Does your child struggle with falling asleep? Sometimes, changing the time you put her to bed can make it much easier. But you may need to go later or earlier to get the full benefit. Even though it sounds complicated, it doesn’t need to be. Fixing bedtime is one of the best ways to fix toddler sleep problems. Note that I have a whole chapter on finding your child’s ideal bedtime in my book, It’s Never Too Late to Sleep Train.
Later bedtimes work for a lot of kids
If you’ve read my work for a while, you know I’m a big fan of matching your child’s bedtime very closely to the time she falls asleep. For a lot of kids, this means moving the bedtime later.
Imagine a 3 yo whose parents put her to bed every night at 7pm. This typically produces a short tantrum, then multiple trips out her her room where she demands a cup of water, a cuddle, or another story. In the sleep field, we call these field trips “curtain calls” and they are the hallmark of behavioral insomnia due to limit setting. (For the best curtain call ever, read about a boy you used to throw his glass eye out of his crib).
Eventually, she falls asleep by 8 pm, sweaty and tired. Perhaps her parents feel guilty for yelling at her.
This is a situation where a later bedtime will be helpful. If her parents start moving her bedtime later by 30-40 minutes, (7:30-40pm). This will typically not make her fall asleep later, but it will make bedtime go much better. Sometimes, in sleep training, we even move the bedtime later than that to harness her natural sleep drive— a technique called “bedtime fading”.
Some kids need an earlier bedtime
However, some children actually need to go to bed earlier. This most commonly occurs for children who have a late bedtime— later than 8:30 for most children between late infancy and elementary school. They may be entering into a period that a sleep physiologist named Peretz Lavie called the “forbidden zone”. I think of it as the “no fly zone” because if you are trying to guide your child to calm landing after a long day, you are going to be disappointed.
Every night, I feel pretty tired around 9 PM when my older child goes to bed. If I stay up past 10:30 PM, I get a second wind and I’m wide awake until 11:30 PM in midnight. I’m in the no-fly zone.
This happens to children as well. Here’s an example from a friend and former colleagues Diana Balekian. Diana is an allergist as well as an excellent chef. Check out her excellent blog White Coat Pink Apron— I’m especially fond of her vegan chili recipe). Diana notes, “C is actually not good at nighttime sleeping outside of our house, ever. She went to bed before 9:00 maybe once on our family vacation in Feb. She is also a “spirited”/strong-willed child.” (Comes with the territory when you are 2.5 years old).
Diana wrote about some difficulty she was having with her daughter while staying at her parent’s house during a home renovation. I asked her to write a description of her bedtime routines both at home and at Grandmas house:
Home routine:
Finish dinner around 6:30 PM. Generally one kid or another gets to watch a show (I know, I know) or we do a bath. At 7:15, change into PJs. Usually there are some shenanigans between the two kids, and by 7:30 we start reading 1-4 stories. Then she goes to bed–most recently, she would sometimes want to sleep in her brother’s bed (that was a new thing within a few weeks of moving in with parents). Generally falls asleep by 8:15 latest.
Grandparents house routine:
Dinner at the same time. Same thing re: watching a TV show or getting a bath. 7:15 or 7:30 change into PJs. 7:30 begins the fighting to go up and brush teeth. Read 1-2 books. In bed by 8:00 pm. She is sharing a full sized bed with her 4 yo brother because that’s what has worked out best here (she is afraid of her own room), and he goes to bed closer to 8:30. My husband will occasionally lie down with her for a few mins while she falls asleep. Immediately after leaving the room, yelling begins. At the beginning, my mom would go in every time, but now she only occasionally goes in if it’s very close to when C was put to bed.
Diana initially attributed these issues to Grandma’s involvement at bedtime, or fear of being alone— all good thoughts. Note the curtain calls and the yelling.
After writing me about these routines (and before we spoke), Diana moved her daughter’s bedtime 30 minutes earlier — to the time she was going to bed before– which actually resolved the majority of their problems.
In retrospect, I suspect a lot of the issues Diana and many other issues face on vacation is at least due to the fact that bedtime was moved a bit later. On vacation, it’s best to either keep your home bedtime, or lean into it and accept that your child will probably be going to bed later and shoot for the other side of the no-fly zone. (For more on this, read my article on the painful topic of vacation “sleep”).
In many kids the forbidden zone can be 60-90 minutes long. As one mom said on my Facebook page, “My kid needs to be in bed at either 7:30 pm or 9 pm. There is nothing in between.” Often, this surge in energy is attributed to being “overtired” but it’s more accurate to say say kids who are overtired are experiencing a natural surge in wakefulness and energy— which is VERY ANNOYING to tired parents.
How can you find your child’s best bedtime
- Most kids in early childhood benefit from a bedtime in the 7:30-8:30 PM range, provided that this allows them a long enough sleep opportunity to wake up spontaneously in the morning.
- If your child is on the earlier end of this range and struggling with bedtime, a later bedtime (by 30 minutes) is often helpful. However, in other children, this can put you in the “no-fly zone” as with the child above.
- Writing down your child’s routine often helps you pinpoint the painful sticking points.
For further reading, here are some articles on understanding your child’s sleep drive and body clock.
If you like this content, chapter 5 of my book It’s Never Too Late To Sleep Train will walk you through the best way to find your child’s ideal bedtime and avoid pitfalls and disasters along the way.
My husband and I have gotten in the habit of staying in the room with my daughters ( ages 7.5 and 3.5) until they fall asleep ( mostly so that my 3.5 year olds protesting doesn’t wake up my 1 yr old in the next room. A few weeks ago we also had my 3.5 year old just gave up her pacifier ( I know, I know, she had it for too long). She only had it for naps and bedtime- we didn’t use it for comfort throughout the day. Since the “paci-fairy” came and took it away naps and bedtime have been even more difficult. I’m not sure how to transition to just putting them to bed and leaving the room. My 7.5 yr old still likes us to sit in there even though she is fine falling asleep on her own. But my 3.5 year old will cry and whine and keep her sister up. Both go to bed between 8-830. My 3.5 year old still takes a 1-1.5 hr nap most days. How can we make this transition to falling asleep in their own and not having my 3.5 yr old keep her sister up with the protesting?
Paradoxically, the answer may be a slightly later bedtime for the child who is still napping. Here’s an example of this working. . Alternatively, your three year old may be getting ready to give up her nap.
My boy (9mnths) goes to bed between 6.30-7pm. He goes down easy but wakes over night and is difficult to put down for naps. I am reading your book but unsure of how to get him down for naps and resettle or feed overnight. Any thoughts?
It all depends on whether or not he is falling asleep on his own. If he isn’t, working towards independent sleep. If he is, then you may want to wean the feeds at night. Worth discussing with your pediatricians.
As for naps, essentially you offer a nap opportunity but get him up if he is not asleep in 30 minutes and wait until the next nap. I promise you napping will get better in the next few months once he is more physically active during the day.
Hi Dr. Canapari! I just found your page through SeattleMamaDoc and I’m so excited for the new resource. I am a child psychologist and always looking for different information on sleep to better support the families I work with, given the positive impact of quality sleep on learning and emotion/behavior regulation. I’ve got a daughter who is approaching 5 years old and she has always “fought sleep”. We have sleep trained a number of times (occasionally needing a reset) and had a lot of success. CIO worked well as an infant (9 months) and she has always been able to put herself to sleep independently. She sleeps soundly and through the night the vast majority of the time, but her bedtime behavior is difficult for our family to handle. We practice great sleep hygiene (no screens, consistent routine and consistent lights out time) and she generally does not have trouble getting through the routine, but almost always escalates (from whining to fussing to crying to full on screaming) while she gets into bed. Even as an infant she did better without frequent check ins, so we have not tried camping out more than a few times (it seems to work for a few days, but then I just sit in there listening to her escalate more and more each night). I keep thinking I’m going to extinguish this screaming by not responding, but she has kept up the behavior for over two years. We never go back in, she rarely comes back out, and we have tried different reward systems to incentivize quiet behavior at bedtime. I have always been afraid to push bedtime later for fear that she will then be screaming past everyone’s bedtime- but now I’m wondering if this might not be helpful for her? We generally start our routine right after dinner around 6:45pm, and she is in bed by 7:15-7:30. She screams anywhere from 5-20 minutes (which can be particularly disruptive to younger siblings’ sleep and startling to family/friends when they are over).
A later bedtime sounds like a great idea. Good luck!
Looking for help for exhausted parents and toddler. We have been struggling with sleep training since my daughter was born and she is 16 month-old now. The best time we had good sleep was probably in the first 4 months after birth. It started with wrong habits and continued with wrong sleeping habits and need help with breaking the cycle. As a newborn and up to 5 month my baby used to sleep while breastfeeding, once we moved to bottles she then would fall asleep drinking her bottle and with us laying next to her in bed. The sleeping time differs and could be as early as 8 pm or as late as 9 PM or even later. Now at 16 month putting her to bed is a struggle, we come from daycare and we are home between 5:30 and 6:30. Sometimes she falls asleep for 10- 15 min on the way home which makes bedtime even harder. Once at home we eat then take a bath then play. Once we enter the room around 8 or 8:15 PM the crying starts we lay next to her crib on the floor holding her hand or rubbing her back until she falls asleep. More recently this has not been enough and the crying would persist (sometimes longer than an hour) and she would turn all sweaty. Using the crying out method was so difficult. We also moved out from bottles to sippy cups and this made the situation worse not only by restricting bottle before bef she stopped drinking milk and would only drink 4 oz if not less. Once asleep then she wakes up again in the middle of the night, used to be for a short period of time but more recently having to go through the same struggle of putting her to bed again at 3 am. This is followed by one or two other awakening around 5 am at which stage, we are so tired that we just bring her to our room and sleep with us. We just returned from a vacation and had to interrupt it because of her sleeping habits . She was not going to sleep untill 11PM or midnight and sleeping next to us in the hotel rooms. Since she was born she has been through a lot of instability including changing houses, living abroad for 2 months and switching from sleeping in her own bed to sleeping next to me and going back to her crib once back from travel. Even when she is sleeping in bed with us she still wakes up. We really need help on how we can help our daughter get better sleep. I am concerned about this affecting her development.
There is a lot to unpack here. I would certainly discuss with your pediatrician, but CIO may be worth considering at bedtime as it will likely get you the quickest result. I also would recommend deferring any action until you anticipate at least a month without disruptions to routine.