how many have gone by a set bed time and had success?

[mmom]

We are finally in a place where my LO is sleeping 11 hours at night, which is a huge accomplishment.  A couple of months ago, he was sleeping around 9 hours.  Yet, we are still stuck with an early bedtime, which means an early wake time, due to short naps.  He is napping 1.5 hours almost everyday and sometimes the naps are shorter.  If the naps are really bad, we shorten the last A and will have an early bed time.  As a result, we can never push bedtime back to get a later wake up.  I have read in a couple of threads that people have just gone by set bed times no matter what and I am wondering for how many this is successful for.  I would love to try something like this, yet I am nervous about the OT aspect, since my LO seems sensitive to that.

[Lolly]

We have done a set bedtime for a long  time now. It did take a long time to help, he had a long period of EW and really it took til he was over 2 to get consistent wake ups after 6.30. He does settle to sleep a lot quicker and knows the routine, we get the odd glitch but he gets back to it quickly.

We do the same with DD - they share a bath etc but she has her milk and is asleep about 30 mins before him, she is much easier to handle at bedtime than DS ever was even though we did the same with both. I find sticking to the same bedtime works well for us, I really can't get them to bed any earlier or DH wouldn't see them as he is often home just in time to do baths etc.

Laura

[*Becky*]

We do a set bedtime in that 6.30pm is the earliest we will put him to bed regardless of naps. We kind of had to do it as he is a poor napper and always has been but is generally great at night. Before we set we often had 6pm bedtimes which meant 5am wakes sometimes. Settlng to 6.30pm has really helped with this. If he naps well or later in the day for some reason we sometimes do a later bedtime but never earlier. I am going to now try pushing the bedtime by 5 mins every few weeks as would love wake up to be 6.30-7am rather than 6-6.30am
bx