We are trying a bit of sleep training with little i. She is an exceptional human being but if she has one fault, its bed time. She needs one of us to lie with her before she'll fall asleep and on a bad day, this will involve a stupid amount of mucking about before she switches off at 8.30.
We start the bedtime routine with a bath at 6.30 so 2 hours worth of bedtime routine is getting a bit much. We've tried starting the bath later but it's still 2 hours before she switches off. We've been trying to get her used to the idea of settling herself to sleep. She can do this during the night, she did it last night but she seems resistant at bed time. I don't hold with controlled crying, it's just not for us, so we've gone with the reward chart/sticker/blatant bribery route.
Last night we told her that she could have a sticker if she could settle herself to sleep. She didn't manage it at bed time, in the end Rob fell asleep lying next to her. But in the night she did settle herself so today I got one of the reward charts from Cbeebies magazine and she put an octonauts sticker on Wednesday. My theory is that she now knows she'll get the reward and what the reward is.
Tonight she is pleased as punch with the sticker and knows that if she gets a weeks worth of stickers, she'll get a new octonauts book (it has to be octonauts, they're her favourite) but she's still resistant. No longer was I lying with her but I had to check on her every 2 mins or she'd get out of bed and at 8.00 she decided to go for a wee. However, she was left just before 8.30 and she has settled herself to sleep. Yay for little i.
We still haven't achieved the aim for getting her to settle herself to sleep at a decently close time to her bath but hey, its a start!
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