Get access to over 1,300 articles and reader Q&As
There is no question that one of the biggest problems parents face is getting their kids to sleep. It’s one of the parenting issues that straddles all ages — newborns, babies, toddlers, kids, and teens. I assume I will still be thinking about my children’s sleep when they are out of the house.
Toddler and young child sleep, in particular, is hugely challenging. I’m thinking about kids who are too old for sleep training, but where bedtime is a nightmare, or they are getting up at night all the time, or ending up in a parent’s bed more often than the parents would like. Sleep problems in this period are also hard because they are unexpected; we expect newborn sleep to be a challenge, but we often don’t expect that, all of a sudden, it becomes hard at 2 1/2 or 4 years old.
There are many great bedtime and sleep arrangements, and different things can work for different families. But if bedtime doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work, and it needs to change.
I once surveyed parents on what their most significant problem was, and sleep won by a landslide. Here are a few of the stories I heard:
“My 2.5-year-old fights sleep, and specifically bedtime, for hours every night. It makes for lots of stress and tension between my husband and me. If she naps for even 20 minutes during the day, she will be up past 10 at night. On top of this, I have a 6-month-old who also does not allow for much sleep. Our one thing: FIX SLEEP! Make it easy.”
“My 3-year-old has been struggling to fall asleep on his own for over a year. He gets out of bed instantly and keeps doing it over and over. We have tried so many strategies and feel totally defeated.”
“How to keep my 2-year-old in his bedroom at night. We transitioned him from crib to ‘big boy’ bed, and he is up 4–5 times a night, in our room, and it takes forever to get him to calm down and go to bed. I’m exhausted and feel like I have a newborn again! He was such a good sleeper in a crib. How do I keep him in his bed in a way that is loving but firm, so he knows our family’s boundaries around bedtime and nighttime. Help!”
There are some basic principles when it comes to bedtime: decide what you want, have a good bedtime routine, enforce it consistently. But what I hear from people is that you need more concrete help. That’s what I’ve got today.
I want to walk you through a little choose-your-own-adventure approach to this. Even better: I’ve built a tool for you to use. This tool isn’t a quick fix (I’m not selling you a way to fix your sleep problem in five minutes) because that’s impossible. Instead, the goal is to give you the guidance to find the time to make a short-term investment in order to get to a longer-term solution that makes everyone happy.
Sleep matters for the whole family
Before we get into details, let’s start with a reminder: sleep matters. It matters for your kids, and it matters for you. Sleep is necessary for your mental and physical health, and it’s not just missing entire nights of sleep. Getting too little sleep over an extended period also takes a toll. Kids in particular need a lot of sleep, and if bedtime is delayed, they may not get the sleep they need consistently enough.
I think part of what gets in the way of fixing sleep problems is a feeling that it’s selfish to want your kids to sleep more. It’s not selfish! Sleep is a biological necessity, not a luxury good.
Step 1: Identify what needs to change
Start by identifying your issues and your ultimate goal. What is happening now that you do not like, and what do you want bedtime to look like post-fix?
It’s extremely important to be concrete about this and to make sure all the adults involved in bedtime are on the same page. This is a place where you really need to hash out disagreements with your partner (if you have one) before you implement.
My recommendation: write out exactly what you want the night to look like, in detail. It may seem like overkill, but this will save you conflict later.
Step 2: Ensure you’ve got the basics
There are a few basics that you’ll want to check off before you move on.
First, do you have a consistent bedtime routine? This is the number one recommendation for improving kids’ sleep. If not, do this first before moving on. Decide on a routine, tell your child about it, and implement it. This will be important for anything you do later. This bedtime routine should also involve an appropriate time for bed. Your kids may need to go to bed earlier than you think.
Second, are there screens before bedtime? The evidence on light exposure and sleep is mixed, but it can be difficult to pull kids away from screens in the evening. If your child is watching screens right before bedtime, it may be a good idea to change this before getting into the rest.
Finally, sometimes sleep problems at night are a result of a need to drop a nap during the day. If your older child is still napping regularly, it’s worth considering whether that can be eliminated if bedtime is a struggle.
Step 3: Decide when to start
Changing behaviors around sleep is going to require a period of investment. During that time, there will be some conflict because it’s unlikely the transition will happen overnight. I’m not saying that to scare you, but just to be realistic. A great thing about kids is that they form new habits more quickly than adults. But if you’re in a set of bad habits on this, it’s not going to be fixed right away. You want to imagine, depending on the age of the child, something between one and three weeks of consistent work to get to a better place.
This means you want to start this at a time when you have that investment ability. That’s both a practical consideration (don’t do this like one week before a big vacation) and also an emotional one. You need to have the mental and physical energy to take this on, and if you’re dealing with 15 other extremely stressful things, that’s not going to work.
So ask, can we do this now? If yes, great. If not, ask when you want to revisit it. This is very important! Deciding that you cannot fix this problem right now is not the same as resigning yourself to it forever, so make a concrete plan for when you’ll reevaluate.
Step 4: Build your confidence and set expectations
Changing sleep behaviors will involve some conflict, and your child will be upset some of the time. You will need to sit with this. You may need to return your child to their room and place them in their bed, over and over again, as they cry and ask you to stay. This is OK — you’re not damaging them; you’re setting a new boundary.
Remember, this is an investment in good quality sleep for your family, which is incredibly important.
However, you need to have confidence in that statement before you begin. Ask yourself what will deliver that confidence. Is my saying it here enough? Would a book help? Do you want to hire a sleep consultant? Would talking to your pediatrician for reassurance be useful?
If you have a partner, try to develop this confidence together. You’re a team here — you need to be able to hype each other up when it’s tough.
Step 5: Make a plan and implement
I realize this seems like the whole thing, but actually, steps 1 through 4 are arguably more important. You know where you’re going, and if you’re ready to get there, you can do it.
The basic principle behind fixing most or all of these sleep problems is to decide what you’re doing, outline the plan to your child, and then consistently enforce the plan without emotion.
For example, say the issue is that it’s taking hours to get your child to sleep at bedtime. There’s a lot of negotiation, coming out of their room, etc. The outcome you want is a bedtime routine (bath, teeth, PJs, a book) and then for your child to stay in their bed until morning. First step: Explain this to your child. Depending on their age, you may want a little chart with pictures to show them the routine. Explain that, from now on, they will stay in their bed after the bedtime routine until a parent comes in in the morning.
Then do the routine. Put them in their bed. When they come out of their bed, calmly return them to the bed. Do not discuss or negotiate and, in fact, do not interact. They come out, you put them back in. Maybe you’re camped out outside the room. Every time they come out, you do the same thing. You’re not mad! You’re not frustrated; you are just holding the boundary. The first night, they may come out 100 times. It’s OK — this is an investment. You’ve prepared yourself. You put them back 100 times. The next day, it will be better.
If the issue is the middle of the night, it’s the same thing. You tell them in advance that from now on, you will stay in your bed. And then, if they come out, you return them. No emotion, no anger, just a consistent return. Might this involve someone sleeping on the floor outside their room for a few nights? Maybe. This is part of the reason why you want to think about capacity before you start this.
Now what?
This may seem overly simple — as in, is the advice just “decide what you want and do it”? — but that’s really the key, as with many behavior modifications. Kids respond extremely well to consistently enforced boundaries. Once you decide what your boundary is, you just try to hold it every time. This is hard to do, but the advice is simple… and effective.
Do your best, and be patient. You’ve got this.
Community Guidelines
Log in