Getting 2 year old to sleep...

Our situation seems a little different to the norm!
Our beautiful DD refuses to go down at night till she falls down. Sometimes, quite often, after 1am.
She sleeps fine once she is asleep but getting her to sleep in the first place is a major battle...
The dr said phenergan for a few nights to get her in a better sleep routine but I really don't like phenergan.
CIO, controlled crying and tough love are no goes in this house. They simply do not work for us.
Melatonin was suggested but I can't find much info about it for healthy toddlers...
We are going out of our minds trying to find a solution that works...
We would be so grateful if anyone had any ideas, solutions, tips etc that might help!
I thank you in advance for whatever wisdom you can share :-)

what time do you usually start 'trying' to go to bed?
If it's 'later' perhaps she's already overtired by then. Maybe an earlier bedtime might help?

I hope you find some good suggestions hun xxx

Does she nap in the day? What time does she get up in the morning?

You might need to reset her body clock a bit. Try getting her up at the same time each day, and drop the day sleep and see what happens.

Good luck!

Her day sleeps are all over the place - some days she will nap an hour, some 10mins and some not at all. I have noticed on the days she naps regardless of how long, she is harder to get down at night.. Even on the days she has no sleep, she won't go down till she falls down.
Her wake up times depend on when she went to bed, the later she goes down, the later she wakes.
We tried getting her up earlier but she is falling asleep for her day nap by 11am regardless of what we do to keep her awake... Then she is up later. Evil, evil circle!
She isn't getting nearly enough sleep...
On average she sleeps 7hrs at night and her day sleep is less than an hour.
Does that make sense?

Is she in a cot or a bed? How does she go to sleep?

We had a late night issue for ages because DD wanted to be cuddled to sleep so she wouldn't settle in the cot. We just had to wait every night until she decided that she was tired enough to go to sleep, then we would cuddle her on the couch and transfer her to the cot once she was asleep. At about 18 months I cracked it with having to stay up until 10-11pm every night so we put her in a king single bed. That allowed us to choose her bedtime rather than waiting until she was exhausted. At first we would lie in there with her, then progressed to sitting next to her and now at the end of the bed.

Good luck sorting it out, I know the frustration of having to stay up long after you want to go to bed waiting for a night owl to get sleepy!

She is in a toddler bed...

I had an issue with my DD and her bedtimes where she would spend hours awake before finally falling asleep. It never got as bad as 1am but I think it was heading there. We would go through the evening wind down routine and put her to bed and she would just stay awake, lying there, talking, singing, crying, calling out, getting up.... it would go on and on and the time she fell asleep was getting progressivly later. It did not matter what I did, nothing changed her night time sleeplessness and she was so overtired. I can't remember how old she was, maybe 2.8 or even around 3.

In the end what worked for me was following the advice from a sleep book which suggested resetting her sleep clock by following her rhythm for a bit to stop the battle, then bringing back her sleep time very slowly. For a few days, I let her stay up until 10.30 (that was the time she usually fell asleep after I put her to bed at 7). I then made sure I woke her at the usual time of 7.30 to keep that part of the routine locked in. I found that by putting her to bed then, she did go off to sleep pretty quickly as it seemed to be the tired window for her. After a few days of this, I brought back her bed time by 15 minutes, still getting her up at 7.30 in the morning. I kept going with this till I had her going to bed at 7pm and by this time, she would go to sleep at a pretty reasonable time, by at least half an hour after looking at a few books by herself.

This was a nice, natural, gently approach to retraining her sleep patterns and although it was pretty painful for the first few days to have a really overtired child running around the house in the evenings and then a very overtired child during the day, the system worked a treat.

Hope my experience helps? I went months with the crazy late bedtime and it was such a headache. All the best.

Put her in bed with you - in your bed. Model going to sleep. It works.

what exactly are you doing at bedtime? when does it begin? And what is she doing before you start bedtime?
Modelling sleep as barb suggests may be an idea too :)

:hug: hun, that sounds like a nightmare!

Just a stab in the dark here, but I'd be having a close look at the food she is eating and possible side affects. Not just in terms of additives etc, I know grapes and tomatoes have something called solactytes (sp? I think thats what they're called) which can cause sleep issues in some kids. It could be worth doing some wide ranging research on foods that can affect sleep and then perhaps trying eliminating them from her diet.

HTH

My only thoughts are doing a real routine for bedtime.

Dinner, short play, bath, story, bed. If you have no other stimulation - i.e. the TVs not on, and the other kids aren't partying up! Even go to bed yourselves as Barb suggests. Then slowly bring it earlier and earlier. She's not going to want to stay up by herself - so if she sees the lights going out and everyone winding down, then this should help her understand.

We did similar to Artechim. DS1 has never self settled for us. He goes to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow at day-care but at home refused. As baby we held/cuddled transferred as he got older he would fall asleep on the couch. DS2 was born when DS1 was 2.6yo & has never been a good sleeper & I just couldn't cope with both boys up to 10:30 -11pm slowly getting later as DS1 was more taken with the TV and music etc. One day out of exhaustion I cracked it & now both boys (after a spell at sleep school with DS2 when he was 4 months) have the same routine dinner between 5-6, bath 6-6:30, wind down with milk, books & a few wiggle songs & bed for 7pm. If DS1 has been allowed to sleep at day-care we struggle but generally he now knows he is tired. We still have to lye next to him but we know that he will let us know when he is ready to do it alone.

I know it's hard but to break that cycle you will probably need to put up with a cranky DD for a couple of days. I would plan activities for those days. I found DS1 was better if we were not in the house and had other things/people to occupy him. I also know how daunting that sounds as for a few weeks after moving house (DS2 was 8weeks when we moved) DH & I talked about what we were going to do as we had no time for ourselves. The night I cracked it we decided that at night DH was responsible for getting DS1 into bed at 7pm (unless DS1 specifically asked for me) while I worked with DS2. There was much protesting & crying even with us lying next to him but we gently consoled him, explained, listened to his worries.

Huge huge hugs sleep is the one thing I found & still find hard to teach my children. As a child & up to being 11yo I was a terrible sleeper also. Now I can't get enough ;-)