Why Won't My Child Go To Sleep Without Me? Part 1

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Welcome to Toddlers Made Easy, where there's no fluff, just practical, research-based, 15 minutes or less parenting strategies. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Dr. Cathryn Tobin, a pediatrician with more than 33 years of experience. I'm the author of 2 parenting books, the founder of Healthiest Baby, and the mother of 4 amazing adult kids. And let's not forget Smudge, my great big golden doodle. Welcome back. Today we're going to talk about toddlers and sleep problems. I did this recent poll in my office and I was really surprised to discover that close to 75% of parents say that they struggle with some aspect of their toddler's sleep. I had one family tell me that they need to read 8 books and sing 3 songs and then lie down for 45 minutes before their child will doze off. Another one saying that they have this incredibly long, drawn-out bedtime process that takes them 60 to 90 minutes. Every family member comes in and has their own little goodnight routine with the child, and they go through this every night in order to help the little guy fall asleep. And then also many parents complain that they're still getting up 1 to 2 times in the night. So I plan to spend a little bit more time in this new year talking about toddler sleep issues. There's a lot of discussion early on when your baby's first born about baby and sleep problems, but we don't tend to talk about them as much as kids get older. And toddler sleep problems are a completely different set of problems and solutions than a newborn's. I want to start off with a little story and This is about when my daughter was 9 months old, and I'm talking about my second child, but I always kind of think of my first two kids as two first children because there was 10 years between them and it felt like starting all over. Actually, I always tell parents that each child is like a first child because it's the first of that child with their particular personality and routines and preferences. Anyhow, I know we're talking about toddler sleep problems, but I just want to give you an example about how anybody can fall into sleep habits that are ineffective and not really working, and it can happen very easily. So this is a story about Marissa, my daughter, when she was 9 months old. It's really a story about my husband and I. I went on a trip down south on my own with Marissa around the age of 9 months. My husband stayed back to look after our older son. And when I got there the first night, I started to do my usual rocking Marissa till she fell asleep routine. And yes, I was doing that when she was 9 months old. In fact, our routine up until this point was I'd feed Marissa and then I'd give her a little rocking till she dozed off, and then I'd put her in her crib. During the night, if she made any noises, my husband Henry would go running to her, pick her up, and bring her back to me to breastfeed. And then he'd take her and put her back in bed. He's better doing without sleep than I was. I started to do this, and my mother asked me, what are you doing? And I said, I'm rocking I was rocking Marissa to sleep. And she said, why are you doing that? And I said, that's how she goes to sleep. And my mother said, don't be silly. And she said, I want you to go sit down over there. She sent me to the corner of the room and she said, just be quiet. And she took Marissa and gave her a little kiss and hug. And I gave her my goodnight kisses and she was already fed. And she just put her in bed. And I sat there quietly in the room and I just watched. Marissa played for a few minutes but then went to sleep. I was flabbergasted. For 9 months now, I had been rocking Marissa to sleep thinking she needed me to rock her to sleep. And not only that, since I was down there by myself, I did not go running to Marissa in the middle of the night. In fact, I let her make a few squeaks. My husband really couldn't stand the kids crying, and so the first little peep she'd make, he'd go dashing. The few peeps didn't bother me because she wasn't crying, she was just making some noises. The amazing thing happened was she went right back to sleep. So the noises she were making were actually sort of helping her to get back to sleep noises. And here we had been picking her up and feeding her repeatedly in the night. So it turned out we were actually waking my daughter up and not the other way around. You can see it's very easy to misread a situation and misread a child and fall into habits that keep going and going and going. And that's what I'd like us to talk about today. Picture this. It's 7 PM and you're swamped with work. You've got a looming deadline for tomorrow and you're really anxious to get some time to get to work on things. You've already got the baby in bed, but now you've got that nightly challenge of tucking your toddler into bed. And typically this means lying beside him for an hour or until he dozes off. And the big problem is that more often than not, you end up falling asleep in the bed and staying there for the night. Now, for many parents, bedtime is a mix of exhaustion and frustration. Especially when your child insists on your presence to fall asleep. At bedtime, you're likely desperate for some time for yourself while your child wants the complete opposite. They just want you. So understanding what's going on is really crucial in finding the right approach to encourage independent sleep habits. So let's look into this a little deeper and develop an understanding of why kids struggle at bedtime. And that's what we're going to do today. This is something I go through in more detail in my course, but what I like to do is have you think about bedtime from your child's perspective. So kids struggle at bedtime because we're asking them to be on their own for an extended period of time in the dark. And just like separation at daycare or any situation where you're dropping your child off, this separation can be really challenging. There's numerous factors that can lead to a child having difficulty falling asleep on their own. It can be fear. Many kids struggle with fears about darkness or monsters or simply being alone. Things that happen during the day that they may not even know what they are or understand, just things that are happening in the world. Children soak things up and feel it, and that can make nighttime difficult. Then there's the separation anxiety, like we mentioned a moment ago. The thought of being away from parents in a dark room for a long time can be really difficult. Also, sleep timing. Either your child isn't tired enough for sleep, or they may be overtired, which also is very disruptive to sleep. Medications can impact a child's ability to fall asleep. Certain medications, such as salbutamol or Ventolin, they're known to impact your sleep patterns. And then there's habits. A child's routine of falling asleep can evolve into a deeply ingrained habit that's hard to break. For instance, a child's insistence on having you right by them to fall asleep can become just a habit. It might have started because your child had a fear, but the fear has gone away, but the habit didn't. And often these habits persist for a really long time until we make the change. Also, napping too late in the day can cause a child not to be sleepy at bedtime and making it hard for them to fall asleep. Also, you know your kids have a lot of FOMO, Fear of missing out. Even toddlers experience this. They're so curious about what they're missing that it makes it hard for them to let go. So with all of these possibilities, you can see that bedtime is stressful. And I'd like you to take a moment now and really think about what helps you in a stressful situation. Well, I would say feeling understood. And also feeling like someone's in charge who can help you feel safe. Now, I'm not talking about sharing a family bed. You may decide to do that, and that's perfectly fine, but I'm talking about how can we help a child feel safe so they can manage bedtime separation. So take a moment and think about your current bedtime routine. I'd even stop for a moment, stop the recording, and just think about what this looks like from your child's perspective. And I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. I just want you to put yourself in your children's shoes for a moment and think about how it feels to be them at bedtime. Look at your part of the equation. What are you adding to the bedtime routine? It's easier to change you and how you're acting than it is to change your child. Now that you're thinking about what is my child's experience, imagine a parent putting their foot down and saying, "Enough is enough. Get in bed. I'm not kidding." Now, it's understandable. You know, you're human. You've got a nervous system that gets worked up too. But the purpose of this exercise is to see it from your child's perspective. Will that help them feel safe? And allow them to let go and go to sleep? Obviously, probably not. What would be more helpful, and I think you'll find it easier to do when you take that moment and see your bedtime scenario from your child's perspective and see what they really need, is number 1, to feel acknowledged. You're really sad it's bedtime. I understand, sweetheart. I find bedtime hard sometimes too. And then second of all, they need you to be the leader, but they need you to be calm, calm and firm. Yes, it's hard to do. Yes, it's hard to not feel guilty. We always want our kids to be happy, but you can see what your child needs when they're feeling anxious about the separation is a calm, firm leader whose behavior says, hey, I'm in charge here. Everything is okay. We can do this. We can handle this. Let's talk for a moment about how much sleep does a child really need. So a child between 1 and 2 years of age requires about 11 to 14 hours of sleep, and that includes naps. As they grow into preschoolers, the needs hover around 10 to 13 hours. Sleep is instinctual, but falling asleep is a whole different thing. Falling asleep is learned, and that means you may inadvertently develop falling asleep habits that are not helping you or your child in the long term. Because when your child is falling asleep in the middle of the night, for those of you who remember about sleep science, we cycle from deep sleep to shallow sleep back and forth all night long. When your child hits that light sleep state, They may need you to help them fall asleep again. So if your child's used to going to sleep with you right next to them, when they hit the light sleep state in the middle of the night, they're going to call out to you or go running to you because they need you to help them get back to sleep. And this can happen repeatedly at nap time, bedtime, and during the night. Now, fortunately, this habit is not set in stone. With a nurturing and understanding approach, one that doesn't resort to any crying it out, this pattern can actually be altered, this habit. And that's something we're going to explore in the next episode. I use a technique that I call Easy Does It, and it's tailored to gently guide your child out of the lie with me routine. This change is not just possible. It's within your reach and it can lead to more peaceful evenings and a well-deserved break with your child in bed by 8:00 PM. Take this as a reassuring reminder that it is never too late to improve your bedtime routines. But before we go, I want to take a moment and have you practice something in the next week that will make Easy Does It even easier. And what I'm talking about is the time to start working on nighttime is actually during the daytime. Just like when we're dealing with a behavioral problem and your child is all worked up, we save teaching them how to do things differently for a time when they're calm. Well, the same thing goes with sleep. You're not going to be able to teach your child how to deal with those feelings when they're all worked up and upset. And so instead, you want to use daytime to teach your child the skills they need to help them manage the stress of bedtime. Probably the most effective way to teach your child to deal with stress is through either deep breathing exercises, and I also love using a mantra. So I'm going to ask you for the next week, until next week when we talk about the Easy Does It routine, Teach your child how to do deep breathing. There are lots of different techniques. I'd like just a simple one where you encourage a child to take a deep breath in through their nose, count to 4, and then slowly let their breath out. So you can do this like telling your child they're smelling a flower. So deep breath in through the nose. Hold your breath for a second, and then slowly let it out and let it out really for a long time. So, and repeating that over and over. Give it a name, magic breathing, deep breathing, Max's breathing, whatever name you want, but teach your child this breathing routine and have them practice using it so that they're really skilled by the time they need it. I like to use a mantra and I would pick a phrase and you repeat it. Now I typically use the mommy loves you, daddy loves you, or your partner's name loves you, Smudge loves you, whatever brothers and sisters' names are, and then repeat it and repeat it. This helps your child not feel alone and also just the act of repeating it is soothing. So pick your mantra. You know, there's not a special mantra that works better than others when it comes to kids, but have your child practice using that as well. So please practice this for the next week. In the upcoming episode, we're going to talk about Easy Does It, and this is a laid-back, no-pressure routine for helping your child learn how to fall asleep independently. If this kind of approach, a no-pressure, laid-back, I call it a big-hearted approach to parenting, resonates with you, take a look at our courses, Toddlers Made Easy and Potty Training Made Easy. You'll find the link in the show notes. Have a wonderful week, and I look forward to talking about this more in the upcoming episode. I'd love to hear your story, so please feel free to Drop me an email at DrCathryn@healthiest-baby.com. Have a great week and happy parenting.