Gotta Get This Child to Bed

Is he still taking a daytime nap? If so, you might need to drop it, shorten it, or find ways to tire him out after his nap so that he'll be tired enough at bedtime. (We've been going through the same this with my 3 yr old).

ETA: We've been taking after-dinner walks and trips to the park. Instead of just letting them play on the playground, I've been bringing some balls and we run around in the field for a LONG time. By the time it is done all the kids are toast and ready for bath & bed. Very rare that they resist bedtime after I've run them ragged.

Is he getting lots of active play during the day.. This means running, jumping, climbing, peddling, swimming etc.. for at least and hour to hour and a half in the morning and again in the afternoon..

EVERY day.

At this age they are just so full of energy.. they have to be allowed to just get rid of it. They are growing so fast, they need to have their hearts pumping that blood to their brain and all through their bodies.

Also in the evenings.. no horseplay, the more wound up he gets with tickles, horseplay and laughing etc.. the more awake he will be.. Instead once bath time begins.. make everything calm and quiet.

Schedule this into each day.. and I promise, he will sleep great at night.

Oh, I feel your pain. My son was an awful sleeper for years, and that age was the worst. Bedtime took at least an hour, often two. He'd already dropped naps on his own, but we tried everything else under the sun: earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, wearing him out with exercise, extra fresh air, pre-bed snack, who knows what else. None of it made much difference. We simply had to wait for him to grow out of it. Which he did...at age 5.

The one thing that did help a little was to download some white noise apps - ocean, rushing stream, etc. He liked listening to them and they seemed to make him settle down when nothing else would. I think the sounds gave him something to focus on other than the constant hamster wheel of thoughts and questions and ideas in his head. (Truthfully, I can identify...if I don't have a ceiling fan or some other background noise when I'm falling asleep, I start thinking waaaaaaaay too much.)

Hang in there. It passes. I promise.

Sounds counter-intuitive, but have you tried putting him to bed at 7:30? That is when I used to aim for with our kids at that age. Combine that with making sure that he is getting plenty of physical activity during the morning/afternoons, and he should be ready for sleep. :)

What time does he get up?
Does he ever nap?
How much activity does he get?

If my son falls asleep at 8pm, he wakes at 8am.
Does not usually nap unless he needs it & just falls asleep.
He gets tons of activity each day!
On the days he falls asleep for a nap, he does not go to bed until 9 or 10pm.
Sometimes if he's tired, he will wake 30 mins later and he almost always then goes to bed 30 mins later.
Since I'm a SAHM, I don't have to get up early so I let his body & our activity for the day determine our schedule.
I would try putting him to bed a little later. Try adjusting times by 30 mins when going through stages like this.
So try about 9pm for a bedtime.
Hang in there. This stage will pass, things will level off & a new stage will come. :)

What time does he have to get up? Try a later bedtime. He may have grown out of the need for so much sleep. Even 9:00pm is still an early bedtime.

I would start the bedtime a bit earlier and if he gets up early and plays all day outside and in he should be ready for bed. I would do the bath, story, talk about the story quietly maybe so he gets to talk with you and then prayers and bedtime but if he is still not sleepy, as he isn't, you might tell him he could lay in his bed quietly with no noise and look at a book for a few minutes and you'll be back to check on him soon. I would not have TV loud, or talking for just a bit and then he should fall asleep. 'Should' is the key word here. Sometimes if you start earlier they do sleep better, or at least some kids do. Try it at least.

After you leave his room maybe he can hear the tv and stuff and he knows y'all are still up and he doesnt want to MISS anything. Maybe some soft music in his room or some sort of white noise might help?
He's probably going through a spurt of some sort.
Basically you just need to do your routine and let him know it's lights out and he has to stay in his bed. You are the boss, you do have some power, you just have to enforce it.

We used the ferber method, it worked for us. Since he's actually going to sleep at 10:30, try not putting him to bed until 11pm. Do your regular routine, and if he gets up, do nothing more than say something like nite nite, time for bed, put him in bed and walk out of the room. It probably won't take long for him to fall asleep. You are essentially shifting the responsibility onto him, i.e. he is responsible for going to sleep, you are just responsible for putting him to bed. A few nights of this and when he goes to bed and goes to sleep quickly and reliably, you can start bumping his bedtime back to a more reasonable hour.

Be prepared for some tears and some screaming as you don't bend over backwards to get him to sleep. He won't like it at first. The up side is that he will be capable of going to sleep and going back to sleep without your intervention soon enough.

Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

Sometimes a little bit of melatonin 30 minutes before bedtime can be very helpful.