Helping Toddlers Sleep (& Learning What Not to Do)

Before we rearranged where they slept on the bed, they were rolling over each other and kicking each other in their sleep so I was up several times in the night with crying toddlers.

I’m happy to report we’ve finally figured out our sleep solutions. We struggled a lot for 2 1/2 months after Zen came home before we found our groove with helping our girls get enough rest. Before we had children, I had expectations that we’d all just go to bed at the same time about 10ish and co-sleep, happy as clams. Well, that didn’t work out for us, and I could write a book about the other 100 things we tried which also didn’t work for us. Here is the short version. We tried letting them regulate their own sleep. We tried waiting for sleep cues before helping them fall asleep.  We tried having them nap in the same bed. We tried letting them fall asleep in the car or stroller. We tried rocking and bottle feeding. We tried a nightlight. We tried every possible type of pajamas ever made. Every possible room temperature. Black-out curtains. We tried falling asleep in their clothes. We tried massages. We tried to forego the much advised “schedule” (as I kept hoping their sleep needs would be more flexible). We tried different types of diapers.  I could go on…

Here is what is working for us all right now. Our girls need to have lunch by 12:00 because if it’s any later, Zen will fall asleep before she eats. If that happens, she’ll wake up from her nap too soon because she’s hungry and the rest of her day is misery. If she falls asleep in the car seat or stroller, she’ll wake up too soon because she’s uncomfortable and the rest of her day is misery. After lunch, she needs to be in a bed by 12:30. (Ali watches a movie for 30 minutes while I help Zen fall asleep). She needs to have pajamas on or she wakes up too soon because she’s uncomfortable. It needs to be very dark in the room. I read 2-3 books and sing 2-3 songs, then I lay down next to her. I stay in the room for up to 30 minutes. She usually falls asleep in that amount of time, but if she doesn’t, I leave the room and she falls asleep by herself somewhat easily.

Then at 1:00 I help Ali fall asleep in the other bedroom. She almost always protests sleep day or night. However, if she doesn’t get a lot of sleep, her behavior is profoundly affected. As of right now, she still cannot regulate her own sleep patterns, which I thought would come naturally with time, so I’m finally rolling with this reality after many months of denial. (In case you are wondering, Zen could regulate her own sleep patterns, but she seems to be thriving with the routine we have going right now). Ali can usually fall asleep within the 30 minutes I’m in the bedroom with her. If she doesn’t, I leave and she is now at the point where she’ll play quietly by herself in the room for an hour or so — much needed quiet time. It took us a long time to get to this point. She used to scream and cry when I left the room. I won’t leave my children to ‘cry it out alone’, so that wasn’t working, but I also can’t stay in there with her for up to 2 hours while she tries to fall asleep. Thankfully, with time this has subsided.

If Ali doesn’t sleep in the afternoon, she feels miserable starting about dinner time and her behavior is more than I can handle. In those cases, we do dinner>bath>bed. If Ali does sleep in the afternoon, we have wonderful, peaceful, happy family evenings with lots of playing and/or dance parties. Then we start helping the girls to fall asleep about 8:30 or 9:00.  In the evenings, they sleep in the same (queen size) bed and one of us lays down between them for about half an hour or so for books, songs and cuddles. (If either of them is keeping the other up after about half an hour, we bring one to the other bedroom so the more tired girl can fall asleep).  Ali likes to have the door open a few inches, so we leave it open while they are falling asleep, then we close it after they are asleep while we are puttering around the house. When we go to bed, we open their door a few inches because if Ali wakes up in the night and the door is closed, she gets up.

They both seem to need a certain type of pajamas (footed thick cotton). The room temperature has to be just right or they wake up because they are too hot or too cold. They both need overnight diapers, so they don’t wake up because they are wet and uncomfortable. They have 2 layers of blackout curtains + we just put up a blackout shade and we could still use one extra layer.  If they go to bed too early, they wake up too early (obviously). If they go to bed after 9, then we sometimes need to wake them up in the morning (for whatever activity we have planned) which totally screws up their whole day – one important thing we have learned is that they need to be woken only by their body clock. We have also found that if they get enough connection time during the day, going to sleep is easier for them. On the days when we have had less connection time, Ali gets very emotionally needy at bedtime and resists sleep even more than usual.

So these are the things which have worked for us so far. It’s taken a while to get to this point, but we’re happy to be in this place where everyone gets enough rest and is therefore feeling good throughout the day. Yeah!! For those of you who are struggling, keep trying different things until you figure out something that works for everybody in the family. The book that helped us somewhat is The No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers. It has many ideas to try no matter what your current dynamics look like. It even has a chapter about adoption.  Many of the suggestions within the book are too coercive for our parenting style, but many suggestions are non-coercive, so we were able to pick and choose ideas that all of us are comfortable with.

*As an end note: now that we’ve figured out what works for us, we’ve changed things up again  The girls sle*ping t*gether in the queen size bed was only borderline working out because they were waking each other up in the night at various times due restless sleep, flailing and kicking. Rather than have their pillows at the head of the bed, we moved them to what most people would consider the side of the bed. We’re also using one of these as a barrier between them so they no longer roll on top of each other and their breakdancing in their sleep doesn’t disturb each other. This has solved night-time wakings! Our biggest challenge now is that they are waking up too early, before they’ve had enough sleep, so they are sometimes flagging and cranky in the morning. We’re hoping an extra blackout layer on the window will solve this!