my 2yr old won't go to bed what can i do to help him to settle down?

not just 2 yet, another month. need to clean up and get to bed at a decent hour myself.

Answers:
Okay, I've read all of the answers and while they're all pretty good suggestions, I take quite a different approach to the whole bedtime thing. Myself, a mother of a 2year old (she turned 2 just last month), I have found that there's a fine balance that you must maintain. If you lie in bed with them every night then they become somewhat spoiled and dependent, so what do you do when you aren't able to lie with them one night and they just refuse to or can't to go to sleep? But at the same time, you don't want to be too hard on them, after all, 2 is a hard enough age for children to begin with. We were having this problem with my daughter when she was getting close to 2 and we moved her into a "big girl bed". I wanted to lie down with her until she fell asleep, but my husband felt that I was spoiling her and he used the "tough love" method of spankings when she got out of bed, I thought that was too excessive. So we came to a compromise... a half hour before bedtime is quiet time, lights get dimmed a little, she may quietly play, watch tv, look at books or have one of us read books to her (we do this because we also have a newborn and don't always have time for warm bath, milk, rocking and story routine), but there is NO rough play, running, loud voices or music. When it is time to go to bed, one of us takes her in, explains that it's time to go to sleep and that she may not get out of bed or she will be put into "time out" (because this is a more passive form of discipline than "tough love"), we cover her up, turn on some classical Celtic music, turn off the lights and shut the door. If she gets out of bed, we put her in "time out" (a car seat she gets strapped into... highchair works too... and put in an isolated corner), she usually falls asleep in "time out" or she tells us she's ready for bed and doesn't get back up once she's been put down.

The old wives tale of warm milk. Put some chocolate syrup in it, just enough to make it turn color so he doesn't get hyper. There is an enzyme that breaks down when we warm milk and it makes people sleepy. Just like turkey. That's why we get sleepy after eating turkey on Thanksgiving.

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my 2yr old won't go to bed what can i do to help him to settle down?

Pregnancy & Parenting