u/shortasiam

I'm trying to wean my daughter (likely neurodivergent). She is down to no naps, only has milk before bed and occasionally in the middle of the night if she is having teething pain. I'm able to put her back to sleep in the middle of the night without milk as long as she has some sleep inertia.

She doesn't seem too emotionally attached to the breast milk and doesn't usually ask for it it's mostly out of sight out of mind. She does associated with sleep sometimes and refuses it if she doesn't want to go to bed.

She hates sleep and it always trying to fight it. She's on a floor bed in her own room that she moved into a few weeks ago and I'm still sleeping in there with her at night.

I've tried keeping her in the bed but she gets up wanders looks for books in the room tries to leave the room. She's able to turn almost anything into a distraction. If I try to prevent her from leaving the bed she gets hysterical and cries. I've tried waiting it out in hopes that she just tires herself out and goes to sleep but rather than tie herself out and getting into the bed or sleeping on the floor she will just leave the room.

I'm also worried that when I let her try and sleep on her own she gets progressively more tired and more manic and then it becomes even less likely that she'll fall asleep on her own.

I haven't been able to do more than one or two days in a row of attempting to wean because of these issues. Am I part of the problem? Do I just need to keep doing it consistently and eventually she'll stop trying to distract herself and allow herself to sleep? How long did it take for your toddlers to learn to sleep on their own without milk the first few nights? How many hours?

She is able to fall asleep in the car so we have used that on occasion.

My next step is to remove all the toys and books from her room so that she doesn't have anything she can distract herself with. Bring a cup of warm milk up with me in hopes that it will help her to calm down but then I run into the issue of teeth brushing as she's already brushed her teeth and if I brush her teeth after the warm milk it kind of defeats the purpose of her using that warm milk to power down.

The issue here doesn't seem to be her wanting milk or her asking for milk or her being emotionally attached to the milk but rather just not knowing how to fall asleep without it.