots of great books about sleep, bedtime, the dark, that are staple reading. One favorite is Lemony Snicket's "The Dark." Do voices when you read? Try and make it immersive. Ad lib.
After books we do "best part, hardest part, looking forward to" where we each say the best parts of our day, the hardest parts of the day, and say what we're looking forward to tomorrow.
The last thing I say to my kids at night is "see you in the morning to...." And it could be to play, to go to breakfast, to get ready for school, to work, whatever. They want to know what their plan is for tomorrow and feel like they are a part of planning the day, so tell them what's on deck. It's part of that forward, goal oriented thinking.
Obviously the two year old is just starting with a lot of this stuff, but it is remarkable how much language a two year old understands even if they can't speak it back yet. So for my two year old most of her sleep hygiene comes from how we speak to her about sleep. I tell them often "we go to sleep every night, you've done it every night so far, and you'll do it every night for the rest of your life."
Kids are in bed for books by 7 pm at the latest and on their own after 8 pm or 8:30. If we do have to go in after 8 pm, its short and sweet. Back rub, calm talk, hold them and let them hear you do some deep breathing (they will syncronize to your breathing and demeanor), offer them water, make them blow their those good and hard (nasal drip is a big thing that keeps kids awake), give them a tums (reflux is another big thing that keeps kids awake, avoid acidic foods for lunch and dinner) retuck them in. For my two year old if she's struggling I'll say "show me where you're going to lay down for sleep tonight...." And she'll go right to laying down in a comfy position. Both of my kids are excellent sleepers. They've never once slept in our bed; "everyone sleeps in their own bed." Sometimes they have to cry it out, go in after to help them blow their noses.
If he's rolling around and kicking you guys, which is totally normal, we try "go to the potty and check in with your body." But especially as a dad with a son, he's going to get a lot of self-confidence from rough housing with you. You can't rewind the day at that point and you don't want to get him fired up right then before sleep, so roll around with him a little. We do "steamroller" where we take turns pretending to crush each other flat, then we blow ourselves back up. If hes still buzzing we say "play for one book" and he can bounce around the room a bit during one book. That helps him start to wind down, kind of puts a self imposed time limit on his shenanigans. More physical activity during the day will help with this, too. Rain snow or shine, get the kid into proper clothing and get them outside even if it's for 15 minutes.
This stuff waxes and wanes too. The other day my two year old fell off the side of the couch and full body landed on the wood floors and smacked her head. For the next four days she was in sleep regression. If one of them is sick, it might be a night where we're up and down feels like all night. Push through.
This is hard shit. I'm sure you're doing a great job. Keep at it.
Maybe he just needs to spend more energy. Going outside does miracles to sleep.
He obviously yearns for the mines.
Yeah, that is also a good idea. Today we were outside two times, once during lunch and then at 5pm and he was sleepy at 7:30, so we gave him a bath and put him to sleep, but then it took him still two hours to fall asleep. But at least then it was 10pm and not 11 like the days before.
Many of the suggestions in the comments make sense and will work for some children. Just keep in mind that every child is different and during some developmental phases things can shift and change significantly. Just because something worked for other parents, it may do the exact opposite for you. Sometimes being patient and waiting for a phase to pass is the only thing that works. It can take a week or two and in some extreme cases months or even a few years. Also keep in mind that trying something different every day will likely make things worse. Try something and (gently) stick with it for a while before evaluating.
Good luck!
Use a makeup brush to lightly caress their face.
Or drive in car for 5km, with calming music.
I remember my dad driving around with my little brother back then, somehow we never tried it, might be worth a try.
His big sister would fall asleep quickly then you gently stroke her forehead down to her nose but he hates it to be touched on his face with a passion.
Dark, quiet and comfy temperature.
If you can dim lights start to do that half an hour before. Read a story in the growing darkness, gives time for those sleep hormones to take effect.
Have a routine so they know that dim lights = bed time, that will take time to develop though.
Good luck!
It's very dark in the room, but I will try the thing with dimming the lights before.
My recommendation is to give the book “Precious Little Sleep” a read.
https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/
My friend Anna mentioned at dinner the other night something about her archive having books; maybe she has it for loan/purchase.
We’ve had some sleep issues and we had to use sleep training. We didn’t go full “cry it out”, but they have to get used to falling asleep by themselves. As long as someone is there, they’ll continue to be stimulated because they want to play, cuddle, and have fun. It wasn’t easy, but the lack of sleep was killing us. It’s feels pretty rough during their “learning phase”, but looking back after 8 years, it was the right choice.
When he was 10 months or so we had this too, so we did even with the crying out because I was so exhausted that I couldn't take it anymore because he would also wake up every hour. What improved was that he would sleep longer during the night but we couldn't quite transition to removing ourselves.
So now he never wakes up at night anymore. But sadly the problem moved to him not falling asleep forever.
We were lucky - our guys went to sleep pretty well on their own, but there were a few times where they were crying and we needed to stop ourselves from going in.
I think we did a thing where we'd go in immediately after the first shout; if he cried again, wait five minutes before going in; then ten minutes, etc. IIRC it took a few nights.
We did this too when he was like 10 months. Hm, perhaps it is time to try again.
Expend his energy (more play time) and routine. Right now the routine is you guys lay with him for hours. Also make sure both parents spend at least 15 min of quality time (no screens, playing what he wants) with him in the evening. It's going to take some time to get him straight with a new schedule. Best of luck!
Since it sounds like he’s used to you or your wife being there, you can try slowly removing yourself. What we did with our kid is start with a parent sitting or laying next to the bed, then every few days moving a little closer to the bedroom door. We’d still stay until they fell asleep.
Our kid got most anxious when we got to the part where moving put us out of their room, so we did that step a little more slowly where we stayed at the entrance of the bedroom but would have to leave the room for increasingly longer periods of time (go get a book to read, go to the bathroom, etc). They struggle with anxiety in general though, so your kid may not have this hurdle.
We too keep books next to their bed which they can read or look at until they get sleepy. We also have a volcano lamp we turn on at night they can watch.
That sounds good, but it always takes about 2 hours, so we wouldn't mind staying with him if he just would fall asleep within half an hour ^^
When his mom tells him she is going to the bathroom he can stay in the room for like 5 minutes but then he wonder what is taking so long and goes out to try to find her.
The books are a challenge already durin daytime. In the evening he just takes the book from us and throws it away.
But I think not lying in bed with him as a starter but sitting on a chair we should try. I will propose this.
I'm by far no expert, but I worked with children (aged 0-6) in a children's home. They had to get used to get to sleep alone as there was not enough capacity in the evening to stay with every single kid for a long period of time. (Of course we did everything possible to meet everyone's needs in a lot of different ways) One thing that helped if a kid was anxious when the adult left was to introduce a new plush toy that they chose by themselves. The toy would then get integrated throughout the day whenever the kid was being soothed/ calmed, and it was also verbally integrated...like it had a name that usually the kid chose and we referred to it. You can also make it part of their bed time story if that is part of the bedtime routine. What should happen is that the kid associates the plushie with being calmed. Now the second part: similar to "weaning-away" but together with the toy. As you gradually move away a little more every evening, every time your kid becomes upset, you reassure them you are there but refer to their plushie for comfort like "I'm here, and you can hug the crocodile/ take your crocodile/... (or whatever fits the situation). No big leaps, just gradually moving your location away from their bed...across the room...next to the door...someday in front of the door but doing something quiet outside so they can still hear you reassuring them and redirecting them.
Our daughter just started doing this too, she looks obviously tired from the day and of we sit on the couch she starts falling asleep so we go to bed but as soon as we all lay down she pops back up and starts climbing us and rolling around all loopy and delusional and just cracking up from being so sleepy
Yes exactly this is happening to him too.
He also loves music and we got him some children drums which he is playing during the day so often he starts playing air drums in the bed too, he probably has some melodies in his head.
He only let's his mom bring him to bed and then she stays there with him until he falls asleep. Sometimes he asks for me additionally to join and then he rolls in the bed kicks us, climbed on us and so on because he can't fall asleep.
Is it possible he's distracted by having someone there? He might be old enough to fall asleep on his own in a toddler bed.
Hm, we should try it. But most of the time even if his mom just is getting some water or goes to the toilet he runs after her.
Can you teach him that bed time means it's time to stay in bed (unless he needs to go to the washroom, etc)?
I mean as long as we stay there he does also.
Can you teach him to stay there even if you leave? It sounds like he needs to learn that.
Mines a little younger but going through similar phases. If he can’t sleep I let them cry for 5-10 minutes then come back and pat them. I recently had a stroke of genius and gave them a board book for bed. If they can’t sleep they get up and read the book until they’re tired again. That depends if your child likes that or not. Once my siblings dog came over and they chased it all around the house then slept really well, so I think exercise helps too.