Bedtime meltdown

Over the last few days, our little angel reasonably well-behaved daughter, has taken testing boundaries to to the outermost limits – somewhere approaching Alpha Centauri. And she is doing this at bedtime, a time that we had got pretty much sorted.

The usual evening routine, that has worked perfectly for a fair while, goes roughly like this:

• We all eat dinner together at 5pm.
• Rosemary brushes her teeth while I start getting Eleanor into her bedclothes and Chris walks the dog.
• Rosemary gets her pyjamas on while I finish getting Eleanor into her bedclothes.
• I read Rosemary and Eleanor one or two stories (basically until Eleanor starts crying very loudly).
• I go through to our bedroom to feed Eleanor and put her to sleep, while Chris reads Rosemary a few more stories.
• Rosemary lies down, gets her covers put on her, chatters to her teddies a bit, sometimes listens to Paolie’s (My Pal Scout) music, and falls asleep, usually within a few minutes – sometimes it takes maybe 15 minutes.

Every few nights, the girls have a bath after dinner, but the rest of the routine stays the same.

Quite often there will be a couple of attempts to put off sleep – going to the loo, asking for a drink, asking for a teddy to be brought up, but nothing more.

Until now.

Every part of the routine goes perfectly well, pretty much, with no arguments. Stories are read happily and peacefully. But when it comes time to actually go to sleep, all hell breaks loose, with every possible delaying tactic brought out, along with tears, stomping, leaving the room, running upstairs, downstairs, in her parents’ chamber, screaming, and threats.

Oh boy, the threats.

“I have to have the light on, otherwise I will scream and scream and scream.”

“You have to flatten my covers, otherwise I will not love you anymore.”

“I have to sleep in your room, otherwise I will hit you.”

It has been escalating since we got back from Scotland (and there were a few issues there, too). She has been getting worse every night. And we have been getting worse every night. Meaning we are shouting and screaming, too. We’ve both slammed doors. We’ve both threatened things that we’re not able to go through with. (Last night, I threatened that if she didn’t stop misbehaving, I would go downstairs, walk out the front door and go away somewhere for the night. Duh! It made her cry. Didn’t stop her misbehaving. And, of course, I didn’t do it. Because how would that even be possible.) We’ve all three of us ended up with sore throats from shouting and screaming. And she pretty much hasn’t gone to sleep until she’s completely exhausted herself with crying and screaming.

We know the shouting and screaming and so on is almost certainly making it worse, but we’re seriously at a loss of what else to do. Threats, bribes, calm explanations in the morning, nothing seems to be working. This morning, I talked to her about it and she said she didn’t know why she was doing it, but agreed that it was making it worse for her and that she wouldn’t do it tonight. We talked about it later in the afternoon, and she agreed that she would go to bed nicely. While I was reading her stories tonight, she agreed that she would go to bed nicely.

But then she didn’t.

Some of the behaviour seems to be creeping into late afternoon now, too, mostly when she’s tired out, I think. The rest of the day, she’s pretty lovely, creative, bright, friendly, affectionate, inquisitive. She’s not perfectly behaved, of course, and she’s experimenting with bargaining and the like, but to nowhere near the level that we’re seeing at bedtime suddenly.

So, I’m throwing this out to the parenting panel… Does anyone (oh, please, please, please) have any advice? And is the perfectly normal behaviour (while knowing it is wouldn’t actually provide a solution, I think it might make us feel a little better, somehow). Have you been through it? How long did it last? What worked?

Edited to add:

I just had a sudden realisation… Over the last few weeks, we have gradually accepted a new rule that Rosemary made. That she would get a cuddle everytime anyone left her bedroom. It’s such an innocuous thing a cuddle, that we happily and unquestioningly agreed to it. And gradually there have been more reasons for us to come into her room. It’s not sudden at all. She’s been building up her cuddle quota! No wonder she’s finding more and more reasons to delay. Cuddles are such lovely things! So, the plan is to let her know tomorrow that she will get one cuddle from each of us when we say goodnight (me, when I take Eleanor through; Chris when he finishes the stories) and that will be it. If she needs help to go to the toilet, or needs a drink, we will help with those things, but she won’t get any more cuddles. And, in the meantime, she can have as many as she wants during the day.