2yo sleeping- or not sleeping!

[Aylin]

I need some advice about my ds. He is 27mos and nurses to sleep unless he falls asleep in the car. When he was younger, my husband was able to put him to sleep bouncing on a fit ball, but after a while he fought it too much (and we went through 3 balls)! He usually sleeps on the "big bed," but sometimes wants to sleep on a camping mat bed I made up on the floor. The problem we are having is that he is so into being awake, somedays he just keeps himself up for hours after we do our night-night routine. He'll either cry and scream and say "no night-night" or go with the flow but pop up after nursing. Sometimes, he'll also wake up in the middle of the night and think it's time to "gi up". Like many of you, all the moms I know are into cio, but we'd have to shackle him down somewhere to even try it! Not to mention that we don't want to! Is there any other way to get him to follow a flexible routine? Somedays he's so miserable from not sleeping enough, and some days I am,too! Thanks for "listening." Aylin

[Treenahurricane]

Have you read the book The No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers? We had the same issue with our two year old never wanting to sleep... to the point that she was sleep deprived therefore always cranky, fussy, had rings under her eyes... she just would not sleep! We started off making a sleep plan and giving her a set routine... much earlier in the evening than we had been letting her go to bed and it's just what she needed-- she needed a predictable transition to bed every night that she could anticipate, and she needed to go to bed when she first got tired, not after that point when she would become wired awake.
The pattern we chose was: Warm bath, put on pjs, brush teeth, read two books (that she gets to pick out), then she gets tucked in to go to bed. The first couple weeks of it we had to sit in her room with her for her to fall asleep, now she no longer needs us sitting there to go to sleep on her own. We have a dim light on in her room, and play a quiet lullaby CD (Celtic lullabyes lol). It creates the right environment to help her get to sleep where before it was more like my husband and I saying "okay time for bed" and expecting her to go to sleep because we were ready, kwim? lol.

[Havilah]

We had to pick a routine and go with it. Consistency, consistency, consistency. The Queen of England has to wait for us to finish our routine ;) At first this seemed like a tremendous burden, but the predictability this has added to our days and evenings has been well worth it.


If you'd like some more specific advice we can try to help. I second the recommendation for Pantley's book.