Sleep Nightmare

Worldwide I guess bed sharing is the commonest arrangement!

Be kind to them. People have different temperaments and it starts early. Some children are more needy than others and it does all pass.
Bedsharing is not the end of the world.

I am perfectly serious when I say that a friend of mine still had her daughter coming into their bed every night at the age of 16. It started when she was about 18 months old.

I think it was actually a symptom of her not very happy marriage

We lost touch when we moved but I did hear her daughter now has 2 children of her own & I wonder where they sleep.

My 2 smaller GC insist on door left open & landing light on but son & DIL close door & turn off light when they go to bed & children never query it in the morning. We do same when they stay here.
You have to be kind but firm.

my 10yr GD still sleeps in her parents bed ! when they visit I put girlie duvet and teddies in the single bed in "her " room , but it is Dad sleeps there !

Merry16 I feel so sorry for your daughter and son-in-law. Children are very different and my daughter's just 2 year old has never needed to be persuaded to stay in bed. He loves going to bed, sings nursery rhymes with mum then sings out "Night night Nanny", "Night night Mummy", and sings and chats in his cot until he drops off. If he wakes in the night we hear him chatting and singing. Yet his mum, who was a screamer from birth, was a terrible sleeper, still trying repeatedly to get in our bed when her brother was born nearly two years later. But he was an angel who loved his sleep and when he could talk would announce "sleep time!" by 6pm.
His first son is a good sleeper but his second (and last) son is a night time nightmare. We have all read the books and watched Supernanny and others and followed all the rules but at nearly 3 nothing so far has worked. Consistency hasn't worked so it can be just the luck of the draw.

I have a friend who did not knuckle down and stop her DD doing this, she is still doing it and is nearly 8!

both mine were taken to bed every night, tucked in and left with a nightlight. if they woke in the night and came into our room then they were taken back to their room and tucked in again. no sitting with them until they fell asleep.

didn't take very long for them to realise that their room was for sleeping in all night.

when they woke up early in the morning [anything before 6 is early for me] and it was light then they just used to find a toy or book and take it back to bed with them until it was time for us to get up.

if one of them woke with a nightmare then they were just soothed and put back to bed ......... i had one of those dream catchers over their beds and they worked!

Thank you everyone for all your advise. I know being firm and consistent is the answer, and it is up to my daughter and son-in-law to see it through. They have tried in the past, and then failed because he has been ill or they are so tired. But I will put all your ideas to them and I know they will be grateful.

tiggy that's also a good idea. My DIL has a youtube video for my 20 month old grandson and as soon as it starts playing I see his eyes glaze over (when I'm putting him to bed - so he gets the same lullabies at granny's house too).

mumofmadboys - I love my sleep and would never have coped with "musical beds". To my shame it was (and still is) a family joke that I never woke up when the children called, so they would wake their dad instead.

I'm just a very sound sleeper and when I say I am going to sleep, I do just that. Can't say that I managed it during their teenage years - I would wait in a "twilight zone" state for the squeak of the gate, often that would be in the early hours of the morning.

My first three slept well in their own beds but number 4 , who I knew would be the last , used to get into our bed in the early hours and we didn`t put him back . It is all to do with early training and if you miss that `window` then you just have put put up with it .
It is exhausting keep putting them back into their own beds I know but it is the only way and it may be too late for your daughter to start now .
One good thing is he won`t be doing it forever but probably when he stops the expected baby will be unless the Mum and Dad start as the would like to go on !

I agree with everything said about routines and no screen time etc. The other thing which DD has found useful with her two is playing a cd of nursery rhyme type music quietly. It is the same one every night and acts as a 'sleep trigger' and I doubt either of them ever hears the end of it.
As for DS and his brood (I don't see them often) one of them did try it on with me but the putting back into bed with no eye contact and nothing said took quite a few times the first night but succeeded in 3 nights. At home he had been allowed to fall asleep on the sofa and then put into bed - sod that for a bowl of cherries in Granny's house !!

Like others posting here, I think routine and consistency are key. I had four children, one of whom was an anxious little fellow, but none of them ever had problems sleeping at night and all of them slept well in their own rooms from an early age.

Like NanaandGrampy we had a wind down zone routine. This always ended with stories and cuddles before being tucked in. We never had problems with children getting up at night; maybe this is because they were very active in the day, we walked a lot and they played out in the garden a great deal too so they were physically tired. I do wonder if some of today's children are simply not exercised enough and that this can add to bad sleep.

With so many young children using ipads and the like, I do think it is important to have a 'no screen' wind down zone from 1 hour before bed too.

Quite Synonymous.
Merry16. In your op you say "and know they should be firmer". There you go.

Breast feeding, although it has numerous benefits, tends to add to sleep problems as babies snack more and breast milk is digested more quickly than bottled milk so babies are hungrier earlier.

Exactly Syn and that's why it's a pleasure to have the GC to sleep over - we get out sleep too.

Now if anyone has an idea how to stop them waking at 6.00am...........

This Granny is very firm and is not a pushover!

We haven't got to our time in life without learning a thing or two!

Synonymous my SiL once joked 'do you drug our children?'because his boys neven wake up/get up in the night on their weekly sleepover

Exactly Synonymous.

Little ones only understand what they are taught. Whilst they know what they themselves want they have to be taught what is acceptable in the life of the family and what the rules are. If no one takes the trouble to teach them the children will never learn and the adults get all the 'benefits' that come with that.
I am often amused to hear how many children who don't sleep at home are really good at sleeping at Granny's!

I thought Jo Frost was very good the way she worked.

Luckygirl I wish my DD had put them straight down to sleep in their own cots. DGS2 is still waking up lots of time at night for a feed and he is 11mnths. DD always seemed to feel he will get lonely if he is put to get himself to sleep. Making rods for your own back comes to mind.

However I have refrained from saying so to my daughter but my co-granny and I have shared some mutterings about this.

All babies are different I suppose I was just lucky with mine

Our children slept in their own rooms from about 6 months - and were settled in bed/cot then left to go to sleep.

Several of my DGC (some of school age) still have someone stay with them till they drop off - it seems to be what they do now.

We ended up with several children in our bed! We just decamped and went in their beds when our bed was overfull! They all grow out of it eventually. We have five children.

Here's another example:
www.infantsleepconsultant.co.uk/

merry poor sleep deprived parents. If you Google "baby sleep trainers" numerous websites come up. My friends with toddlers swear by these sleep trainers.

But perhaps your daughter is aware of them?

Here's just one example:

www.happylittledreamers.co.uk/

Many offer online help or "first time free" consultations.

Good luck.

I think it's an age old problem. My youngest son slept with us for ages and my eldest granddaughter was a terrible sleeper. She never went to bed until she'd fallen asleep on the sofa and often ended up in bed with her mum while my son had to move into her bed. If she stayed with us she always slept with me. She's 18 now and has obviously grown out of it . I think the advice given here about consistency seems to be what works best and is the techniques used by Jo Frost the nanny.