Sometimes, it’s okay to let your child have their way.

My wife and I have been going through quite a rough time with our 18 month old daughter when it comes to sleeping at naptime and bedtime.

I have a 5 year old daughter, and back when she was a baby, it wasn’t much of a chore to get her to sleep in her crib, in her own room. We put her down, and let her cry for a bit if need be. She never really cried for more than 10–15 minutes. To this day, she is still a great sleeper. (Just not always the best at going to bed.)

With my 18 month old daughter, I’m telling quite the different story.

For the past 6 months, we’ve been going through ups and downs with her and her sleeping habits. Sometimes she’d sleep all night (8pm — 6am), and other times she’d wake up crying every 30 minutes. Sometimes she would do well for a week, but randomly she would not do so well the next four days.

When you can’t get used to a certain pattern, it sure gets rough on the body. I found it to be easier to wake up consistently to feed and change my daughters through the night when they were infants. It would be months straight of this pattern, slowly decreasing the amount of having to get up as my daughters grew from infancy to toddlers. When one gets to sleep for 8 hours straight for several days and then not for the next four, and back again, it gets rough on the body. There’s no getting used to a pattern.

A week ago, I found myself at my wits end of this. I ended up writing a cry for help (and rant on Facebook) at 3am, while my wife was trying to deal with our younger daughter. I’ll share an edited version here, removing my daughters’ and wife’s names.

My wife and I are lost. Lost once again with our 18 month old daughter and her random refusal to sleep at nap time, and/or overnight.

At this time, she is crying when put into her crib. Both at 8pm (bedtime) and then whenever she wakes up through the night. Why she’s waking up in the first place is beyond us. Her nap time at home or daycare is about an hour if that.

The typical answer for a crying child in their crib is simply let them cry. It’s annoying. It’s loud. But it won’t hurt them. If they’re making noise, they’re obviously alright. Wait long enough, and they’ll clue in that you’re not coming and it’s time to sleep.

My 18 month old calls bullshit.

We’ve waited 15 minutes. 30. 45. 60. 90. 120.

Yes. 120. Two hours. That’s the length of a two hour movie. Two episodes of Friends. Four episodes of The Big Bang Theory. You get the picture.

She will cry — no, scream — for the entire way through. Her lungs and diaphragm are impossibly powerful for an 18 month old toddler.

My wife does not agree with letting her cry so long. It’s only through the exhaustion of ideas she will go for it. The two hour wait has only happened a couple times before we go get her. The waiting for an hour or more has happened countless times and she’s actually fallen asleep on her own.

For a bit.

The problem gets compounded by the fact that after crying for an hour from 8pm-9pm, or maybe 11pm-12pm, is that it has often been only a couple hours later, if that, and she’s right back at it again.

So what does my youngest daughter do when we DO go in her room? She shuts up near instantly and babbles in a cute manor like a light switch. Close the door on her and she switches it back to a full-out-schreak that makes me wonder how my neighbor (duplex) hasn’t heard and called the authorities on me, thinking the kid is being abused.

I am not just writing all of this out from a history of a few weeks to a month. No, this has been going on since last summer, or maybe even Spring. It feels like forever now… Only recently I’ve been documenting the instances as best as I can in my journal.

For those of you reading this, wondering what is wrong with the two hour cry? Or maybe longer? Well, my kids’ pediatrician said that is too long. Plus, my daughter’s cry/scream will carry through this house as if I didn’t have walls. The doors are no better at stopping sound than a sheet of newspaper. My five year old’s room is right beside her room, and yes, my oldest is being kept awake. She can sleep through a lot, but not this time. The result is a very tired and worn down 5 year old.

Right now as I type this out, my youngest is in bed with my wife. Something we both know is quite possibly the worst thing we could do, as it may, and probably will reset her. This is the recurring result due to exhaustion and wanting our older daughter to sleep as well. Prior to this last resort we did the following;

- She woke up crying at 12:15. We let her cry for 15 mins before my wife went into her room. She tried to rub her back and shush her. This has worked in the past for a while. My youngest screamed instead and wasn’t having it. My wife walked out, causing my youngest daughter to scream even louder with clear anger in the cry.

- Another 20 mins, I go in, where she was standing in her crib. I laid her down telling her it is bedtime still. She shrieks at me and stands back up as fast as she can. No lie, I repeated this 12 times. My 18 month old is a freaking Weeble Wobble. As this point I am frustrated. I leave.

- Let her cry for an hour. We just laid in our beds and surfed on our phone

- After the hour I went in her room, spoke sternly to her telling her this is not okay and it is time to sleep. If this child could have given me the big, “F—- you, Daddy!” I feel she would have.

- Starting to cave, I went to plan B that we learned about a few nights ago. Lay down on the floor beside the crib. This worked last night, as she went quiet, eventually laid down, and fell asleep. I was able to sneak out, go to bed, and sleep until the morning. Tonight though, she sat there for what felt like a dog’s age before laying down. Then after a glacier past by the house, she finally stopped checking to see if I was there and fell asleep. Or so I thought. There’s no clock in her room, but after maybe an hour of laying on the floor (ow…) she was still awake, and decided to check after I got back into my room. I swear even a ninja couldn’t have been more quiet than I was. She started the uber loud cry once again.

- My wife and I were/are done. After the two of us arguing of what to do, and both of us NOT wanting to argue, I just said to her, “Do whatever now…”

We need sleep. My five year old needs sleep (we, we heard her talking a little at one point, so we know she was awake) I went downstairs to unwind from frustration and I know my wife just went and got my youngest, putting her in our bed.

So before anyone asks what other things we’ve tried, I’ll list it out:

- Curtains up making the room pitch black (worked for my oldest years ago)
- Too dark? Put a nightlight in
- Clock radio quietly playing music or AM with talking for the ambient noise
- Fisher Price fish tank for nighttime in cribs
- Adding a pillow for more comfort
- Different blankets
- Milk before bed (we don’t feed her through the night. Even the doc said no to that.)

During Christmas, there was a point where I thought we were over this hurdle. At one point, I walked into my 18 month old’s room with my “dad voice” and said, “Enough crying. It’s bedtime! You have to sleep now, okay?” She shocked me with the response, “Otay” and went to sleep. This worked several times up until a week ago. Now we’re back to this horrible loop that we can’t find our way out of.

The history over the past six months is she would almost always go to bed at 8 with no problems. Sometimes she’d sleep through the night. Sometimes she’d wake up, cry a bit, and sleep again. Other times, she would cry until my wife checked on her, then that would be good enough and be fine for the rest of the night. We have no steady pattern to go by!

When we talked about all of this to the pediatrician, we gave a few tips here and there, but we heard them already and nothing worked. He suggested a child psychologist, but I don’t know how I feel about that with an 18 month old. I could see us going and suddenly she reverts to “good sleeper” mode making the whole thing a waste of time.

So, there you have it. The reason my wife and I look and act tired. The reason we may have been short with any of you (sorry…). Quite possibly a reason we’ve all been getting sick so often — aside from ear infections.

If any ideas come to mind for us to try, feel free to share them. We’re up for anything these days…

The result of this post did lead to quite a few comments, all positive and helpful. What caught me off guard though was the amount of fellow parents who simply said,

“Let her sleep with you, or in your room. Do whatever you can so you can all get some rest. She will grow out of this, but right now, you all need to sleep.”

Clearly, I needed to quit being stubborn, and quit worrying about my 18 month old daughter winning. I needed to stop the mentality that if she sleeps in my bed, she’ll never sleep in her room again. I needed to do what needed to be done to get sleep.

So, the very next night, I remember putting her down at 8pm. She of course, cried in crib, in her room. It only lasted 10, maybe 15 minutes. She was out like a light until 12:30am. Instead of starting the war again, I set up the playpen in my bedroom, and my wife went and got our daughter. We put her in the playpen right beside the bed. She went to sleep. We all slept. Right until 7am.

It was wonderful.

About a week later now, we’re not home free, but we are better rested. My wife and I will give this routine a go and see what happens.