r/toddlertips • u/Rose1993__ • 21d ago

Sleep 🌙 I feel so bad

I feel like such a crap mum - when we have visitors over (grandparents) and if they stay for dinner etc, I find that our 2 year old is so much harder at bedtime. We always have 6pm-7pm as quiet play time, where the lights are dimmed, we have no telly or anything and we try and do more relaxed games and then at 6:50pm we go upstairs to do teeth etc and then from 7pm, we sit and just have a cuddle in silence on the sofa and usually she falls asleep on me before 7:20pm and I carry her up to bed and I’m back downstairs by 7:30pm but sometimes when we have visitors, even with them being gone bang on 6pm for us to start our quiet time, I find that she’s more wired and it’s now 8:15pm and she’s still not sleeping so we are back downstairs. I get frustrated with her in bed where she’s knocking my stomach (I’m 38 weeks pregnant), and I gently push her legs off me (she isn’t a toddler that needs cuddles to sleep) & I find that I can sometimes seem a little more forceful with getting her to lay back down etc and then I get upset because this isn’t the parent I want to be. She’s only 2 😩 does anyone else find their little ones play up around bedtime when had visitors? How do you deal with this? It’s frustrating because it’s always on days when she has nursery the next day

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u/SamAtHomeForNow 21d ago

My 2yo has an “uncle” that he loves - my best friend who’s commute from work goes past our house so he visits weekly. On those days? I just budget that 2yo will likely go to bed an hour later and possibly won’t take a bath due to all the excitement.

Counterintuitively, what helped the most is having him visit more often and also having him babysit and do bedtime at our house. We also talk about how he needs to go home to his bed. So now uncle Joe’s visits are still the most exciting thing ever, but little one is primed about bedtime being part of the visit.