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

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?

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

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).

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 :hug:

Just wanted you to know that you are not alone :hug:

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

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

For our sanity we've ended up letting DS set his bedtime - he fights going to sleep at the best of times :rolleyes: 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.


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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. :hug:

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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

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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.

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!
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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.

He goes to bed when he's tired. He wakes up at different times, depending on what we are doing in the day - and only has a nap somedays.
We keep a watch on his behavior, and when he starts getting clingy or unco or silly or repetitive we tell him "When the big hand gets to (whatever number is in 15 minutes) it's get ready for bed time".
Some nights that's 7.30 (earlyish start, no nap) other nights its midnight (slept in and had a nap).
We also sometimes give him the choice mid-afternoon "are you going to have a rest or are you going to bed straight after tea".
It works pretty well for us.

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.

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

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

oops - double post

Truthfully, I have no idea how I got her to stay. We started off sitting with her when we started her going to bed by herself (in our bed), but that only lasted a week. If she ever came out, we just put her straight back in.

No bedtime here either. My DD1 is a great sleeper and always has been. She has maybe been up past 8:30pm a handful of times and most night after her bath and a glass of milk she likes to cuddle with DH or myself and will end up falling asleep. She very rarely has a day nap anymore so most nights she is asleep by 7:30pm. If she has had a nap and is not showing any tiredness and it gets past 8pm I do tell her it is quiet time now and she will come cuddle. She goes through stages of wanting to go to bed before falling asleep and wanting to fall asleep in the lounge room. I choose not to force her and we all have a good night.

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.

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?

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and when he starts getting clingy or unco or silly or repetitive

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LOL DS is like that most of his waking hours ;) but I get what you're saying about tired signs.

*sigh* I am sure he will get there eventually. Thanks for all the replies, I think I am still just heartbroken that he can't seem to go down quickly anymore and since I work 4 days a week, I really miss the evening time to myself. By the time he's down i'm so exhausted I can't be bothered doing much. Going off to sleep was the one part he was good at and now he can't do that and he still has lengthy overnight wake ups. Hard not to think we've gone backwards :( getting my evenings back somehow would really help atm.


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Kmn - I have wondered about putting bedtime back. I guess that was my question (tired posting not my strong point) for those who let their kids decide, how do you structure the evening, if at all? My head is stuck in dinner, bath, cuddle and then bed and i'm struggling to wrap my head around more play between bath and bed or perhaps we start to have dinner later? Dunno. The few times we've been later with the routine, he still takes just as long to settle so sleep just got further into the night! But I haven't done it on purpose for a week to trial it.

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Thinking about you getting your ds to sleep on his own.

With DD1 I always had to cuddle her to sleep, but when I got pregnant with DD2 I had to change it up so I could get up and walk out of the room if I was needed elsewhere. So we went from cuddling in her bed to me laying next to her holding her hand, to me sitting in a chair next to her holding her hand, to me sitting next to her but no touching. Then it changed to me standing at the door, needing to go to the loo whilst she was nodding off, then to me saying to her that I would be close by and she only had to call out to me if she needed anything. Now I put on their night music, kiss goodnight and walk out of the room. Both are happy with that.
So maybe you could try taking some babysteps at getting out of his room whilst he's nodding off.

Here's what we do. Dinner, play (unless dinner very messy - then bath immediately), bath if its bath night (DS has eczema and baths are every 2 or 3 days), wind down with reading or dvd watching or doing lego and then when he gets silly have 15 minute warning, put nappy on, clean teeth, stories, bed.

The downside to all of this is that there are nights when you end up painting pictures at 10 pm! But not especially often.

Bedtime here is 8.30pm, a lot later than other kids DD1's age but she chose that time. We are now in the routine that we put her to bed at 8.30 every night but yeah, that's because that's when she's ready for bed.

Our routine is the same, dinner, bath cuddle bed. Ours starts at about 5:30 with dinner. Then the girls go straight to the bath/shower. DH & or myself also normally have our showers at this time too. We let the girls have around 10 minutes of nudie time and then PJ's on and quiet time. One rule we have always set is that they can't dictate what is on the TV (that ends at 5pm when playschool finishes) and if they do want to play for a little more after getting dressed then it is quiet play on the floor. Then it is cuddles for DD1, DD2 likes to go to bed to fall asleep ATM (she is only 11months though). Sometimes we cuddle for an hour sometimes we cuddle for 5 minutes.

I have found with DD1 that by having a guideline of events but not inforcing a time limit and saying okay times up, you have to do this now that she naturally follows along happily.

Bedtime here is between 8.30 and 9.30 - usually 9. We kinda let DD choose. If she isn't ready to sleep, she will fight it - and fight and fight and fight until it ends up being MUCH later than this! It's just not worth the angst!

DD still has a day nap - if she sleeps after a certain time, it nudges bed time back. so we have to make sure she is awake at that time.

we could probably look at trying to move nap and everything earlier in the day BUT, i don't get home until after 5, so that period from 5 until dinner (around 7) is our Mummy/Daughter time. I'm not ready to eat dinner any earlier than we do - i just want to chill after work - and i dont' want the angst of seperate meals and then having to try and get her settled before we eat

for now, it's working. when she ditches her day nap or we head towards 3yo kinder (2013) we'll have to re-think things. but i'm working on the thought that we've done everything else "DD-led" - this is just part of that approach. it's not hurting anyone, so we'll run with it for now

We have a set bed time and I work their day sleeps in around that. I would prefer a tired afternoon then a kid up til 9 pm I just need some quiet til on the evenings. It works for us. I say give it a try, at 2 hrs to get to sleep what's the worst that can happen? Good luck

DS kind of chooses his bedtime - it's between 8.30 & 9.30 most nights. it used to be a lot earlier but then it seemed to push out. it could be because of his day nap (he still sleeps 2-2.5 hours each day) & the day nap is later than it used to be (he does down somewhere between 12 & 1) but he's not ready to give up the day nap (and neither am i! :lol:).

we did have a fairly good routine of dinner, bath, book & bed but that's kind of out the window now. now we have dinner, play, bath, quiet (hopefully!) play & then bed. it's tough not getting much of an evening, especially because i'm ready for bed by 9ish & often fall asleep putting DS to bed! but i figure his bedtime will probably get a bit earlier when the day nap goes.

i'm happy to let him go for now - he usually gets tired around the same time so it's still almost a routine, just a later bedtime than lots of other toddlers!

When my kids started fighting sleep at night the only solution we found that worked was dropping their day sleep. Then they went back sleeping really well at night and settling well.
Is your DS still having an afternoon sleep?

All of our kids are in bed at 7.30, if they are not ready to sleep they have torches they can read with or play with their toys.

DD wouldn't go to bed until around 10.30 for the longest time. Would drive us nuts. We were getting tireder and tireder, and here was this child bouncing off the walls. Then there was a day where she didn't have a day sleep - and was asleep by 7.30. We do a bath, drink, story routine, she's in bed by 7.30 everynight (unless she has a nap during the day which is rare). It took a long time for us to be able to say goodnight and leave the room while she was awake, but now that happens too. I guess we half followed her lead, and worked out what would work. Now if it's around 7ish and I'm doing something else when she finishes her drink, she'll come up to me and say "Bed, Mummy."

But while it was all up in the air, I was freaking out, wondering if that was going to be the case forever!

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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!
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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!

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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!
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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

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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.

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That's what we do. Kinda. If he doesn't stay on his bed tho we shut the door, if he "behaves" it stays open. I do the "i'll be back in a minute" thing, and then leave the room but generally once DS actually stays still he's asleep within 5 minutes and by the time I get back in there he's zonked it. :redface:

Since we started doing this he's gone from waking 5 times a night, to zero :)

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When my kids started fighting sleep at night the only solution we found that worked was dropping their day sleep. Then they went back sleeping really well at night and settling well.
Is your DS still having an afternoon sleep?

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Exactly what I was going to say. DS went through a stage of getting out of bed multiple times and wouldn't go down for hours (sometimes as late as 10-11 - and we go to bed before that!). Since we dropped his day sleep for good not long after he turned 2, we haven't had this problem anymore. Bed by 7.30 here!