My wife and I have a very stubborn 2.5-year-old son. He refuses to follow any kind of routine in sleeping, eating, screening times (TV and so), or anything.
Whenever he is sleepy, he fights going to bed until he is really exhausted, and this is normally after 3-4 hours of convincing him to sleep. He can fight sleeping until 3 or 4 AM! The same thing is for eating, whenever he is hungry, he does not ask at all and we spend a difficult time trying to feed him or make him eat by himself. Similar thing is with going to the toilet.
We tried many techniques with him, talking, playing, getting toys to encourage him, but none of these things happened to work. Whenever we take him out, he screams in a very loud voice if one of his requests has not been accepted (like getting the mobile phone or going to bus as he likes being in it).
All of these problems are not emergent, they are from day 1 at home, and we have no idea how to solve this. I am not sure what can we do with him. We feel so sad because of these problems with him.
Potentially helpful information about him:
- He is in a trilingual environment (Arabic at home, German at kindergarten, and English at screens, in particular Youtube)
- He has a very good health
- He prefers to play alone in the kindergarten
- He refuses to sleep in his bed
- the only time we feel he is happy is when he has mobiles, TV, laptop, etc.
- We restrict his screening time to 2 hours at most (sometimes it increases to three)
- We are living alone. So he sees no people other than his parents and the people in the kindergarten.
Any ideas?