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Does anyone have any ideas on how to get a sassy precocious 2 year old to sleep? I have done the bath thing, routine thing, food, drink, even massage thing and nothing seems to get this kid to sleep bwfore 10:30 pm. its a 2.5 hour battle every night. She wakes up at 8, naps at 1pm until 2 or 3 (depending on the day) and then by 8pm is yawning and oh so sleepy.
We've tried going to the park, or doing physical activities all day to wear her out, or even intellectual ones but theres no consistency in results.
She gets to bed, is nearly dozed off by 8:15-8:30 and then... PING! Eyes wide open. This half dozing then waking up thing continues for the next hour or so, until about 9:30-10pm when shes finally had "enough" and is bored to tears and it all ends in litteral tears of anger for her as she tries to get out of bed and i tuck her back in... im tired of wasting 2 hours every night, but I need/want her in bed at 8 for my own sanity.
I tried laying her down and leaving instead of staying in the room, but that just extends the whole thing till 11 or midnight 🙄
Im at my whits end. I know shes bored and wants to stay up and is forceing herself to stay awake, just like myself. And just like me shes clearly so tired she can hardly stand... Im just no better at convincing a 2year old version of myself to go to sleep than I am my actual self.

Main complaint: bored
Seems to think that bedtime is a punishment, but has no issues with nap time.
Somehow recharges enough to stay awake hours.

I've heard of success using:
- a projector nightlight
- lullaby music
- aromatherapy (fragrance of lavender essential oil)
- warm bean-bag near the feet.

Here are two old discussion threads which may be of interest -
book
weighted blanket

Wishing you all the best with this. Parents need sleep, too... even when their children may be night-owls!

My 3 year old has had this problem. For us, moving up bedtime is most successful. Sometimes getting him into bed to sleep by 7 or 7:30pm. If he is already overtired at bedtime then he tends to wind up and have trouble calming his body, but he has an easier time if we start the bedtime routine before the tiredness sets in he will go to sleep more easily.

If she's getting all the sleep that she needs under this scenario, then it would make sense that she's staying awake. Every kid's sleep requirements are a little different, but the standard recommendation for 2yos is 11-14 hours daily. Back of the envelope calculation says your DD is getting at least 11.5 hours a day even when she stays up late, which is right in that wheelhouse.

Have you considered eliminating the afternoon nap? Or at least limiting the amount of time she gets for it?

Standard sleep needs for 1-3 year olds are 10-13 hours/day per the Canadian Pediatric Society. Your daughter is getting 9.5 hours at night and an additional 1-2 hours during the day. It's most likely that your daughter's sleep needs are being met on the current schedule, and an 8:00pm bedtime is inappropriate for her body with the nap. If you feel the 8:00pm bedtime is a necessity for you, I'd work on scaling back or phasing out the nap while maintaining total sleep hours.

In addition to that general messaging, here are some more specific ideas:

- Cosleeping for the first part of the night (say, 30 mins) might help her drift off.

- With my DS, he needed to be utterly overwhelmed with mental stimulus before he could transition comfortably to sleep. This often looked like us reading non-fiction topics of interest for well over an hour.

Good luck.

Good advice in your simulpost, Dude.

LOLparallelism.

Backatcha.

Hmm, if she weren't repeatedly drifting off and then waking up during the first hour or so after you put her down, I would say it sounds like a classic delayed sleep phase issue. She may even be a natural night owl that finds it hard to go to bed or get up early. However, since she does seem sleepy by 8, I'm not so sure.

Still, I think it's worth a try to treat this as a sleep phase issue. As others have pointed out, it sounds like she's getting an appropriate amount of sleep for her age. Therefore, if you want her to be able to fall asleep earlier, you should probably start by having her wake up earlier in the morning. Leave bedtime as is, but wake her up 15 minutes earlier each day until she's getting up around 7. See if it takes her less time to fall asleep at night. You'll also need to move meals and nap earlier - basically you want to retrain when her body expects to be asleep and awake, which is the result of various biological signals including morning light exposure, mealtimes, etc. (I realize you may not want her up at 7! Simultaneously working on shortening the nap might be another option).

We have a biological night owl in our household and have to constantly work on this, but using the above we've been able to shift her daily rhythm earlier by about 1.5 hours. It takes constant vigilance/discipline, though. Left to her own devices, she would sleep roughly 11-9.

I would echo those who suggest considering if nap is necessary. We had problems getting DD to bed early when she was 2.5 years old, and she had naptime in daycare/school. When she moved to a school where naps were optional (around 2.75 years old), we ended up having the nap dropped and bedtime was so much easier (except on those rare days when she does nap for longer than 15 minutes, for instance on long car rides - then we were staring at late bedtime for that night). They just skipped the naptime instead of trying gradual decrease of naptime (partially because DD was notorious for being super cranky when woken from naptime) and it took a week or so to adjust.

aquinas, we had the same issue with DS - nightly readathons. even now, if left alone with his books, he would read until he falls over (sometimes literally - we had come back in to tuck him in, and found him asleep facedown on an open book in his bed) so we still have to watch that he goes to bed on time with books put away and lights off (luckily he is not inclined to turn on the lights behind our backs or find a flashlight so far).

I have tried cutting out her nap, but that just makes her super tired by 7pm, and if we put her down at 7 then she ultimately wakes by around 9-10pm and is up until 2am... its some strange vicious circle.
As she gets older I am going to try to do the whole: stay in your room, lights out at 8:30, you can read/play quietly by nightlight system... but so far trying to implement this has been futile.
I know that she is likely a night-owl as her dad is a made one and I am a biological one. our natural bed time is 2-3am.

Ill try the suggestion of cutting her sleep in the morning (waking her from her nap is nearly impossible). Itll mean sacrificing my own sleep lol but hey if I get even an hour more quiet at night, itll be worth it.