Toddler very suddenly changing bedtime behaviour?

[Itsychik]

Would love some advice in dealing with my 2 year old!

My DD can be stubborn and temperamental in general, but things like nap- and bedtimes have never been an issue in the past. She usually indicates fully on her own that she's ready to go to bed and comes and kisses us goodnight and takes the hand of whichever parent is bringing her to bed that night and leads us upstairs. Then it's bath time, PJ's/brushing teeth/bedtime story and in to bed...

Within the past 2 weeks bedtime has suddenly become a huge fight every night. She'll still go upstairs with no problem, and bath time and brushing teeth usually go pretty well. But then it's varying degrees of her absolutely FLIPPING OUT and screaming/kicking/crying for no apparent reason at all. For DH sometimes this starts when he's trying to get her PJ's on and continues until after he's gotten her in bed and then for another 15 - 30 minutes afterwards.

Tonight I brought her to bed and was absolutely determined to remain 100% calm and sweetly talk her through the whole routine to try and avoid a meltdown before it started...everything went perfectly fine until the moment I put her in bed and said goodnight. She started crying so I picked her up to cuddle her a bit. She said she wanted to get down so I put her on the ground and ask her what she wanted... she walked outside of her door and started giggling and running around. I explained that it was bedtime, picked her up and put her in bed. She lost it and was SCREAMING. I asked her if she wanted some water, or to have some music (from the baby monitor) turned on, and she was just incoherent and screaming/crying. But if she gets out of bed/her room then she stops almost immediately and giggles and runs away like it's a game. I put her in her bed and told her I was going to put the other two children in bed and then I would come back to her, but she screamed hysterically for the entire time...

DH has almost the same routine with her every night, where she's having a tantrum for no apparent reason and nothing seems to calm her at all. This is very unusual for her. Nothing has changed in her room or in her daily habits (she's not napping as much as she used to, but we haven't seen a difference in behaviour on days she does or does not nap) and she's fine up to a certain point every night. We're not sure what's causing it and DH is having trouble staying patient every night when it seems like DD is having a fit for no reason...

Any similar experiences or suggestions how we could approach this?

 

[Zephram]

That's a developmental phase most kids go through. My DS1 went through massive bedtime tantrums at that age too. They just get to a point where they realise that they can delay bedtime by making a fuss. You kind of just have to get through it!

2 and a half is also a time when a lot of kids stop napping every day. You may find that the time she's tired differs every night depending on whether she napped or not and you will have to move bedtime forward or backward each night to adjust.

 

[MindUtopia]

I think it's possible she's ready to drop her nap, if you say she's not napping as much as she used to. If it's shortening or starting to drop, it might help to cut it out all together. We went through a period of exactly this maybe around 2 years and 3 months. It was a nightmare. We've always had very gentle approaches to naps and bedtime and that's always worked well for us (still does), so though like you, we're really firm about bedtimes, it suddenly became a massive stress out of the blue. Cutting out the nap meant she was then really sleepy for about a month (like falling asleep in dinner!), but she went to bed easily and slept well. After that bit of a transition period, bedtimes went back to being a pleasure, and it's been mostly smooth sailing every since (for the past year and a half). For us, it really was the nap, so if you notice they are cutting down already, but be time to trial getting rid of them if you can manage to keep her up, or let her sleep for short naps and then wake her (horrible, but it helped).

 

[barbikins]

We are finally just exiting this terrible, terrible sleep regression. It went on for 2 months. He fought bed time, woke multiple times a night. Bed time was fine until it was time for the crib. We spent a lot of time sitting IN his room for half hour to an hour until he FINALLY fell asleep. Before this, we could play him in his bed awake, walk out of his room and he'd lay there for a while, roll over & pass out. Saw him around 5-6 am the next day. I read about the 15 month sleep regression. Didn't think it would happen to us - and so it did. Two months later we are finally getting back to normal....slowly. He's getting really good about putting himself to sleep without us in the room but still waking once/twice a night. I can't wait for this to stop. I've been just knackered.

 

[Sarah lo]

My LB is 2 years and 5 months and we've just come out the other side of a horrible sleep regression. For the past 3 months we've had a terrible time with tantrums at bedtime. I was spending up to an hour trying to settle him every night and tearing my hair out. I'd put him down and he'd cry and get straight back out. I tried staying with him and he would just play, I tried the supernanny thing where you keep putting them back to bed and he would just do that over and over and over every night. When we finally got him to stay there, he'd just lie awake for 10-20 minutes until the coast was clear and then wander out of his room, down the stairs and appear in the living room where we'd end up just letting him fall asleep on the sofa

At the same time we also had trouble with him waking up in the night and coming through to our bed (sometimes even physically kicking me out of the bed so he could share it with his daddy! ) I realised I'd hit rock bottom a couple of weeks ago when I was kicked out of bed and found myself sleeping on the top bunk of DD's bunkbed

The next day I was talking to a friend who suggested putting a baby gate on his door. I was skeptical and thought it was probably a stupid idea but I had nothing to lose so I moved the gate to his door. I don't know why it worked but it did. First night DH took him up and came straight back down and I was like "where's Wesley? Why's he not crying?" I think because we took away the possibility of escape he decided there was no point trying to get back up. But at the same time having the gate on the door means that he can still see out and doesn't feel trapped like a closed door would. Now we take him up to bed, he tucks his superhero teddies in, pulls his blanket up and kisses us goodnight. It's a miracle!

I don't know if the same thing would work for you but it could be something really simple like the baby gate or needing a night light because she's suddenly afraid of the dark etc..

Hope you get back to normal soon

 

[sil]

I second the baby gate. We had a huge horrible two month long sleep regression like pp. we were up 30-50 times on an average night and bedtime took over an hour. We were very consistent putting him back without talking lights etc but nothing worked. We finally put up a gate and the first night he woke twice and second night he slept through and sleeps through about 80 percent of the time since.

 

[RaspberryK]

I find this happens when they are actually overtired. I aim to bath and ready for bed straight after dinner so that it preempts the tired signs. We have had times where we have had the tantrums once we are in bed but I just repeat calmly it's time to lie down. Once they lie down I'll rub dd's back till she's calm and then leave. At no point are they allowed to get out once they're in bed. They have music and a nightlight and a story sat in bed. X