Please can you help? I'm completely at a loss.
For about 3 months ds (he’s now 2.5 yrs) has been crying at bedtime. In the beginning it started as him trying to avoid bedtime, saying things like ‘no, it’s not bedtime’, then he started making requests, like one more hug, one more kiss, he wanted to go and say night night to everyone one more time, one more book, one more lullaby, etc. For a while I complied (I was trying to give him a bit of leeway as 4 months ago we moved out of the house we had been in since his birth, we went to stay in a house he was familiar with, his gran’s house in India) but then bedtime suddenly became 30 mins long or more and it made getting him into bed on time a nightmare. But then he didn’t seem to be stressed about the move in any other way and it really started to seem as if he was just manipulating us to try and get us to put off bedtime and/or stay in the room with him longer.
So we decided that seeing as there was nothing really wrong with him, no sickness, teething, etc, we decided to treat it as a tantrum, otherwise, as experience showed, we’d be in and out of the room over and over and he wouldn’t go to sleep for ages. So we told him ‘we love you but we’re not having messing at bedtime. Mummy and daddy will be in the next room but we’re not coming in again till the morning.’ Now we are certainly not fans of CIO, (and we never ever came close to it before, I was always really careful about that) but he seems quite smart and emotionally mature for his age, so we were sure that he’d be able to understand it. And besides at this point we didn’t see any alternative. We thought that we would probably go through a few days of him crying on his own in the cot after we left the room (which we did), but that it would die down soon. Well it did die down after a few days but it then it continued on and off over the weeks. We didn't seem to see any negative effects from this, we still continue to have a very trusting relationship with our son in every other aspect and a very strong bond and he still seems very secure. I don't think it's fear of the bed or bedroom, there doesn't seem to be any sign of that and some nights he's quite happy to go to sleep with no fuss.
Then a month ago I returned to the uk with him and what with my jet lag I mistakenly ended up putting him down an hour early for bed, but he slept! For two weeks he was sleeping that extra hour and seemed better rested during the day. I wondered if the bedtime messing was overtiredness, but no, it continued.
Our standard bedtime routine is this.
5.15pm – dinner
6.00 – potty, bath
6.30 – nappy, pjs
6.45 - say night night, read a book, lullabies, hug, kiss
7.00 – into bed
He always requests an extra lullaby, I allow one extra, but no more. He always requests extra hugs and kisses, I allow one extra but no more. I never allow him to go and say night night more than once. In the last month I have been particularly consistent but still he’s asking for more and ends up crying alone. Not every night, but probably every other night. I can’t see any other pattern to it, or any other causative factors.
Since the clocks went back he’s struggled to get back on track and he’s been a little overtired, which is now being compounded by the fact that he’s crying and potentially delaying the time he goes to sleep (I say potentially because with the fact that he often lies awake but very quietly at bedtime, it’s difficult to know if I’ve got the timing perfect, but actually I think I must have because he was doing it for two weeks with no problem).
Last night I said to him, ‘Eli it’s time to go to sleep now, please stop crying otherwise you’ll be crying on your own again.’ And he told me he wanted to cry on his own. Tonight I said ‘Eli please settle down now, stop crying and go to sleep’. He said ‘I want to cry. I want to cry for ages.’ It’s absolutely heartbreaking, but I don’t know what to do. Can you suggest anything?
Lia
