Bedtime for My Girls!

Hi S.,
Can you put them to bed at the same time and while they are awake? There is something to bedtime routine and you have to have one to signal to the litle ones that that time is coming. They should both be going to bed awake though and learning to soothe themselves to sleep. Does the 3-yr. old have a favorite animal to take to bed? Reading a book to them in their room while they are tucked in might help - books have worked for us along with a music box (Fisher-Price acquarium or rain forest - we've had both and they helped). I know what you are going through and wish you the best!
G.

Hi!

I have a three year old and a two year and every other weekend we have an additional three year old (finacee's son). We're in a two bedroom apartment so you can guess what has to happen.

First off they all go to bed at the same time. We do dinner together, have wrestle time to drain energy, then bath time (the warm water has a big relaxing effect on them).

Bed time is strict. I've learned with three toddlers that you just can't give them an inch cause they will keep going. So one bedtime. One tried coming back out a couple of nights, but we put them right back into bed and very firmly let them know that was not ok. It stopped quickly.

We also have a toy chest that is easy to move. At bedtime it goes just outside their door so there's no distractions readily available.

If noise is problem try easing them into sleeping while noise is happening. I read in Parents magazine that doing the absolute quiet at naptime creates fussy babies with disorganized sleep patterns. I started doing little things like dishes while they slept and slowly built into vacumming. Now they can sleep through a train running through their room (although this is theory *winks*).

Lastly for about two weeks (well worth the investment) I stood right outside their room. Goofing off was a problem so I had to train them to believe that I could pop in at any time. If they didn't take me seriously I sent dad in. I would go in, lay them back down, and let them know, firmly (no shouting necessary here - just the firm, I am not playing, tone works) that it was bedtime.

All three go to bed at 8 and are asleep by 8:30 - sometimes 9 - but mostly 8:30.

The 6:30 - 7:00 can't be helped. It is a stage every early bird goes through before they learn to pop a movie on rather than waking the neighborhood. But even if you get her down at 8 she will still sleep till 6:30-7. That is exactly how my three-year-old is. I sleep right across the hallway from them in the last two weeks they quit waking me up, and instead pull their toy bin into their room until 7:30. I don't know if this is usual, but it's made life easier.

I hope some of this will help. The most important thing I think people have a hard time seeing is that YOU are the one in charge - not your child - and they need it that way. So if you are firm and consistent it may take a few weeks but you can help them figure out how to get into a good sleep schedule.

The one year old is probably getting old enough to put herself to sleep. It may keep the 3 year old awake for a little bit, but I started letting my son put himself to sleep around that age. What worked best for me was put him to bed every night at the same time like clockwork. Same routine, in the same order, started at the same time every night like clockwork and no deviations. When he got older and wanted to "explore" and not stay in bed, we just took him back to bed with no words spoken. He quickly learned that it was no fun to stay up and just simply went to sleep (even as a 1 year old before he could walk or get up or talk). He still gets up at 5:30-6:00 every morning like clockwork, but I am getting (or at least have the opportunity to get) plenty of sleep in the mean time. If you chose to do that,I would talk to your 3 year old about it in order to prepare her for the possibility of a few nights of crying in her room. They key is don't keep going in if it isn't ABSOLUTELY necessary because otherwise they will think it's time for fun with mom and dad. Maybe some special 10 minute cuddle time and then right to bed would work?...sort of make it a tradition.

I can even remember doing that (getting up for after hours play time) as a kid to my grandmother when she would watch my brother and I. We were older, but the principle was the same. We used to do all sorts of things after she put us to bed....normally involving a bucket of tennis balls. Anyway, my point is that she hated it...would constantly tell us to stop it...we played witht hem on the stairs, threw them over the beds at each other playing catch, anything else you can think of, but with about 10 minutes of her not continually telling us to stop, we got bored and went to sleep. We thought it was hillarious that we could have all that much fun when the house was dark and she would never do anything to stop it except holler at us to knock it off...and we giggled the entire time. Hindsight, I wish we had not been so hard on her, but we were kids....and I'm sure she never told our parents or my dad would have put a stop to it.

We just went through this with our son 18 months now and our daughter just over three. We moved them into the same room when he was 9 months old. Because we couldn't sleep well with him in our room I would wake up to every noise friends told us just put them in the same room my daughter is resilient she will sleep if she needs it. Wow were they right. The first couple of nights were hard and we did end up having to put cardboard around the crib walls on the sides that were open so our daughter couldn't get into the crib. It was like this until a month ago and now they sleep in bunk beds daughter on top and son on the bottom they play for a while at night and then they ushered back to their appropriate beds and fall asleep. If one wakes up at night and cries the other unusually just looks a little pisses for a while but will fall right back to sleep.

We found also that it is better to put the kids down to sleep together and not separate. They seemed more comforted.

Best of luck making things work it's not an easy task.

Hi S.,
Well I only have one, but he did have the same problem with staying asleep when we put him in the crib. What I did was get a wool fleece mattress pad, made especially for babies with a short pile. This gave him a soft place to land, and it's never cool and stiff like sheets. The other thing that helped was that I would put him down, he would fuss, I'd pick him back up immediately (before he was really awake again), settle him, lay him down again, he might fuss, pick him up if he did, repeat process, etc. I'd say it took 2 - 4 times (about 10 minutes) for about a week before I just laid him down and he stayed snoozing.

Or, have you tried going to bed at the same time as your husband and co-sleeping with the little one? You could move her into the crib during a night waking, maybe.

I know it's hard not to have sleep, and I hope you find a good, non-jarring solution.

It sounds like they are ruling the roost. I can't recommend John Rosemond enough. He is a parenting author/expert. He has a lot of books, and his weekly syndicated column is on his website at www.rosemond.com. "Making the Terrible Twos Terrific" is excellent, with tons of ideas and a lot about getting them to bed. I think he told his own child (who would come out countless times) that she could play in her room (instead of going to sleep), and he wouldn't know (like he, he, I'm being mischievous and Daddy doesn't know). As for myself (and this isn't what Rosemond recommends), if my boys don't want to go to bed, or stay in bed, I have their doorknob turned around and I lock it from the outside. I am not about to be tormented until 11pm. They are totally used to it, and the two-year-old almost always crawls in bed with the five-year-old. I unlock the door before I go to bed. If the little guy has a nap during the day (which I try to avoid), then I don't even bother trying to put him down the same time as the older one, because then he just jumps on the older one's head for two hours... What's funny is that if they do go to bed on their own for whatever reason, they usually lock the door themselves.

Mine are now 2 and 5 and since my youngest was 1, they have slept together. I put 2 twin beds side by side and I lay in the middle for about 15 min til they are out and then get up. So far it works. I would not recommend putting every one yr old in a twin bed- mine was ready- and she did go into a toddler bed first. That sat right beside sisters and I would sit on the floor with her til she fell asleep. This has kept the house silent so others can sleep and the 15 min or so sitting there for me is better than a hour of fussing or up and down.

We're also there, doing that. Our 2 boys, 4 and 2 share a room. We used to put the younger one to bed first and about an hour or so later would put our older son to bed. That always worked great. He would just go in quietly and his brother rarely woke up. If he did, we'd pull him back out and wait a little longer. But about a month ago we started putting them down at the same time. The first few weeks they thought it was so fun, they'd laugh and talk a lot. Took over an hour to fall asleep. But this week now they are starting to fall asleep pretty quickly. In fact, as I write this now, they have already fallen asleep without either of us having to go in to shush them! First time for that! It's all a matter of time and getting used to it. If you aren't ready to put them down at the same time yet, any chance you could get the younger one to sleep first and have your older daughter sneak in quietly once she's out? Just a thought. Good luck!!!

We had the exact same problem. We tried putting the little one down and letting her cry it out. Then adding the 3 yr old. It worked a few times but the baby always woke up. We ended up putting the little one in another room. Everything started working after that. When she gets a little older we are going to put her back in the room with her sister. But until then it is blissful in our house after 8pm.