Author Topic: Good wind down routines for spirited toddlers  (Read 1072 times)

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Offline Kfro

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Good wind down routines for spirited toddlers
« on: September 24, 2016, 18:35:38 pm »
Ds1 is 23 months and very spirited. We have always had pretty much the same routine for bt involving books, songs and bed but this doesn't seem to calm him down any more. He just wants to go all the time and messes about in bed for up to an hour after put down every night. I appreciate that maybe he likes to wind himself down in bed but wanted to see if anyone has any ideas of Wind down routines that might help?

Offline 1stimer

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Re: Good wind down routines for spirited toddlers
« Reply #1 on: September 24, 2016, 19:09:48 pm »
Does he still nap? What time is that and then BT and what time is he up during the day? I ask because my DD was spirited and she stopped napping around 2 ( I couldn't believe it!). We also had to switch up her bed time routine when she got older because we saw that it was waking her up and not winding her down. We had to do bath as early as possible and we started talking about bedtime 30-45 minutes before we put her down. We cut out all the simulating things in the house and we would go in to her room a good 15 minutes before we put her down. We said good night to EVERYTHING on the way up to her room. We would say "goodnight lights" and turn off all the lights. We realized she had FOMO ( Fear Of Missing Out ) and if she thought we were still up, there was no way she was going down. Its better now since she is 5 but it was quite the process when she was 2.





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Offline Kfro

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Re: Good wind down routines for spirited toddlers
« Reply #2 on: September 24, 2016, 19:41:12 pm »
He has always been pretty low sleep needs so his nap has been capped for a while (I can't bare the thought of it going completely though!). He is up at 6 (although often wakes early and chats away to himself), nap at 1 for 1.5 hours and bt at 630 (he then plays in his cot for at least 30 mins). I recently cut nap down from 2 hours as his night length had reduced. This did help with the falling to sleep earlier and he was getting close to 11.5 hours night sleep for a little while but it didn't last long. Nights are now back to 10.5 hours.

Offline becj86

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Re: Good wind down routines for spirited toddlers
« Reply #3 on: September 24, 2016, 20:03:30 pm »
It might be worth capping the nap a little more.

My spirited was wound up by books and songs until about 2.5yo, so we did shower/bath, massage, jammies, cuddle and chat about the day (initially I just talked through what I knew he'd done and eventually he joined in - this pays off now because it helps cap off the day and reduce things they're ruminating on before sleep and also when they get to school and you want to know what's going on because they're in the habit of talking about their day), then into bed.

Agree with the fear of missing out, definitely worth considering in your plan.