17 month old screaming at bedtime + EW

[Freckles1981]

Good Afternoon

My LO has been sleeping well for some time now, but has very recently started screaming at bedtime which can continue for hours.  We've tried capping his lunchtime nap, and trying different techniques of staying in the room, reassuring him, cuddling him but we can't find anything that helps and it's getting quite distressing hearing him so upset.  If we stay in the room with him, he thinks it's playtime and starts standing at the cot bars, bouncing and babbling.

His routine is currently like this, and has been like this for around 4 months:

Wake 07.15
Nap 12-2 (at nursery he sometimes only sleeps for 1 hour)
Bedtime routine starts at 18.15, with reading, bath, bottle, and usually asleep by no later than 19.00

I'm not sure if this is SA or the 18 month sleep regression, but do you have any tips to help?  I wonder if we should try putting him to bed a bit later until we stop getting resistance and then bring bedtime back again.  I don't want to do CC or CIO.

Many thanks
Kim

[Martini~]

Hi Hon, routine looks nice for that age. We were on a similar one with around 2h nap. However around 17-18mo I got 3 weeks of BT resistance and waking at 5am. I waited 3 weeks to change anything as wanted to make sure it's not teeth, but only cutting the nap helped. And I cut it by 30min and he almost immediately started to sleep better. However we are now more than 2y and he can sleep 1.5-2h and sleeps fine. I guess it was a case of sleep regression which usually can be 4-6 weeks.

Moving BT a tad later or cutting the nap is a good idea, but I would do cut/move by 30min to see the difference and as you say after some time you can get back to old times.

[clairebear79]

My dd is also 17 months & we do

Up 7ish
Nap 12.30/1 - 2.30/3 (capped at 2hrs) *
Bed 7.30pm (if DD naps til 3pm she may not settle til nearer 8pm)

If dd sleeps in til 7.30am or later she fights going down for a nap til much later & last weekend did her first ever no nap day with a 6pm EBT.


DD is in the middle of wonder weeks developmental leap 10 at the moment so assume your ds probably is too. Its possible the bedtime resistance is entirely down to that & may settle back down soon, however looking at your routine I would guess your ds isn't quite tired enough to go down at 7pm anymore & like Martini says, a slightly later bedtime might help.  With my DS (now 5) we also found that when we got bedtime resistance like that, he often needed the nap pushing a tad later too.  So it might be that a combination of both will work.  I would try just one thing at a time though, that way you know for sure whether it helped or not!  HTH

[Freckles1981]

Thank you both! Things seem to be getting worse rather than better, as he's now waking between 5/6am and after a very short time, the screaming starts and we can't resettle him.

Bedtime isn't getting any easier, he's still screaming when we out him down and some nights he's not asleep until 20.30.

When he's at nursery, he only has a short nap of around 1/1.5 hours, which is shorter than he has at home, but having a shorter nap that's finished earlier isn't easing bedtime. Just as a side note, he's not crying when he goes down for his naps
 
Is this something we'll just need to ride out? Or do you have any other ideas? Thanks!

[ginger428]

Hi there! Sorry to have missed your last post and questions! Bumping you up!

How has it been the last week or so??

[ele]

Hi there, I will just share my current experience and hope it helps. My DD is about to turn 17 mo and is beginning to have shorter naps and night wakings as well as occasional EW. 

Variations of this happened to us all the time around SR or Big developmental leaps, which is around this age too. She also has same behavioral pattern as she had before: lay long time on the floor upset or wanting attention, needs more hugs, bites us etc.
Therefore I blame developmental leap and I will stick to our routine, but will adjust on days of shorter naps to an earlier bed time. I certainly feel she is not getting enough sleep and it's catching up, but I will hold out for at least 3 weeks. I noticed in the past that things get in balance after about this long.

That said, When we had guests recently she screamed in bed for a longtime and I realized that she was getting overstimulated, and it did get back to normal once they left. I would look into what could overstimulate him or make him overtired and would offer temporary fixes to it, but then would hold old routine as the goal.