The most challenging time of the day for many new parents is putting their toddler to bed.
At this age, kids frequently struggle to fall asleep. Toddlers are becoming more conscious of their environment, thus distractions during bedtime may disturb them. Their developing fantasies may begin to disturb them while they sleep.
Lack of sleep for your kid can cause a number of health problems, including obesity, ADHD, and mood swings. You can assist your child in getting the rest they require to develop into a strong and healthy young adult through a combination of sleep hygiene, routines that are age-appropriate, and careful attention to any sleep issues.
Mica and Chelsae, Child Sleep Experts, shared five surprising sleep tips for toddlers on their Instagram account.
1) “Never wake a sleeping baby!” Cap each nap to 2-2.5 hours during the day. Newborns can easily end up with what we call day and night confusion and helping them regulate their days and nights can be done by simply capping all naps.
2) “You can’t create any bad habits in the newborn phase.” OK – while this is true (and we don’t really think of many things as bad habits) habits can absolutely be formed around eight months of age when our newborns start to develop their ability to identify sequences and patterns. This is why we recommend that you introduce a Bedtime and naptime routine that is sustainable.
3) “Babies will sleep when they want to.” Just imagine all the times you knew you were tired but didn’t go to sleep. Especially with babies who have short wake times, just a tiny amount of wake time variance can be the difference of a great nap or a baby fighting than up completely. Waketimes are really the best indicator to help align to your child’s biological rhythm and finding the alignment to increase that over time will help you keep up on their ever-changing sleep needs for the first six months.
4) “Don’t use a schedule, just sleepy cues.” Sleepy cues are really great for the newborn phase but unfortunately, after 11-12 weeks of age sleepy cues mean so many more things than ‘sleepy’ which makes it really hard to base your entire nap schedule on sleepy cues after 12 weeks of age.
5) “Get your baby tired!” This isn’t exactly wrong – getting your child prepared for regression and sleeping really well is really based on tummy time.