Does your toddler choose their own bedtime or did you decide when it would be?

[~Kaz~]

Just wondering if there are any parents out there who let their toddler decide each evening what time they go to bed?

I am seriously considering just giving up and letting ds do his own thing between the bath and the onset of sleep. I have read there are lots of cultures who let children decide their own bedtime and I figure that we let ds decide lots of other things, like what to wear, what to play, what to eat. All of his other choices have limits, a certain number of options I suppose. Sleep is different and something that's totally up to him anyway. I can't force it and i'm not trying but I do resent the time it takes him to go to sleep at night. It's been going on for months now, seriously & I'm really sick of sitting in his room every single night for up to 2 hours waiting for him to fall asleep.

If you do this in your family, how does it work? What boundaries do you have around it? What are the advantages/disadvantages?

Sent from my phone.

[Olive]

we've always had a set bedtime, but hun you need to do whats right/best for you
xx

[beansbeans!]

I have a set bedtime for the girls, but I have thought about trying something similar.

My biggest problem is that DD2 will not go to bed unless DD1 is going to bed as well. Shes done it since the day she was born (would not go down at night until DD1 was in bed, regardless of how sleepy she was).

[AliBaby]

We try so hard with bedtime which is 7:30, but dd is still up in bed next to me. She is so strong willed and I am just to tired to deal with the fight. I am ignoring her though, she will drift off soon....i hope! Big

Just wanted you to know that you are not alone

[*TripleJ*]

DS always had his last bottle from when he was sleeping through at 7:30 so bed time since then has been adrink of milk then bed
DD just goes to bed when i do which is a shame for me lol

[littlelara]

I'm on my pod so can't see how old your boy is.
We have a strong routine, and it has been going so long they pre-empt everything now, but when dd was little we basically left the toddler gate on her door. Once the story had been read and the bedtime songs had been sung, the light went out and we would leave. Often she would play in the darkened room for a little while.
Then we would come in before we went to bed and put her into hers. No big deal.
Hth

[Little Chicken]

I'm on my pod so can't see how old your boy is.
We have a strong routine, and it has been going so long they pre-empt everything now, but when dd was little we basically left the toddler gate on her door. Once the story had been read and the bedtime songs had been sung, the light went out and we would leave. Often she would play in the darkened room for a little while.
Then we would come in before we went to bed and put her into hers. No big deal.
Hth

That is what I do with DD1, minus putting into our bed as her sister is already there. I don't care what she does as long as she doesn't destroy anything. But it's go to bed, I read her two stories, goodnight hug and kiss and then I leave. When she falls asleep is up to her, but she has to stay in her room.

[leckert]

For our sanity we've ended up letting DS set his bedtime - he fights going to sleep at the best of times so for us to stress less we have given up trying to force him to go to sleep unless he's really really tired. We all get worked up if we try to do otherwise. we do know that DS will go to sleep typically anywhere from 7:30-9:00 pm each night so we just ride it out until he drops.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk so sorry if I'm confusing you

[Epacris]

We’ve never had a set bedtime because my kids are night owls and quite frankly after 8pm I just CBFed. DS usually falls asleep on the lounge at around 7:30pm. DD just trashes the house till somewhere between 8:30pm and 11pm.

Ask me about dinner time, we totally rock dinner time, we’re great at that. At bed time we just totally suck! But *meh*, I figure ‘ya can’t be great at everything.

[Livinthedream]

No set bed time here.
After dinner DS normally goes and watches a movie in our bed and generally falls asleep there. We then transfer him to his own room.
It is rare that he is not asleep by 8.30
The only time we have trouble is if we have let him sleep late in the afternoon (say, past 3 o'clock) and he is genuinley not tired. But come 9.30, he goes in his own bed like it or not. That is very very rare though.
I see no problem at all with it.

[Catastrophic]

I've got set bet times here. Always have since I was able to get them into a routine. 730 is bedtime. Some times that is later if we're out or its a movie night. But they are really good when it comes to bed time.

[NaeNae]

No specific set bed time here because sadly i cannot program her to fall asleep on cue

We try to keep "going to her bedroom" around the same time usually 8ish but depending on the night she can take up to an hour to settle to sleep.

Day sleeps are just as bad I try to schedule her nap 5 hours from wake up time depending on how well she slept the night before.

I guess it depends on what your comfortable with, I wish DD would go to sleep earlier and stay asleep all night, but thats wishful thinking.

You could try a partial routine if you wanted to keep things predictable for him, but then not get too stressed if he doesn't fall asleep straight away ??

Nae x

[Jellyfish]

My DD chooses when she goes to bed but it is always around 6pm so works for us too. Not sure what I would do if she was keen to stay up all night, don't think I'd fight a losing battle though if that makes sense.

[Kmn]

Kids do need a bit less sleep as they get older - what would happen if you just decided that bedtime would be 9 for a few days?

[~Kaz~]

littlelara - we have also had a "strong" routine since ds was 5 months old. He is now over 30 months old and since he turned 2 bed time has been more and more difficult. He was a kid who would be placed in bed and be asleep 10 mins later with no settling, no story etc. He just went to sleep at 7pm every night. It just doesn't work anymore. I probably have the wrong title on the thread. My question is really, what would you do if your strong routine stopped working and your child stayed awake an extra hour or two every night?

ETA - for those of you that put your kids in their rooms and expect them to stay, how did you achieve that (aside from the toddler gate?) I would be happy to leave ds in his room playing quietly or reading (he just started wanting books at bedtime the last few days) but the problem is he wants me sitting in there with him until he falls asleep and its driving me nuts!
Sent from my phone.

[Kmn]

oops - double post

[The[cookie]Doctor]

ETA - for those of you that put your kids in their rooms and expect them to stay, how did you achieve that (aside from the toddler gate?) I would be happy to leave ds in his room playing quietly or reading (he just started wanting books at bedtime the last few days) but the problem is he wants me sitting in there with him until he falls asleep and its driving me nuts!
Sent from my phone.

Can you bargain and make it that he can read if mummy can go, but if mummy has to stay there are no books and light off etc?

I am not much help as we struggle to have a routine, mostly because when i was working (and go back to work) we dont generally get home until after 7pm. When we did have one it got disrupted when we threw out the dummy because at that point bedtime became more difficult. We also struggle depending on whether or not a daysleep has been had. If it has, bedtime pre 9pm is usually unlikely, but if he doesn't day sleep, he often falls asleep in the car on the way home from daycare and that 20min nap is enough to knock him back to 11pm (and if he doesnt nap it is a night where we go 'he has a cooked lunch everyday, furit and ypghurt for dinner it is' so we can get him into bed by 7.30, knowing he will sleep 12-13hrs after a no-nap day).

We have recently stopped being as 'hard' as we were at bedtime and the bed time has become smoother. We have dinner, a play and a cuddle, some time with his sister etc and then say righto its wash hands, wash face, teeth and jammie time. Then he asks to read a book / have his reader pen / play his game and we say sure, for a little while, you tell me when you are ready for the light off. Last night it was before 8.30 and he slept during the day so that was pretty good for us!

[Miss E]

ETA - for those of you that put your kids in their rooms and expect them to stay, how did you achieve that (aside from the toddler gate?) I would be happy to leave ds in his room playing quietly or reading (he just started wanting books at bedtime the last few days) but the problem is he wants me sitting in there with him until he falls asleep and its driving me nuts!
Sent from my phone.

Maybe try going in and out. So to start off with say 'you can sit in bed and read your books and mummy will come back and check on you in 1 minute'. Then make sure you come back, see that he is ok, whatever. Then do it again. And again. And again. Over time you should be able to build up the time so that you are only having to go in and check on him once a night after 5 minutes.

We've just moved DS into his big boy bed in the last month and did have a few problems with him coming in and out. When we set it up I wasn't sure how we would go, so also left the cot in his room in case he wanted to sleep in there. Of course he was so happy to have the big boy bed and didn't want a bar of the cot. After a couple of nights the coming in and out started. So we introduced the rule that if you get out of bed 3 times you will have to sleep in the baby bed. So far I have only had to put him in the cot once. Of course it resulted in a huge tantrum, I left him there for 5 minutes and then came back and told him he could sleep in his big boy bed, but if he wanted to do that he to be a big boy and stay in there. He happily went into the bed and went to sleep. Now we've made it that the second time you get out of bed you will have to go in the cot, and haven't had to put him back in there.

Just thought I would share that cos it is working for us and I have no plans on taking the cot out of his room anytime soon because the 'threat' of having to sleep in there really does seem to work in terms of keeping him in bed. But, that said, before we went to the big boy bed DS was pretty good at going to sleep by himself. Sometimes he would call out and I would go in a few times, but generally we didn't have too many issues.

HTH