Discover how bedtime fading (also known as “bed time fading” or the “fading sleep training technique”) can ease your child’s sleep struggles by aligning bedtime with their natural sleep cycle—learn more about this simple yet effective sleep training technique. Although on a first pass, this simply means moving your child’s bedtime later, there is some nuance on how and when to do this depending on the age of your child and their needs.
I often find that parents who see me in clinic have tried and failed to sleep train their children. (Obviously, the ones who had an easy time don’t need an appointment). As I work with families to come up with plan to help their children fall asleep and stay asleep on their own, bedtime fading is one of the most useful tools that I use.
Why does bedtime fading work?
Bedtime fading is simply more closely aligning your child’s bedtime with when they are actually falling sleep. Often, children who are fighting sleep at bedtime are simply being put to bed too early. There are two reasons why a later bedtime can be helpful.
The first reason is that the longer you stay awake, the sleepier you are. This represents accumulation of sleep drive. This is especially important for children who are napping. Napping reduces sleep drive so I would not recommend a bedtime less than three hours from the end of your child’s nap. (And if your child is older than age two and seems to fall asleep very late, you may need to shorten or even get rid of their nap.)
The second reason is that some people have a body clock that is set later than others. One interesting study of toddlers showed that children with difficulty setting had a later dim light melatonin onset (DLMO). DLMO is when your body naturally starts producing melatonin, the hormone of sleep. (This is the same stuff that is sold in a million different preparations to help with falling asleep in kids and adults). DLMO essentially is the biological marker of when your body clock is ready for you to fall asleep.
DLMO is very difficult to measure either in the laboratory or in the home, because to do so you have to take blood or saliva samples every 30 minutes in the evening for several hours. That’s why a study done by Dr. Monique LeBourgeois is so valuable. She assessed toddlers with and without sleep difficulty and found that the children with sleep difficulty had later DLMOs meaning that their parents were putting them to bed when they were not ready to fall asleep.
What children will benefit from bedtime fading?
I find that children who have bedtimes that are on the early side (think 6:30-7:30) tend to benefit the most. It is definitely worth trying if your child comes out of their room multiple times at bedtime, or takes more than 30 minutes to fall asleep.
Generally, if kids are falling asleep later than expected (say, a toddler falling asleep after 9:30pm, bedtime fading will not work and an earlier bedtime may actually work better.. Here’s more on how to tell which way to move your child’s bedtime to help with sleep training.
How to use bedtime fading to help with sleep training
So, a later (or faded) bedtime can help your child fall asleep more easily, both by making them sleepier and aligning their bedtime with their natural body clock.
The first step (and this is often all you need) is to try moving your child’s bedtime 30 minutes later, and assess
- Is there less conflict at bedtime?
- Does your child fall asleep within 30 minutes of lights out?
If things go more easily for you and you are happy, I think you can stop there.
If things are better, but not perfect and you want to try a sleep training technique, you can also try a faded bedtime along with your sleep training technique of choice. (I have a compendium of sleep training techniques here).
But what if your child is falling asleep a lot later than you would like? Let’s say that your 5 yo is not falling asleep until 9:30pm, even though his bedtime is 7:30pm. There is a lot of conflict in the house at night and he keeps coming out of the room 5 minutes after you leave. Here’s how you can use bedtime fading to get things on track:
- Set his new temporary bedtime to the time he is consistently falling asleep (in this case it is 9:30pm). This is not carte blanche for him to run around, play video games, shoot off fireworks, or chase the cat. The evenings still need to remain calm. I won’t say NO screens as this may be difficult, but I would say nothing exciting to watch and no video games.
- Have a quick bedtime routine and put him down.
- Keep his wake time constant if you are happy with it. If he’s getting up at 7am, I would wake him up at 7am. If he previously was waking up at 5:30am and is now getting up at 6am, I think that is OK.
- Do not let him extend his nap later (or start napping again).
- Every few days, move his bedtime 15 minutes earlier until things become difficult again.
Bedtime fading has also been shown to be effective in children with autism, both in terms of increasing sleep duration and reducing the time to fall asleep.
What is a response cost?
Some studies have examined the addition of a “response cost”– essentially a penalty to your child for coming out of the room. Usually this means temporarily moving bedtime later in association with cry it out sleep training: see this entry for CIO bedtime fading. Other authors use the term to refer to something the child loses if they leave their room. A good example of this is the bedtime pass technique.
What if bedtime gets worse with a later bedtime?
Sometimes, a later bedtime runs into your child’s circadian “second wind”– an extra burst of wakefulness at the end of the day. As one mom once said to me, “My child needs to be in bed by 7:30 or 9pm– there is nothing in-between”. This no man’s land has been called “The Forbidden Zone” by a sleep researcher called Peretz Lavie. For more on this phenomenon, read about the toddler no-fly zone.
In this video, I talk about how families can use bedtime fading to successfully sleep train their child.
As stated in the video, the keys to successful bedtime fading include:
- Avoiding “sneaky sleep” in the later afternoon.
- Not allowing your child to sleep much later in the mornings, unless they are getting up at an uncomfortably early hour.
Further reading
Have you tried moving your child’s bedtime with the goal of leading to a better night of sleep? How did that work for you?
