Some children are like roosters. They wake up and are ready to go with the first ray of sunlight on their little faces. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get up at the crack of dawn.
Put blackout curtains on the windows in your child’s room. This should keep the little rooster asleep for an extra hour or two. But you will probably have to let him stay up an hour later at night. To do that he may need a slightly later nap. In other words, everything gets pushed forward clockwise – later rising, later nap, and later bedtime. You have to decide if you want more time for yourself in the morning or in the evening. You won’t get both.
If Dad gets up early, your toddler can tag along with him while he does all the guy things – shower, shave, dress, fix breakfast – while you get longer to sleep. It’s a good father/son “alone together” time.
If that’s not going to happen, you can get up and lie with your toddler on the couch – while he plays quietly, you can snooze or at least be horizontal long enough to feel more rested once the clock says it’s a more reasonable hour. By modelling that it’s still sleepy time for you, your toddler will get the message that it’s a good idea to play quietly. Of course this assumes that your house is thoroughly childproofed, the doors to outside are locked, and any off-limit areas are gated off. Even though most youngsters won’t wander all over the house when they could be by you, you’ll rest easier knowing he won’t get in trouble if you really doze off. Dr Bob’s partner positioned her toddler on the couch in a way that he’d have to crawl over her to get down, which meant she’d know if he was on the move.
Place a child safety gate in your child’s doorway. Set up a water bottle and small snack (something non-chokable) on your child’s nightstand before you go to bed. Teach your child to play and eat quietly and safely in his room when he wakes. You can even set an alarm clock and tell him he can call for you when the alarm goes ding. Even better is a music player with a timer that you can set to come on with your child’s favourite music (a regular alarm buzzer may be too scary).
Wakes up to play
Our eighteen-month-old baby sleeps in a cot next to us and sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night eager to play. It’s cute, but we’re not in the mood to play at 3am. How can we stop this habit?
First, you can be encouraged that this is usually just a phase as baby discovers new milestones. It often passes within a few weeks. Despite this, your toddler needs to learn that nighttime is for sleeping, not for playing. Here’s how we discouraged middle-of-the-night playmates. When our toddler was sleeping close to us and woke us up, we acknowledged her presence but then told her “time to sleep”. Then we pretended to go back to sleep. If we “played dead” long enough, she would decide that it wasn’t very interesting to be awake in the dark, and she would go back to sleep. If baby protests this silent treatment, you can cuddle her close to you (use a firm hand) and repeat the sleep cue: “time to sleep” or “sleepy-sleepy”. Or roll over and lie with your back to baby. Most babies eventually give up and after a few nights, go back to sleep easily.
If this phase lasts too long, and is obviously not going away, in the interest of letting one of you actually get to stay asleep, the one who is feeling generous can get up and walk or rock baby back to sleep. Don’t turn on any lights (there will be enough “night light” coming in to find your way around). After she gets bored she’ll be ready to go back to sleep. Then you can both make your way back to her cot, or your bed.
Discouraging the midnight visitor
Our two-year-old comes into our room, where he used to sleep, at all hours of the night. How can I get him to stay in his room short of locking him in, which I obviously don’t want to do?
Like salmon returning to their birthplace to spawn, children often naturally gravitate back to their preferred sleeping place. Those middle-of-the-night visits, though disrupting, are a usual developmental stage, especially if your child is making the transition from sleeping in your room to sleeping solo in his own. Here’s how to give your child extra nighttime security without disrupting your sleep:
Have an open-door policy, but with rules. Put a futon, mattress, or a cute sleeping bag at the foot of your bed and market this as his “special bed”. Then show and tell him this rule: “You can come into Mummy and Daddy’s room at night if you need to and sleep in your special bed, but you must tip-toe in as quietly as a mouse and not wake up Mummy and Daddy. Mummy and Daddy need their sleep, otherwise we will be cranky the next day. And a cranky Mummy and Daddy are no fun to be with …”
Try not to view this nighttime visit as bad behaviour. It is natural and normal. It will diminish in time without you even needing to discourage it.
To reinforce both your availability and the message that nighttime is when everyone sleeps, go on to tell him, “If you wake Mummy and Daddy up, you have to go back into your room.” Try another show and tell game. During the day walk with him from his room into yours and show him how to slip quietly into his special bed without waking you up.
Here’s how some parents in our practice negotiated with their midnight visitor:
After we moved, our four-year-old, Josh, wanted to sleep with us all the time. Even after he fell asleep in his own bed, he’d creep in with us at about three o’clock in the morning. Even though we enjoy cuddling with him, especially as we all fall asleep, he’s an after-midnight kicker, and we’d spend most of the nights he was with us crossing our arms over our sensitive body parts. So we made a deal. We told Josh that we loved sleeping with him, but now that he was bigger, we didn’t sleep well when he was in our bed all the time, and this made us tired and grumpy parents. We further explained that we could probably handle feeling that way once a week. So we made up a chart and told Josh that if he stayed in his own bed all night Monday through Saturday, he could sleep with us all night on Sunday. Now Josh is eager to sleep “well” on his own so that we can all enjoy our Sunday night snuggles.
Weaning off nighttime bottles
Our two-year-old still insists on a bottle at bedtime and if he wakes during the night. I know this isn’t good for his teeth, but he really seems to need the comfort. I also wish he’d stop needing the bottle during the night. What can I do?
This is a common dilemma. A toddler who is used to the comfort of sucking on a bottle to get to sleep won’t give this up easily, but it’s true that milk or juice sugar that stay on the teeth at night can cause cavities. In chapter 6 we’ll discuss this situation in detail, but here’s the basic approach we recommend:
Go sugar free. Slowly dilute the milk or juice with water over a couple weeks until it is all water. If your child clues in to this trick, back off for a few days then continue again. This at least eliminates the risk of cavities.
Have a bye-bye bottle party. Have a ceremony where you toss the bottles into the outside dustbin, watch the rubbish trucks take it away if possible, celebrate with songs, dancing, cake and presents. Encourage your child that he is all grown up now and tonight will “go night-night as a big boy”. Have a hidden spare bottle handy in case your child decides he doesn’t like this idea come bedtime and his hysterics are beyond what you feel is ok. Some of his presents can be other bedtime props, like a musical stuffed toy, new pillow, or blanket.
Substitute yourself. You may find that once you’ve taken the bottle away you need to find something to take its place. Your child may declare that that something is you. You may need to spend a few weeks helping your child go to sleep if you feel he needs you.
If you’re using other substitute props, make sure your child knows how to find them during the night when he wakes up and asks for the bottle.
If you feel your child really needs the comfort of a bottle with water, that’s