Can anyone offer some advice on getting an 18-month-old to sleep at night?
Until now the three techniques we’ve had are 1) feeding to sleep on the boob, 2) walking to sleep in the sling and 3) falling asleep in the car. Number 3 is only good for naps in the daytime, number 2 is getting difficult as our kid is getting big and heavy (and is a PITA at night anyway, and number 1 is starting to become less reliable/effective.
What have you learnt about getting kids (particularly this age, if relevant) to sleep?
Many thanks!
For child 1: he would take 2 hours to get to sleep and then wake up every 45 min, every night. We used the sleep training described in Precious Little Sleep, and in 3 nights he was falling asleep himself and sleeping through the night.
For child 2: same start as child 1. We tried the above, and everything else we could think of. Nothing ever worked. I finally convinced my wife to keep him in our room and he disturbs our sleep every night still; but at least one of us doesnt have to go to the other room and screaming doesn’t wake the other child. He’s recently turned 5 and promised he will sleep in his own room, so tonight is literally the first night we’re trying to get him to sleep on his own. UPDATE: success!!
My advice is: good luck. Try whatever sounds good to you (some people find it completely unacceptable to let a child “cry it out”), but ultimately, parents aren’t the ones in charge and kids do what they feel like.