Episode 165: How Do I Keep My Toddler in Their Own Bed at Bedtime and Overnight?

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, podcast where we dive into the magical world of sleep and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting.

I’m your host, Courtney Zentz,

and I’m on a mission to change how the world views sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children and adults of all ages. As an award winning speaker, author and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built. So let’s sleep together.

Hey everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids sleep Show. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz, pediatric sleep consultant and founder of tiny transitions. I am going to talk to you today all about how to help your toddler to stay in bed at bedtime, after you’ve put them to sleep, and naturally, this podcast will also dive into what to do in the middle of the night when your toddler wakes and it’s suddenly standing next to your bed. We’ve got kids, and they sometimes need us, and sometimes they just want us because it might make them feel better. So what we’re going to talk about today is exactly how you can help your toddler to stay in bed once you put them there without you needing to lay next to them for hours on end, sit in a chair for half the night, or have broken and disturbed sleep, because they’re coming out of their bedroom five or six times overnight, to ask you for a sip of water, to ask you for a tissue, to tell you that they have to go to the potty when they are more than capable of taking that drink of water from the sippy cup or grabbing the tissue that’s tucked under their pillow, or, frankly, going to The bathroom on their own because you’ve put a little nightlight in the bathroom so they can be sure to see now, obviously there’s balance and grace. Toddlers at all ages and stages need different support from us, and our job as parents is certainly to always be accessible but not excessive. So in today’s episode, I’m going to tell you the five ways that you can go ahead and help set your toddler up for success, by keeping them in the room, settling independently at bedtime, without you needing to sit there, and helping your toddler to sleep through the night. So the first thing I want you to do is look at your toddler’s daytime routine. Okay, some toddlers as young as three drop a nap. Some kids going into kindergarten still have to drop that nap before the first day of school. Your child may still be taking a nap and they may not be, and that bedtime is going to be really important based on one, if they’re still napping. Two, how long they’re napping, and three, what time they’re actually waking up in the morning, and then what time ultimately you would desire them to go to bed. So the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine have specific recommendations around how much sleep a child needs at every age and stage of growth and development. On average, for most of our toddlers, it’s between 10 and 12 hours of total sleep, if they’re in the range of about three to five years old, certainly a little bit more or less based on their age, but you can kind of Gander somewhere around that 12 hours, plus or minus your kid as a toddler is going to need to rest and reset from the day. So my kids were in daycare, and they have to actually all the way through the age of four, until the summer of them going into kindergarten. I have sleep clients, and even just in my own neighborhood, our neighbor across the street, I remember her texting me saying, hey, Emmett, is done napping now? Is that okay? Well, absolutely, as long as you get into bed at the right time, right you can’t have a child at three years old who is not taking a nap, and then you expect them to stay awake from seven in the morning till eight o’clock at night. Good luck with that. Your kid’s going to be overtired, over stimulated and strung out by the time bedtime comes. So first, you gotta understand total sleep needs in the day, and then you’ve gotta gage what time things are happening to ensure you’re balancing sleep pressure, which is a neurotransmitter called adenosine. And your child builds up that adenosine when they’re awake and adenosine levels fall when they’re sleeping. Now the natural progression is that as the day is going on, adenosine levels are rising. When you sleep they fall, but then you also have melatonin, which is typically triggered by the start of darkness. You have cortisol, which is typically triggered in the morning hours between four and 6am it’s kind of your body’s cup of coffee, and so you have to have the right. Balance of the daytime schedule to manage the right bedtime, the sleeping through the night as the toddler and then ultimately waking where it’s age appropriate, somewhere between six and eight o’clock for most toddlers in the morning hours, you want to have a bedtime that’s set every night. My kids are eight and 10 and are still asleep every night at 830 on the dot, sometimes, frankly, even earlier, my son last night fell asleep at 810 on his own accord, got home from football, brushed his teeth and went to bed, didn’t even say anything other than, I’m going upstairs. And by the time we got upstairs, five minutes later, he was already in bed, covered and totally sound asleep. So your body’s beginning to recognize, as you grow right, that you need to go to bed. Now for toddlers, it’s a little hard, because they sometimes have FOMO of things, you know, all around the house that are happening, but having a set bedtime helps your child to have two things happen. One, their body has expectations. They are now preparing to go to sleep. Their hormones are triggered properly. They’re used to as a body going to bed and waking up on the same cyclical kind of pattern. Okay, so you’ve got this body clock that gets set right a child circadian rhythm, but frankly, you also have managed anxiety from your toddler knowing what’s coming next. Kids don’t like surprises, right? So it’s actually very comforting to a child to know that bedtime is that maybe seven o’clock or 730 and then you’re going to work backwards to like, Okay, well, then if that’s the case, we do a bath at 30 minutes prior, before that, we do dinner 30 minutes prior, we read a book, we say our prayers, right? And that kind of dives into the second thing that’s most important. So first is bedtime, and having a set bedtime with your child every single night of the week. Okay? The second part of that is a consistent routine that leads up to that bedtime. So as I sort of alluded to, it minimizes anxiety. Kids want to know what to expect, what’s happening next, what’s going to be going on, right? And so us just throwing in loops like tonight, we’re going to watch a movie tomorrow. We’re going to go for ice cream. Oh, we’re at Billy’s this week to go swimming, right? Oh, no, Daddy’s doing bedtime tonight. No, mommy’s doing bedtime tonight. Just kidding, it’s Daddy. Oh, the nanny, oh, the dog’s in the room. The dog’s not in the room. We’re going to read tonight. We’re not going to read tonight. We’re going to watch iPads during bedtime. We’re not going to watch iPads during bedtime. Okay, there’s tons of stuff that happens during the bedtime routine. As a sleep consultant, do not watch iPads during the bedtime routine. The blue light that is emitted from those is a stimulant to the prefrontal cortex, and will have your child struggle to fall asleep and struggle to stay asleep, because you’re basically shooting their brain up with a cup of coffee. So put that iPad away. You want to give your brain about an hour before bedtime to kind of come down and reset off of that. So in your bedtime routine, you want to have choices. You want your toddler to make choices so they start to feel empowered. They start to feel independent, right? Do you want to read this book or this book? Do you want to brush your teeth, or do you want me to do it for you? Right? Little secret, most kids don’t want you doing it for them, but they feel empowered. Do you want to sing a song or say your prayers first? Okay, then we’ll do this one second, right? And all along the way, you’re dictating what’s going on, but they feel as though they’re in control of the situation, what’s helped them kind of puff their chest a little bit, right? Giving them choices in the routine also helps set expectations. Do you want Mommy to sit in the chair or daddy to sit in the chair? Do you want Mommy to rub your back or daddy to rub your back? Right? Like you can kind of use choices and allow your child again through the put down process to feel empowered, right? Like we used to switch off and on, especially when I had my daughter who was nursing right? So it would be like, Oh, I would go in and start the bedtime routine with Max, and then my husband would come in and finish it and put them down while I then would like, nurse her and get her to sleep after my husband gave her a bath. While I was starting the bedtime routine, we got into a little bit of a routine that worked for our family with the two kids at different ages, and allowing us to both be a part of both routines and put down processes, right? But ultimately, we gave kids choices. Now it wasn’t the choice of like, do you want mommy or daddy for bedtime tonight, we would use that strategically. If I had to travel for work, and I knew that Tuesday, I’d be gone, but I know that every other time they’re going to pick me, if I ask them, right, I would say, on Sunday, do you want mommy or daddy to put you down tonight, mommy? Okay, then Monday, you get Daddy, or whatever the night was that I knew I was traveling, I kind of backed into it to say, All right, well, if you get me tonight, then tomorrow you get Daddy. Do you agree? Yes, great. Okay, and so it made it a bit easier to manage in that regard. Okay, so you want to have consistency in the routine and set your child up for choices. If you’re going to do a routine every night, it’s like, all right, snack, and then brush teeth, and then the only thing after that is water, and then you read a book, and then you put your. Jam is on, and then you say a prayer, and then you tuck yourself in, and then you get a head rub for two minutes, and then when the timer goes off, it’s time to go to bed, and the lights are out, whatever your routine looks like. Do it predictably every night. If they want two books and you read two, I guarantee the next night they’re going to ask for three. Why? Because they’re pushing boundaries. Kids want to understand what is the safe space, what is the expectation? And can I push that boundary a bit that’s naturally them just growing and figuring out the world? Okay? So you want to look for consistency in the routine and make sure you’re setting them up for success. There. The next thing you want to do with that expectations. If you tell your child you’re going to sit in that chair until they’re asleep, you bet you’re behind. You’re sitting in that chair till they’re asleep. You cannot sit in that chair for two minutes and then make Oh, I got stuff to do. Bye, Billy, because then Billy’s gonna freak out and he’s gonna get out of bed and come and look for you and go, I thought you were sitting in the chair. Why aren’t you sitting in the chair? Right? And so that’s where you have to set expectations. Like I will sit here for two minutes until the timer goes off, and then it’s time for bed. I once had a client who was a hair twirler, and that she would sit for 90 minutes at bedtime and allow the daughter to twirl her hair. She’s like, my hair’s falling out. I have dreadlocks. And she curled my hair for 90 minutes like she won’t go to bed. And so it was kind of this like routine tick that this little girl had. And I was like, Well, why do you let her twirl your hair for 90 minutes? Like, that’s not allowed, you know? And she was like, almost taken back when I suggested that. And I was like, go on Amazon and buy a timer. I’ll put one in the the link of the show notes here. That’s our favorite. And I said, Buy the timer. And say, Do you want to twirl my hair? Okay, great. Then I’ll set the timer. When this goes off, it’s time for bed. Do you understand? Yes, okay, that the timer for three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever you’re comfortable with, and then when the timer goes off, her hands come out of your hair and she moves on to the next part of the routine. And if there’s a temper tantrum right, then there’s a consequence to that. There’s a consequence to the choice that the toddler is making about throwing the temper tantrum, and it is no different, my friends, make no mistake, it is no different than if your toddler came down for breakfast one morning. It was like, I want an ice cream sundae for breakfast. Yay. And what would you say as a parent? Now, hopefully you would say, No. What’s going to happen? Well, they’re going to have a hissy fit. You’re not going to give into that, because then they’re just going to give into that, because then they’re just going to have a hissy fit every morning, right? You set a boundary, and you consequence that I will wait until you’re finished, and then you may have breakfast, but we’re not having an ice cream sundae. And then, frankly, depending on what day you catch me, you might hear me elevate my voice a bit more if there’s a temper tantrum, as some parents do, but you know, you try to remain calm. Give them choices. Like, the choice is not ice cream sundae for breakfast, the choice is a banana and yogurt or some cereal. Your choice. Again, they get to choose, and if they choose nothing, then they don’t get any breakfast. And I know that sounds weird, your child is not going to starve if they don’t get, you know, anything until lunch. It teaches them that there’s a boundary. Now, obviously we want to make sure things like water and nutrition are top of mind. We’re never going to withhold water because they were mad they didn’t get juice. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying like you have to set a boundary for what you’re willing to do if your child is throwing a fit, I guarantee when you put all the breakfast away and you go, all right, fine. Then you’re just not going to eat breakfast today, and you start to pack up and move on to the next thing. I guarantee that all of a sudden they’re going to be like, Fine, I’ll have a banana and yogurt, right? Because you set a boundary, and they tried to break the boundary, and they couldn’t. So they’re forced to make the choice that you’ve given them at hand, you see? So that’s what parents often when I’m sleep, coaching toddlers is what you need to look at. What are the expectation? Right? The expectation is, I will sit here for two minutes. I’ll sit here till you’re asleep. I’ll lay in here all night, right? That if you set the expectation, you have to stick to whatever it is that they’re expecting you to do, right, and then, if not, there’s consequences around those choices. Right? I do a lot of explaining with inside the daytime, which we’re going to get to in a minute, around these like boundaries and consequences and such. But if you were to set a boundary that says, you know, you can pick this book or this book tonight. I want that book. That’s not one of the choices. You can pick this book or this book. I want that book. You can choose this book or this book or none at all.

What happens? Well, your child goes, I want that book. You close the books, you put them on the shelf, and you go, Okay, we’re just not going to read tonight. Let’s move on. Did you brush your teeth? Would you like me to do it for you? Or would you like to do it right? And so you just move on in the activity. And the same thing as you kind of did with breakfast, you’re going, Oh, well, wait a minute. Shoot. I want to read a book. What do you mean? You’re going to skip it. I don’t want you to. Skip it. And so then they go, fine, I’ll read Little Ponies, you know? And so it’s just setting the boundary and sticking to it. And the consequence of them not making the choice, because it’s on them to do it, they’re empowered, they’re independent. It’s on them to make the choice, and if they choose not to do it. It’s on them, not you. So you see, it’s a natural consequence. It says, Look, you had a choice. You didn’t do it. And here’s the consequence we’re not going to read, right? Watch how fast that starts changing behavior, even in the daytime, which is part five, right? What is the daytime impact to a child’s choices, okay, boundaries and consequences. People look at them as negative. They’re not. They’re meant to keep a child safe. They’re meant to keep a child less anxious, with predictability, with independence, right? With an understanding of what to expect and how things work as a framework, right? But you can’t be like, Well, if you don’t do this, then tomorrow we’re not going to Grandma’s, and then you go to grandma’s. To grandma’s, like, that’s not helpful, because you just broke the consequence, right? And then your kid starts to know that, like, you’re not going to hold true to that, right? So when it comes to boundaries and consequences at bedtime, you know, when you have a child who’s constantly getting out of bed to come find you, or waking up and yelling for you or asking you to come in and sit for the entire night in a chair and you do it. There is no consequence. You’re willing to do it. Why would they stop asking if they come into your bedroom every night you let them in bed. Why would they stop coming in if my husband came upstairs every night with a donut at 3am and was like, hey, Courtney, you want a donut? Hell yeah, I’ll take a donut, right? But if he suddenly stopped coming up right with that donut, I’d be like, whoa. Wait a minute. Where’s the donut? It’s like, well, you can get it yourself. Like, man, got really interested in that, right? I do this with my husband at the age of 43 if I want a head rub. As a grown adult, when I go to bed and he has already flipped over looking towards our walk in closet. Okay, I know that I’ve kind of missed the window to ask for a head rub, but as a grown adult, if I go, can you rub my head? And he says, No, and I go, Oh, please, just like 30 seconds from my head, he’s like, Oh, you’re relentless. Fine. And he rubs my head. So I know the reward of my protest is a head rub. Now that being said, and I’m not a nagging wife, I promise. But if I say, can you rub my head? And he immediately responds with no, good night. I’ve already turned over. I know I’m not getting the head rub because the the tone of his response, even despite my protest, I can already tell like no shot, right? You have to set a boundary. And then there’s a consequence. I waited too long to ask. I’m not getting the head rope tonight. That’s consequence, right? There was a boundary. It was set, he flipped over, and the consequence was no head rub, right? So it’s just using an understanding that what we set and say we’re going to do at bedtime we stick to. But if your toddler gets up and comes in and then you go sit there, why would they stop asking? So this is where there has to be the incorporation of a boundary that says, buddy, if you get up tonight and ask me to come in, I am not going to do this, or you’re not going to get into my bed, but you may choose to sleep on the floor, right? There’s a sleeping bag on the floor. Do you get up tonight and come into my bedroom? You can sleep on the sleeping bag, or you can go back to your room to sleep your choice, right? I can guarantee, after a couple days on that hard, cold floor to your room. Sleeping Bag is no longer appealing, trust me, and don’t make it super cushy. Okay, so if you want to start slow and get your kid out of your bed and onto the floor, you can try something like that. But ultimately, it’s about weaning from the behavior by setting the boundary for a couple days, and most of our private sleep clients, we actually have to work you back into the room in order to actually fix the problem. Okay, we set the boundary that we’re willing to do, x, and then we stick to it, and then x, over the course of a couple days, becomes less desirable because you are not engaging with that child. There’s no back rubs, there’s no head rubs, there’s no tuck ins, there’s no extra kisses upon going back to the bedroom at 2am the best you’re getting is a corpse in the chair, right? And we dive into this a lot more inside of sleep steps, and I coach you every step of the way in the sleep Steps program through exactly how to implement this, exactly how to set the boundaries, and then how to stick to it and get the results in about a week for a toddler. Okay, so if you’re interested in sleep steps, you can learn more right about it on tinytransitions.com right at the top in the menu, it’s the sleep steps. Course. Programs and program but besides that, you have to have consequences to the choices that children are making. Let me give you an example. Consequences are not always bad. You do not want a four year old roaming around your house at two o’clock in the morning while you’re sleeping. I would Gander, right? I know I wouldn’t, lord knows what they’re getting into, especially when I’m sound asleep. Okay? So there has to be an understanding that, like the expectation is they stay in their bed until, for example, their clock comes on in the morning, right? One of those colored light up clocks. There’s, oh so many of them that are out there that tell a child it is now acceptable to get up, but if you choose to get up and come in my room and wake me up and have me take you back to your room to go to bed, and I’m willing to do this particular thing, to go to sleep, right? And then you’re like throwing a protest, like, No, I want you to do this now. I want you to do that right. There has to be consequences. Your child will not care to change their behavior if the consequence does not outweigh the reward that my friends is toddler sleep training. If you are willing to do the things and you’re willing to do it because they ask and there’s no consequence to the choices, why would you change behavior? My husband still will rub my head if I throw a protest for five seconds, why would I stop asking? I get a head rub. It feels good, right? But if it suddenly impacts your child and in the morning they go, Can I watch bluey? And you say, No, I’m sorry we didn’t sleep well last night, so we’re not going to watch bluey today. You have to be able to stick to the consequence, whatever it is, right in the middle of the night it might be it’s there, like standing up and throwing a hissy fit, which many kids will do. May come over and they try to punch you and drag you into bed and pull you over there to get whatever that they want, right, want versus need. They try to pull you over to get what they want, like maybe laying next to them or something, right, and you don’t do it, and you set a boundary, and they’re protesting that choice. You have to, you have to leave. That’s a consequence they want you. So you leaving, you’re the consequence. Now you’re going to come back. And this is, again, too hard to kind of detail into in a podcast episode that I’ve got about 20 minutes to kind of share, but you have to consequence, the choice with a consequence they care about. If you’re just like, Fine, I’m going to take the paper clip off your dresser. Like, what do they care? They’re not going to change their behavior. They don’t care, right? So this all comes down when you’re talking about boundaries and consequences. Is to using things that are unique to your toddler, right? And then incorporating them into the boundaries that you set as parents, the expectations you set around sleep, and how it all works together. And I guarantee part five of this, as I mentioned, which is the daytime impact. This is happening in the day. Your toddler throws their sippy cup. What do you do? You pick it up and give it back to them. They fling their peas across the kitchen. What do you do? Pour them another bowl of fresh peas, right? And hand them to them and go, please don’t throw your peas. And then you reward them by giving them a new bowl of peas. You know how I reward them? You’re not eating till lunch. You throwing your food tells me you’re not hungry. I will take those peas. Thank you very much, and we’ll eat again at lunch. You know what happens an hour later? Can I have goldfish? Nope, you threw your peas So you told me you weren’t hungry. We’re going to eat again at lunch.

Go play. Let’s go swimming. Let’s go walk. Go for a walk. Whatever you’re going to do, right? So that’s the part you have to balance in this is in the daytime, watching for those types of behaviors and also listening. I want to can we? Can I will you those are all rewards. So you can look at it, and you can try to figure out whether or not you can consequence things based on their age and based on what the ask is, and based on what’s happening. And that’s where all this gets a little complex, and we break it down in sleep steps is, can you figure out how to use things in the day to impact them, setting the boundaries and expectations of bedtime and overnight? I will tell you, sleep training a toddler takes every bit of one week my friends and you cannot use baby sleep training methods like Ferber or cry it out, or interval based check ins. With a toddler, it’ll never work. They will scream for hours on end, because it’s not that they don’t know how to sleep. They have the skill they are choosing not to sleep. That’s the difference. Okay, so with toddlers, you know it really depends. Again, first, just to recap on making sure the bedtime is set. Second, having a consistent routine and choices within that routine that help your toddler feel empowered. Third, is expectations, and having the right expectations around what’s going to happen between bedtime and overnight, setting those expectations with boundaries and consequences and then watching. For daytime impacts that you can use to change your toddler’s situation. I have been a toddler and infant sleep coach for almost 10 years now. I have worked with a lot of families. This only works when you are consistent, and it’s going to take every bit of a week to fix your toddler from waking it’s a little bit of office space, and we are happy to coach you in private sleep coaching or through our sleep Steps program, which has live coaching calls with me and my team every week and a live community for instant access to education and responses from a chat standpoint whenever you are ready to fix this, because sleep is the foundation friends for which the house is built. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode again. I’m

Courtney Zentz,

the founder of tiny transitions. You can jump out to tinytransitions.com and learn all kinds of things about newborns, infants, toddlers. I mean, heck, even school aged kids and adults. We work with your entire family to make sure everyone is sleeping through the night and waking rested and refreshed. Thanks so much for tuning in. Be sure to click Subscribe and leave us a review if you’re feeling so kind, because reviews help tell all of the podcast gods that we are a great show for you and your family.

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see you next week here on the kids sleep show.

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