We have a routine we do before bed. My little man has to pick up all his toys then brush his teeth and then I tuck him in and read him books for about 20mins. All in all the whole deal takes about half an hour so he has that long to get used to the idea of going to bed.

We also do a routine like the above commenter.

My sons are 8 and 6 and normally are wonderful about bedtime. BUT whenever there are big changes- such as summer break- their bedtime routine seems to get disrupted. We’ve had each of the boys getting out of bed a couple times per week for the past couple weeks. They say it is because they can’t sleep and we think it is just because it is still light outside when they go to bed and the noise level is higher in the summer outside their open windows! We don’t have air conditioning so the heat can sometimes keep them awake too.

Try and figure out if there is something specific causing your son to get out of bed- is h actually scared about something? is his room too hot or too cold? is the noise outside keeping him awake? stuff like that. If there is a legitimate issue than try and fix that. If it is just him trying to avoid bedtime than you just have to be firm about it.

Basically all we do is send them right back to bed. We don’t go with them, we just send them back. It works.

We have a cd player and we let them listen to bed times stories – just podcasts we downloaded from iTunes for free- and that helps tremendously. It drowns out the outside noise and helps them drift off to sleep.

We are pretty strict about bedtime – it is always the same time, same routine- and overall we have very few problems. But it definitely takes time and determination to get there.