Settling 10mth at bedtime

[james030405]

I have a 10.5mth DS who at nap times settles without any crying or assistance.  I am able to put him down with little wind down (I found this made things worse) and he rolls around for 10-15mins and then falls asleep.

My trouble comes when I put him down for his bedtime nap.  For a week (about 2 weeks ago) he settled just like at nap times, but now he cries and needs me to help him settle.  Nothing has changed in his development or teething etc, and I hve tried a few things that I thought were the problem but nothing seems to work.

I have tried increasing A time to 4.5hrs between nap #2 and bed time and this doesn't work
I have tried doing less A time and also doesn't work
I have tried playing quietly in his bedroom 30mins before bedtime
I have given him my shirt and left the light on thinking it might be a separtion thing- during the day he can see me leave and at night I put him down in a dark room.
I have bathed him before dinner as I find a bath can "wake him up"

I am at a loss as to what else I can do. Any suggestions would be helpful.  I am now wondering if I should wake him early from his naps to bring them in line so he can have a 7pm bedtime.

Our routine looks like this:
6am awake (plays by himself till 6:30am)
6:30 out of bed
7am breakfast
7:30am shower/wash
8am milk
9:00am nap
10:30am morning tea
11am play
12pm lunch
1pm milk
1:30p/2 nap
3pm awake
3:15 afternoon tea
5pm dinner
5:30pm bath
6pm milk
7/7:30pm bed

He is a good eater and doesn't wake during the night.  Any tips would be helpful.
Thanks
Lisa mum to James my textbook koala

[JennŠ]

bumping this so it does not get lost. 

[smzcoz]

I think we may have the same child.  I sympathize with you because I am going through the EXACT same thing and even more surprising...our 10 month old boys have the EXACT same schedule...eating, baths, napping, bottles, bedtime...everything!  I too have tried it ALL.  Please let me know if you find ANYTHING that works and I promise I'll do the same.

Carol 

[chell]

Hi Lisa, sorry that you have only just got a reply. Not sure if I can help out on this one, but from reading your post, it sounds like your lo used to need help settling, then for 2 weeks he self settled, and now he needs you again.  Your routine looks ok, but I wondered how you were getting him to settle before? The other thing is that, just when you think they have got it, they can regress. It may just be a matter of sticking to pu/pd, or the method you are using, as long as it does not fall into the category of accidental parenting, to reinforce boundaries of bedtime.

You also mentioned the possibility of separation anxiety, does he have the opportunity to play on his own without you? If not this would be a good thing to gradually work on anyway.

Hope this might help a little.

[james030405]

HI,

Thanks for the reply.  The last few days have been strange indeed. On  Wednesday, james decided he wouldn't go down for a nap so he ended up only having 1.5hrs all day.  He did the same yesterday.  He went to bed at 7pm the first night and 7:20pm the next night and so far today, he is still asleep.

We have always had trouble settling - he is a great sleeper - just settling has always been a problem.  When younger we used pat/sh and still have to sometimes. I am now doing PD.  Last night when I took him into his cot at 6:30pm, after being awake since 1:45pm, I gave him his cuddle in his room and then placed him down.  He cried so I stayed and he just wanted to play.  I just stood beside the cot and did PD only saying "Its bedtime, time for sleep".  He crawled around and fluffed around till 7:20pm when he finally went to sleep. He did go to sleep by himself but I had to be beside the cot. I did try and leave at one stage and it just caused him to cry. 

He has lots of time during the day to play by himself and he is very good at this.  We also have interaction with other children of different ages.  He settled for his nap yesterday without me in the room.  He is not waking during the night either.

I am at a loss as to what to do.  Will it be something that he grows out of of needing me to stand beside the cot?  This is the only thing that I have trouble with.  He is a fantastic eater, sleeper and developmenally he is either just adhead or textbook.  I have tried going into his room 30mins before bedtime with only a night light on.  Should I do this and give him his milk here? I have tried to read to him but he just wants to play .

Oh well, today is another day.  We will see how it goes. 

Thanks again

Lisa

Thanks for the help.

[chell]

Hi, this must be very frustrating for you.  It sounds as though he does know how to settle, but is finding it hard at the moment. My feeling, is that you should just go with it, be there for him when he needs you to help him settle at night. I think the most important thing is that you remain totally consistent with your bedtime routine and with using PD, saying exactly the same words to him. I do believe it will work. I was wondering why James decided he wasn't going to go down for his 2nd nap - what happened - did it get too much trying to do PD, or did other things in your own daily routine get in the way? I think it is also really important that you remain consistent with  both naps. I think he must have been very tired by bedtime, which is likely to have have contributed to his difficulty in settling. I know that you said winding down was difficult and I'm interested to know what was hard and what exactly do you do now. Let me know

[james030405]

I know he is overtired when going to bed, this is why he is not settling, but it did start last week when he was having 3.5hrs between waking and nap #1, 4hrs between both nap #1 and Nap 2 and nap 2-bedtime.  Nothing in our routine has changed. 

Our wind down consisted of walking around, singing/humming about 15-20mins before nap/bed.  This use to work okay up until about 3 weeks ago when we had a couple of really bad days when he just wouldn't sleep at all.  During winddown he would start to squirm to get down and wasn't interested in just staying in our arms.  One day when he showed me his tired signs (rubbing eyes) I just walked slowly down to his room and layed him down, gave him his blankie and said night-night. 

I am very keen on still having 2 naps (so it wasn't my idea) as I feel this is better for him at this age. He has just started to fight it.  He is having about an hour less sleep during the day but on the other hand he is getting probably an hour more at night - he use to be from 7/7:30pm to 5/5:30pm.  Now he is going from same bedtiime to 6:30am.  He is getting 11hrs at night as apposed to 10.

He does know how to settle himself and this is what I find frustrating because I know he knows how to do it. 

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to help me.  He was up at 6:30am today (I got him up at 6:50am - hence he is happy to play by himself) so I will try and put him down at 10am today.

thanks once again

Lisa

[chell]

Hi, Yes Jacob was similar in the way he responded to wind downs -not wanting to be held, but he would also get easily o/tired/stimulated, so preparation for sleep was important. What I do now is to pack away most of his toys and just let him wander around for a bit, with minimal interaction, but obviously responding when needed, everything is really low key.

Sometimes they will suddenly start fighting naps and it can be hard to work out why, but I think as long as James isn't ill or in pain , you should stick to the nap times and persist in getting him down. So, we know that he is overtired, let's just have another look at the routine.....Can you tell me how long he naps for at each nap ? If there are 3.5 hours wake time (up-nap1) 4 hours wake time (nap1 -nap2) 4 hours wake time (nap2 -bedtime) = 11.5 hours wake time, 12.5 hours total sleep. If this is right, I think the problem might be that he is either going to bed too late or not getting enough nap time. I know they are all different, but I think for this age it needs to be about 14 hours.