My 4 year old definitely requires a long routine. We usually start at 7pm after her bath and the routine involves a prayer, reading a story and then some songs. Luckily we had grandparents here to help today so she got lots of attention.
My 2 year old can be the easiest one to get off to sleep. On days like today when he hasnt napped he is completely done in by 6pm and will head off to bed with a bottle of milk. And yes we do suffer plenty of judgement for letting him still drink from a bottle, but I'm totally OK with it. If he has napped then there is usually half an hour of him running out of his bed and me catching him and putting him back in again.
My youngest child is just over 6 months old. He usually falls asleep at the breast, but in the evenings has resolutely refused to be put down into his cot. We've spent many evenings cuddling him whilst he sleeps, but recently have been trying to get him to sleep properly in the cot. The last few weeks he has struggled even to sleep in our arms so we felt there was no other alternative than to try controlled crying. After hours of feeding and rocking we've been putting him in the cot and then going back after 2 mins, 5 mins and then 10 mins to reassure him that we're still there and help him to settle. Thankfully it has worked very well so far and he has fallen into deep sleeps and stayed in his cot for a few hours.Let me know your top tips for getting those tricky kiddies off to bed!
This is very interesting. Our 3 year old still likes a bottle of milk and we get the same judgements - which I find difficult as I don't judge other parents and how they raise their children. We did controlled crying with her as we had got into the habit of rocking her off to sleep and after 2 weeks we pretty much had it sorted and in hindsight it wasn't that painful. We still have the odd escaping from the bed of course!! The 8 month old we let him have a last 'play' mainly crawling around the living room to wear him out and then milk. Just as he is about to fall asleep we pop him in his cot and he usually goes off.
ReplyDeleteVictoria
Thanks for your comment. I've met a few mums who give their kids a night-time bottle at age 4 to 5 so I think it's all good :-) Our daughter stopped having her bottle when she was 3.
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