Use A Timer!

by Katie
(US)

We used to get our daughter in bed and then she'd still want to play. What helped us was having a timer set for 5 minutes so we'd say goodnight, then she'd have a little play on her own until the timer went off. We'd say - there's the timer! It's time to sleep now! - and it worked. We think it worked because the timer wasn't something you could argue with! The timer went off and that was it. A friend of ours used this method and recommended it to us.

Having our daughter (she was 2 at the time) go to bed without a fuss gave us our evenings back and we all felt better for it.