Sleeping when dd says it's time to sleep

We have never attempted to regulate sleep so it's never been an issue. The kids just do the same thing we adults do every day--when we're tired, we go to bed. If we want to get up, we get up. Personally I can never sleep for more than about 2 hrs at a time, so it would be hypocritical for me to expect my kids to go to bed at a certain time, or stay in bed, or sleep through the night.

I feel the same way about sleep that I do about food, TV, toys, and all kinds of other things--if they're accustomed to having these things regulated for them, they'll lose the ability to self-regulate. But if they're given their freedom back they'll figure it out again after a while. So I think that for the first few nights she might be crazy before she falls asleep, but after she gets used to sleeping on her own schedule, she won't choose to over-tire herself and go crazy.

They (the kids) almost always go to bed before we grownups do, but I don't really care if they don't--they know what to do, the house is babyproofed, and I'll be up in 2 hrs anyway. No harm done.

Like the PP, I don't expect dd to fall asleep on cue since I can't even make myself fall asleep simply because it 'is time'. She does regulate herself pretty well, and it is easier for all of us. Since she often nurses to sleep, I offer whenever she is sleepy or I am. If she nurses for awhile and doesn't fall asleep, she usually decides to play a little more. We cosleep, and she sometimes stays awake talking quietly for a few minutes or sings herself to sleep, but it doesn't take long and we use it as an opportunity to teach her to be considerate of others be doing it quietly.

You might be thinking of me...... I have a 2.5 yo and about 6 months ago we really let go of managing dd's sleep. Things were bad in that dd never wanted/needed to sleep when we thought she should. That meant hours of laying with her while she squirmed every night and naptime. Very frustrating for everyone. We just decided to let go one day. We try to be non-coercive with dd and while she never got upset about bedtime, we did feel that perhaps she needed to be in charge like she is with most everything else that pertains to her body. I will tell you two parts of the story.

First what sleep looks like in our house now. It is really not much different than most houses with toddlers except that we have no set bedtime. Each day is different based on when we woke up, what activites we did, and where we happen to be around bedtime. We watch dd for sleepiness. The universal stuff....rubbing eyes, yawning, etc.... At that point we start to ask periodically if she is tired and wants help with teeth and pjs. At this point, she usually agrees on the first asking. Rarely she is doing something that is more important to her than being tired and she chooses to defer until later. She no longer naps. However, we have gotten tot he point now where if she is sick, we have a party to go to at night, or she had a bad night, she will alomost always take us up on a suggestion to try for a nap. And occasionally she will just decide to curl up with a blanket and take a nap. She now knows the consequences of being tired and also knows how to read her own cues and choose to sleep. So far (in 6 months) she has not wanted to stay up later than both dh and I. Dh is a night owl and is as happy as can be to have a companion to watch movies with. So on dd's latest nights, dh and dd have ended up faling asleep on the couch. But we are pretty flexible about that kind of thing.

The second part is how we got here. Since birth, dd has been sleep challenged. She did not fall asleep easily, even as a tiny baby. Putting her down once she was asleep was nearly impossible. She woke hourly for most of her first 18 months (when she night weaned), then more like once every 2 hours after that. At 2 yo it was taking us 2+ hours a night to get her to fall asleep. At that point, my dh travelled a lot of business. I have insomnia problems myself and I was at my wits end. My mental health was at risk. We had to do something.

As it happened, my dh lost his job and our lives went into chaos. And at the same time, I started to have a revelation about control. We have always tired very hard to not control dd. And it had never occurred to me that our problesm might boil down to her being or feeling controlled. Or more importantly that we were causing her sleep problems by not allowing her to read and react to her own cues.

So we let it all go. There was no discussion at first. Just one day instead of saying "time for bed" we said "do you want to go to sleep?". Dd was quite astounded and reacted in the typical way. She binged on late nights and was a big crank for about a week. She basically fell asleep somewhere playing at like 2am. We did not even mention naps. We just skipped them. After about a week, she seemed to see that this was for real and it was up to her. She never did pick up naps again. She started to tell us when she was ready for bed. She then only took 1/2 hour at the most to go down. AND she decided she wanted to sleep in her own bed. She still does come into the family bed during the night but this was still a shocker for me. As she started to trust us more, we did discuss it occasionally. We explained that people need sleep and that it is a good idea to sleep when you are tired. Then we started discussing how naps can make a late night party easier for everyone. Just stuff like that. We still discuss it regualrly.

What was shocking to me is that it turns out that my dd only needs about 10 hours of sleep a day. She will sometimes go entire weeks on 8-9 hours a day and still be fully functional and happy during the days. When we were attempting to "manage" her sleep, we were having her take 1.5 hour naps then putting her to bed at a time that would have yielded another 11-12 hours. No wonder she would not fall asleep!

We did have to re-evaluate "us time". I need as much or more sleep than dd so many nights there is no "us time". But somehow that is OK. We only needed the "us time" before because we were both so frustrated trying to get dd to sleep

I cannot say this will "work" for all kids. I guess it depends on what one thinks "works". For us, "working" really means that dd is learning the ins and outs of sleep just like she does eating, breathing, climbing, etc..... It happened to have the nice side effect of being easier for us to live with. However, most people say we are nuts to allow our dd to only sleep so little and not take a nap. They think we should make her. I have come to the opinion that had we continued the struggle, we would not only all still be miserable about sleep but dd could develop sleep issues BECAUSE of it.

DS has been setting his own sleep times since he was about 15 months old. Before that we were soothing him to sleep based on his sleepy cues -- we were always low key about sleep and rarely pushed the issue if we couldn't soothe him to sleep easily. It was a pretty organic transition so we didn't have a conversation with him about it. We just noticed that he was no longer getting to that tired overwound state -- he would go until he was tired and then ask for help falling asleep. He has always nursed to sleep (or at least nursed right before going to sleep) so he usually asks me to nurse him in the bed when he's ready for sleep. He is usually asleep within 5 minutes of asking to go to bed. If I notice that he's getting tired I might comment that he's looking tired and ask if he wants to start getting ready for bed, but I don't push it further than that. Most of the time his sleep times are quite reasonable -- for a long time he was going to sleep at about 8:30, then we had a tiring spell where he was staying up until midnight (or past) for about a month, and for the past few months he's been going to bed around 10. We are night people ourselves, so it's rare that DS wants to stay up later than we do -- the few times it's happened we've just asked him to come to bed (we cosleep full time) and he'll either nurse to sleep because we are boring when we're sleepy or we'll set him up with a video to watch in bed while we doze. But that's only happened a handful of times in the past year. Evenings with DS are not really different than any other time -- we just go about our evening playing with him, working, watching TV, chatting. He sometimes needs to run off some energy before bed and then he and DH will play some wild chasing and wrestling games. It's really rare that he gets to the point of being overtired and cranky -- he usually goes to bed before that happens. I don't know if we're just lucky or if his reasonable attitude towards sleep is the result of our laid back attitude towards his sleep but I definitely recommend self determined sleep -- our evenings are so pleasant and DS falls asleep so quickly and easily once he is ready.

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no one could mistake my ds for mellow.

We don't regulate our daughter's sleep. She is 10 months old. Of course, at this stage I feel she still needs help falling asleep (by her cues) so I will help her if she seems sleepy (clingy, rubbing eyes, yawning, fussing a bit and nothing else helps)...so I will rock her and sing to her and such....

Other than that though, I read her cues. Sometimes she falls asleep at 7 pm, sometimes 11 pm...it usually falls between 8-9 though on most nights. We have never had a "schedule" for sleep, more like a loose routine, and of course, following her cues. She set a pretty regular sleep schedule for herself without any *training* or scheduling on our part -- I think most small children will. Without the parent-led sleep scheduling, training, sanctions, threats, or other "tools" parents use to get their child to sleep, I think most children are VERY good self-regulators in that area.

Our daughter (like most people) does get a bit amped up if there is something exciting in her day etc. Like if friends have come over and there is excitement and laughter and such, I find she takes longer to wind down etc... but most nights we have our regular routine (not a schedule though, not set in stone at all) where we take a bath (she loooves baths), give her a massage, read a book, and mellow out. Those nights she is usually routine about sleep, going down at about 8 -- but then again, if she is not ready to sleep, I by all means never force it. She can play as she wants until she expresses to me that she is sleepy (by the cues mentioned above).

It has worked very well in our family to follow her cues in that area.

Hmmm....my ds basically decides when he wants to sleep. I tried when he was younger to have a somewhat-set sleep time. But that just frustrated me to no end because it took forever. (plus I hate schedules lol)
So, we watch for when he's tired. I try to have his jammies on before the earliest that he might want to go to bed, so we don't have to take time to do that AFTER he's tired.
The wanting to go to bed before him isn't an issue in our house- my dp stays up until 5 am lots of days. lol. So even if I'm tired before ds, he can stay up with dp. But when we stay at relative's homes, without dp, I just take ds into our bedroom there an hour or 2 before his "normal" bedtime, so we don't keep anyone up. (I should add here that his bedtime is usually after midnight- that's just how it worked out for us, as dp doesn't get done working until 9 or 10, and doesn't wake up until right before he starts working). I take in toys, and he plays or nurses, and I watch tv practically on mute with the captions on. He goes to sleep earlier there, usually. But I watch tv so I don't get hung on on "WHEN are you going to go to sleep!!!" THAT just makes things way worse, ime!
It helps to have quiet toys, like puzzles. He plays with that before bed all the time.
Ds plays before bedtime. And sometimes roughhouses with dp. We watch for tired signs, and go to the bedroom and talk quietly when he's tired. Though now he usually asks to nurse when he's tired, so its easy to calm him down that way. He can go to sleep 10-30 minutes after running around.

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yup. this is our situation exactly. and, yes, i do believe it was something that you posted Yooper. 1 hour to get dd to sleep is a GOOD NIGHT. most nights it 1.5 hrs and often 2+ hrs.

we co-sleep and nurse to sleep. well kind of nurse to sleep. dd nurses in bed and then eventually flops over and goes to sleep spooning me. we are basically ON each other all night long with lots & lots of nursing. she goes to sleep for her nap just fine and willingly. it's the nighttime sleep that's rough.

thank you all for your insight. it bothers me to think i've been over-controlling dd's sleep since we try very hard to follow her cues in other areas like eating & play.

another question though--following her sleepy cues it often seems like she's tired at, like, 4:30. anyone have a child who adopted some crazy schedule like going to bed at 4 and getting up at 3?

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Just to play the devil's advocate here, but I have to say that I don't think sleep scheduling is in the same league with controlling eating. Not that you can really control sleep, anyway, but I think you can peacefully teach your children how to put themselves to sleep at a consistent time and in a consistent place. Some families don't need to, in fact I was just talking to my mom, who was staying with my brother (who works from home), and she was telling me about how they all sleep at random times but it works great for them.

Anyway, my dh goes to work at 7:00 at comes home around 5:00, and we want to be able to do certain things during the day at certain times. For example, I want to be able to schedule appointments when I know the kids are going to be well-rested and happy, instead of miserable and grouchy. And my dd LOVES more than life itself to go to story time at the library, so as my ds has gotten older I've done everything I can to schedule his naps around mid-morning activities. Then I usually know that I've got about a two hour block that they both can enjoy and we can do our "outings" in. I don't think I'm doing anyone a disservice here. Anyway, if you're not sure you want to go totally "schedule-free", you could try the "No-Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley. I think there's some great ideas in there for teaching a child to go to sleep without nursing.