u/gavana12

My son is about to turn 2. We did extinction when he was 13 months and it worked really well. He’s regressed over the last 2 months and bedtime has been brutal. Chair method not working. Ferber never worked I suspect that will still be the case. Tempted to do extinction again. Is he too old? I worry about it being too upsetting for him.

He’s on one nap a day, FYI. His ideal schedule would be 6/630 wake, 1230-230 nap, 730/8 bed. But his schedule now with his messed up sleep is 5-530 wake, 12-230 wake (we wake him) and 8-9 he falls asleep.

My son is 22 months old and recently has gone through a bedtime separation anxiety/sleep regression.

He’s on one nap. His old schedule was:

- wake 630am
- nap 12-2pm (capped 2 hours)
- bed 7-730pm

I cannot get him down anymore. He just cries and resists. My husband gets a bit of resistance but he can certainly get him down easier than me. Other caregivers like grandparents can just drop him in the crib and walk away.

For context, he was sleep trained with extinction around 13 months and was sleeping through the night. I could get him down just by plopping him in his crib awake and saying goodnight. It was great.

I guess my question is, is extinction ok to do at this age? I am concerned because he’s older, especially because he’s in this “separation anxiety” phase. I don’t want to cause any harm developmentally

My son was sleep trained using extinction when he was around 14 months old. He is now 22 months. He was a fantastic sleeper until now. He’s resisting bed with me specifically (mom) and has shown some pretty serious separation anxiety. I basically cannot put him down anymore. He wakes in the night and will be distraught if I’m the one who goes to him. He really needs some sort of comfort when he wakes. My husband has been 100% on duty with bedtime and night wakes but this had to stop.

Here’s an example of his typical day pre-regression where he would sleep through the night and fall asleep independently:

6-630 wake
12-2 nap (we would cap it at an hour)
7-730 bed

Here’s his newer schedule and he wakes multiple times a night. If he sees me he just won’t go back to sleep, his longest stretch awake has been 130-5am which is insane:

530-7 wake (sometimes it’s early and sometimes if he’s up a lot in the night he’ll sleep in to 7)
12-3 nap (been letting him sleep longer since he’s been losing so much night sleep)
8-830 bed (due to his resisting this is now pushed out more)