Tips on Toddlers and Sleep

You can lead a toddler to bed, but you can’t make her sleep. Oh sure, there are things you might be doing that could make lulling your sweetie to sleep more difficult, and the internet is full of tips and tricks that help (sometimes) ease a sleepy child to accept that it is indeed time to rest. But too often, parents and children become locked in a battle of wills over sleep. I know, because it happened to me. With all three kids.

My kids are 8, 6 and two. All three of them had sleep issues. And the issues were different for all three. Now that my older two are through the toddler years, I have concluded:

  • Each child has a natural sleep/wake rhythm. Minor adjustments are possible, but wholesale change won’t happen without many, many tears (both yours and theirs)
  • Toddler tantrums about sleep are to be expected
  • Naps are never guaranteed and may expire without notice
  • The only magic solutions to sleep struggles are Love and Time

Before my first child was born, I read practically every baby and toddler parenting book in the New West library (and a few more off Amazon) to get myself ready for this Mom thing, paying particular care to the advice on sleep. Unfortunately for me, my son was unfamiliar with the ‘expert’ recommendations. I was doing all the ‘right’ things, but my son still slept all wrong.

In retrospect, being so concerned about being a good parent led me to behave rather foolishly at times. I was in tears more times than I care to admit over my inability to make him sleep. Then I had two more kids, and eventually realized most of my earlier struggles were pointless. Learning each child’s rhythms and developing a daily routine that works with their natural rest and active times was far easier and more effective than imposing a routine I read about in some book.

For example, my first child has always been an early riser. I tried everything possible to get him to sleep later, including blackout shades, later bedtimes, and even teaching him to read a clock and forbidding him to get out of bed before 6am. Eventually, I realized nothing silenced his inner alarm clock, and I began enforcing an early bedtime and coaching him on what to do in the morning when he woke up. Little by little, he learned how to take care of himself in the morning, starting with identifying some toys to play quietly with, and eventually how to make his own breakfast and get dressed. By the time he was in kindergarten, he was dressed and ready to go to school before I was even out of bed. My youngest daughter takes after her brother, and now my son feeds her breakfast before I’m out of bed too.

My middle daughter, on the other hand, isn’t ready to go to sleep until later. She has billions of questions to ask at bedtime. Literally, billions. She has always been a bedtime procrastinator, and almost always sleeps in. My little night owl’s brain is very busy at bedtime, and it takes her a long time to get going in the morning. I have to wake her up for school and coach her through the morning routine while she’s bleary-eyed and grumpy. For her too, the template was set as a toddler. While my son was already mostly asleep, she was asking for endless glasses of water, kicking off her covers and demanding to be tucked in again, and then claiming to need to go potty. My answer to this has been to tuck in her siblings first, who both drop off to sleep quickly, and then plan to spend a little time talking about a few of the concerns swirling around my daughter’s mind. She is gratified to have a little one-on-one attention, and I am happier when I plan to spend a sweet little moment with her before bed than when she acts out to demand my attention.

As for my youngest, she has been trying her hardest to give up naps since turning two. I staved it off for a while, by strategically timing walks with the stroller for the time of day when she was at her sleepiest (scoring a double benefit of some exercise for me and rest for her) and more recently, simply declaring that if she doesn’t nap she has to go to bed right after dinner to ensure she gets enough sleep. She understands the bargain, and on days when she does nap, she gets to stay up until her siblings go to bed. Like her brother, her wakeup time seems innate, and does not change when she goes to bed later.

With all three children, tantrums about sleep were a signal that I needed to adjust our family routine from what worked for the kids as babies. The testing of the toddler years is related to children’s discovery of themselves as individuals, and a growing need to test their ability to choose and do for themselves. It is also a wake-up call to parents to see children as separate people with likes and dislikes that may be different from ours. I don’t see the testing around sleep as any different. The limits and routines we set need to change as kids get older, and conflict is one of the signals that triggers change.

The biggest lesson I have learned about sleep is that many things can disrupt it, and the best fix for it is to stay connected with your kids and give yourselves time to figure out the routines that work best for you.

The reasons behind sleep refusal and other difficult bedtime behaviours need to be resolved before the problem can be solved. Developmental changes, nightmares, anxieties and fears, potty training, hunger, thirst, and many other factors can disrupt your sleep routine. I find it helps to remind myself that not sleeping is an effect, not a cause. Some causes of sleeplessness are possible to troubleshoot, but others are resolved only with love and time.

 Written by Briana Tomkinson