Over an hour to settle 23mth old for bed

What is she like if you leave the door open? She will be screaming cause the door shutting is like rejection.

I used to stick a twig of lavender next to A's pillow, removing it once she was fast asleep cause too much expose can cause headaches.

Also maybe keep her up for a little longer for some one on one time?? Nice quiet cuddles?

We did the sitting next to the bed but not looking at/interacting with technique (he was a bit older though, around 29 months when we had trouble). I would tuck him in, read him a story then at the end of the story give him a kiss but just stay sitting on the floor not looking at him until he settled to sleep, after a while I would just wait until he had settled down and was able to leave before he fell asleep and then slowly over about a month I was able to just do story, kiss and leave and he was back to settling himself. I think sometimes he was so over tired by bed time that he just couldn't calm himself down and me sitting there was enough to keep him in bed long enough to calm down and it stopped him getting out. On the few occassion he did climb out though I just put him back in calmly without talking to or making eye contact with him and then would sit back on the floor so he quickly learnt it wasn't worth the effort.

The other one that Nigel Latta suggested was to tell them if they stay in bed you will leave the door open but if they get out shut it. So they get out you put them back to bed and shut the door, they go crazy, you open the door and say "get back in bed and i will leave the door open" then if they get out again you do the same until they realise that it is better for them to stay in bed and have the open than have it shut. We never tried that as we shut the kids doors to keep the cats out and they don't seem to care about them being shut, guess cos they always have been.

Good luck

In our house shutting the door is considered a good thing! lol!

Anyway is Dakota still napping? If she is then I'd consider possibly dropping it.

Nat has started taking 1-2 hours to go to sleep at night - we put her in at 7.30pm, but often she's not asleep till 9pm. However, she is happy, talking away to her toys (mostly) - if she gets upset, we'll go in and remind her that it's time to sleep now

She's sleeping 1-2 hours in the afternoon, but I just figure she's going through a phase where she still needs a nap, but that means she isn't tired at bedtime. I guess eventually she'll drop her sleep, and bedtime will become early again!

We've always shut her door, but she's still in the cot, so no worries about her getting out! It's actually quite nice atm knowing we can do stuff in the early evening, whereas we used to have to have her in bed no later than 7pm, or we would miss the 'window' and she would be a nightmare! Now if we don't get her into bed till 8.30, it's ok, and we find she does tend to go straight to sleep a bit later (but I need some sanity/assignment time in the evenings, so I'm not keeping her up longer for her sake! it does obviously help that she's happy playing in her cot though).

Jake has never once got out of bed (still sits on the bed and yells for us when he wakes!!) so can't really help with what to do, but I also wondered about the day nap? Jake still has a big one (3 hours alot of the time) so he goes to bed at 8pm now - as hes just not tired earlier. Although we never had the coming out drama - he did go thru a phase of happily talking for ages in his room before going to sleep. I found that running him ragged during the day and the slightly later bedtime definitely helped.