He sleeps six hours in a 24 hour period, he actively fights falling asleep.
He will sit there nodding like a heroin addict because the moment he is about to fall asleep he jerks himself out of it. It is impossible to do anything with him awake, so you put it off til he is asleep at which point you are too brain dead to do anything but stare at the TV.
I love him but omg I don’t remember the last time I’ve actually had time to read an article.
It’s a toddler. Life is a stimulant.
Has he discovered that life goes on while he’s asleep, yet? They usually hate that.
The first thing he does on waking assuming both of his parents aren’t still asleep is sweep the house for us or one of us, if both can’t be located he will freak out for a long while. That means one of us left WITHOUT HIM.
Yeah, but six hours in a 24 hr period is nowhere near enough for a toddler. It’d be hard for most adults to get by on that. Their little bodies are still in an active growth phase, and I would imagine they’d need at least TWELVE hours to maintain that development.
I know they can be tiresome little critters, but your situation sounds quite abnormal, and I would suggest getting a medical assessment to look at why he/she gets by on so little sleep.
Good luck!
He finally went to sleep at one am tonight and he is almost guaranteed to wake at six or seven am. After a few hours of outdoor play today he did the nodding and then jerking awake thing for awhile, if we would try to take him to bed he was right awake again.
The problem at night is that he won’t stay in bed, so one of us goes in with him. He just stays there in the dark singing or staring at a wall for more than an hour once until we get sick of it.
Do you think he might be frightened of falling asleep? I’ve seen kids who were frightened of falling asleep do those things to try to stop themselves from sleeping.
He may be perfectly fine, but yeah…that’s far enough to the extreme that he should be checked out, just in case. For your own sanity - if he’s got some medical thing keeping him awake, wouldn’t it be awesome if it was an easy to treat thing and you could read an article again?
You need to put him to bed at 9pm and not let him out. Eventually he will learn to…I’m sorry I just couldn’t bring myself to finish. People with kids that actually sleep at a decent hour will never understand and give you stupid advice. My oldest daughter was like that. She eventually grew out of it. Sort of. My youngest sometimes wouldn’t even tell us when she was tired sometimes and put herself to bed at 8pm.
I think he is afraid one of us will leave while he is asleep and he will miss it, which of course happens rather often and causes a meltdown every time.
He hasn’t been like this forever its been a slow development, a couple of weeks ago we were groaning when his naps were turning from a few hours to an hour then to thirty minutes to none for the past five days.
I used to have horrible insomnia which is returning with a vengeance.
My daughter is only 13 months old and she has fought sleep for ages, too. She gets really ratty and tired but does the whole jerking herself awake thing too. When she gets really tired she will usually fall asleep on my shoulder, but then tends to get very cross when she wakes up somewhere else, like if you put her down in bed.
Does strapping him in the car and going for a drive not do it? Of course then you have to either get him out without waking him, or leave him in the car with a window open and watch him from the house, which kind of defeats the object of having him asleep!
I am a parent, had a child that did not want to sleep, so I speak from experience…
You and your wife have to work together to enforce some structure on your child. Your toddler does not rule your life, and you as parents have to manage the process of your toddler realising this.
If he cannot manage the afternoon without nodding off - he needs to be put down for a nap. A bed time needs to be set, adhered to, without a parental presence. If the child gets out of bed, they get put back to bed with minimal interaction. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Ditto for the mornings - child is not allowed out of bed until an appropriate time. They learn to tell the time real quick.
Attachment tantrums get dealt with in short order, too (timeout, 1 min per year of age).
I don’t really like the show, but Supernanny often illustrates these techniques. But they have to be applied consistently by both parents supporting each other. As I said, I have been there - and it does work, and my children are now well adjusted (don’t tell them I said that, though) young adults. 
Si
Sounds like a recent development, and the fear of a parent leaving is probably the problem. I don’t know what your schedule is, but if you wake him when one of you leaves do you think he’d get back to sleep?
Does he eat chocolate at all? Because my Small Boy (who really isn’t much of a sleeper to begin with, though better than his big sister) had some really frenetic nights on chocolate. As in, at around 1am I finally let him get up because I just couldn’t STAND the whinging a minute longer, and he then proceeded to rampage round the house for three hours in a “hey I’m a baby and I like to bounce! Isn’t 3am a good time for bouncing!” kind of way.
Some food colours can do similar things too.
When the Small Girl (who’s always been our Good Sleeper) went through a sleepless and grumpy phase at about 2, it turned out to be because the bed was too hard. Just sayin’ 
I have to say … we’re well over on the low side of the sleep spectrum, but SIX HOURS in TWENTY-FOUR? really? That’s pretty extreme. What is he, nineteen months or something?
clearly he does actually need more than whatever he’s getting anyway, otherwise he wouldn’t be “fighting sleep” like you describe.
That’s got to suck. Sincere Sympathy. :-o
6 hours is not enough as others have said. My daughter sleeps a ‘normal’ night, but she also naps during the day. Could your toddler be doing the same?
Can you set a bedtime for him and tell him that he doesn’t have to go to sleep but that he can’t get out of bed either? Give him picture books and quiet toys and tell him that he won’t be allowed out of bed between 9 pm and 6 am and then stick to that. I can’t promise it will work, obviously, but that would be what I would try next assuming it isn’t a medical condition.
Put a little whiskey in his bottle.
What? It was good enough for *my *parents…
Routine?
Could it be as easy as adhering to a schedule so he’s going to bed at the same time every night? Does sound like a daily nap routine might be needed too. I know a lot of parents who struggled, but their kids responded really well to routine.
It is ten thirty am right now and despite a few scattered cries he is still in bed.
Holy hell I am pleased, I’m hoping for a repeat.
I would suggest checking out the nearest children’s hospital and see if they have a sleep clinic/specialists.
My youngest had horrible sleep . The Seattle Children’s Hospital Sleep Clinic was a godsend for all of us. It may be just needing to be strict about sleeping times and putting the child down, etc, and it may be physiological. And your son getting so little sleep probably makes him ultra cranky much of the time he’s awake.
Good Lord man, it’s not that bad yet.