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Our son is 3 and a half. Bath at 6:30, stories, bed at 7:15. Then: water. Wee. Different water. Different teddy. Door open. Door more open. Scared of the curtain. Hungry. Wants mummy, not me. Wants me, not mummy. Asleep by 9:15 if we're lucky.
My partner and I haven't had an evening together in months. How do you break this?
Bedtime pass! Give him one card. He can use it to come out once, for anything. Once it's used, that's it. Our daughter now often saves it and doesn't use it at all because it feels powerful.
We had to get really boring. Every request after lights out got the same calm answer, no conversation, walk him back. Two nights of misery, about a week to settle. Now it's mostly 15 minutes.
Is he napping still? Our 3 year old was doing this until we dropped the nap. Bedtime went from 2 hours to 20 minutes overnight.
@earlybird_ellie he naps at nursery for about an hour on days he goes. Hmm. Interesting thought.
Put everything he might ask for into the routine BEFORE lights out. Wee, water on the bedside table, choose the teddy, check the curtain. Then there's no list left to work through.
Honestly, sometimes I think it's just them needing connection at the end of the day. We started doing 10 minutes of lying with her and chatting about the day, and the stalling went way down.
Update after two weeks: asked nursery to cut his nap to 30 minutes, front-loaded all the requests into the routine and introduced the bedtime pass. He's now asleep by 8 most nights. Had a whole evening with my partner on Friday and we fell asleep on the sofa at 9:30. Romance is alive.
Romance is alive, ha. Glad it worked.
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