Putting our toddler to bed

When your child is two or two and a half, you may find yourself a participant in series of bedtime rituals that are a toddler’s way of making the transition from being awake with plenty of company to being asleep alone. All the simple, practical processes are elaborated into a carefully choreographed ceremony: the bath, brushing the teeth, putting on pajamas, and selecting the right stuffed animal and the right book for the bedtime story. Everything must be in the same sequence every night or the spell is broken, so beware of adding any new elements that disrupt the ritual. Also beware of the delaying tactics that some children try to slip into the ceremonial routine: I went to change pajamas; I want another drink of water; I left something downstairs.

Your child may be more skittish about sleep on days when he has endured long separations from you or when he has experienced other daytime worries. The proverbial monster waiting at the foot of the bed after rears its head during this period of childhood. You should demonstrate to your child that you are in charge and able to protect him – even if it requires your loudly banishing the demon from the house.

Try to make bedtime the same time every night or as nearly the same time as possible. But keep your attitude toward your child’s sleep positive and nonpunitive. If he is having trouble getting to sleep, do not try to force or threaten him. Your child needs to be shown; instead, that sleep is a welcome and pleasurable retreat. You can help foster this attitude by teaching him to cherish his bedroom as a pleasant heaven for comfort, rest and security, rather than making it seem like a place that he is banished to for punishment.

Although many children consistently go to bed voluntarily, some do not, especially when the rest of the family is awake and doing interesting things. Give a 10 minute and a five minute warning as the time to start the bedtime ritual nears. If your child insists on putting up a fight about going to bed, try a neutral signaling device, such as an alarm clock. This way, the source of the unwelcome news is impersonal, and the child cannot argue with it. Let him know that you understand how much he does not want to go to bed, but tell him firmly that it is, nonetheless, his bedtime. If he is playing, assure him that in the morning, he can return to what he was doing. Sometimes children feel less victimized when they are given options: “You can either go get in bed now, or you can kiss me good night and when get in bed.”

Maintaining good sleep habits

Even if your baby takes readily to drifting off to sleep on her own, your troubles may not be over. At some point between seven and nine months, she may suddenly begin to protest with anguished cries your departure from her room each night. Her panic is a sign of separation anxiety, which emerges at about this time in a child’s life. She has become strongly attached to you and does not yet understand that when someone disappears from view, that person continues to exist and will return. She is afraid you are going away forever.
Soon after this time, the baby’s drive to master body skills such as walking becomes so intense that she often finds it difficult to unwind for sleep. You may discover her in the middle of the night crawling around in her crib or pulling herself up to a standing position, as though her drive to practice her skills outweighed her heed for sleep.
Help your baby find her own methods for soothing herself to sleep, while reassuring her that you are not abandoning her. One way to accomplish this double purpose is to casually leave and reenter the room several times after she has been put to bed, making reassuring sounds but concerning yourself with some other bit of business rather than hovering over your protesting child. Presents sometimes interfere too much at bedtime, when their babies really just need a chance to complain a little before setting down to some humming or jabbering and then to sleep. Small gestures can help ease a baby’s resistance to sleep. Let your child have a favorite toy or blanket for comfort when you leave the room. A night light that allows her to see her familiar surroundings when she awakens at night might also help.

How to put your baby to sleep

Unless you enjoy rocking your baby so much that you want to do it several times a night, you may wish, by the time your child is five or six months old, to alter the way you put him to bed in the first place. You need not deny yourself the joy of rocking him, but rock him when he is wakeful. That way your baby gets a bonus: he is fully aware of the pleasure of snuggling in your arms. When it is bedtime, put him into his crib in his favourite sleeping position, tuck him in, and kiss him good night and turn off the lights, perhaps leaving a night light on. Leave the room so he will get used to falling asleep alone. If he protests, you can pick him up and cuddle him, or do some quiet chore such as sorting his laundry.

Or you can leave the door open and give evidence of your presence just outside his room by talking and making soft other soft noises as you move about. In some cases a few evenings of this routine is sufficient for your baby to learn how to go to sleep on his own and he will apply that experience whenever he awakens in the middle of the night but if your child reaches the age of five or six months and is still demanding your attention throughout the night, you may wish to try the special sleep training program devised by some pediatrician specializing in sleep problems.

Baby's different form of sleep

To understand a child’s sleep problem, you need to know something about the nature of a child’s sleep. A full term infant emerges from the womb already practiced in two distinct modes of sleeping known as active sleep and quiet sleep. The form called active sleep in newborn infants is also known as rapid eye movement sleep. It is distinguished by slight but frequent body movements, irregular breathing changes in facial expression and the easily visible rapid movements of the baby’s eyes beneath his closed eyelids. In older children, dreaming takes place during REM sleep. In the quiet sleep mode, the infant’s breathing is regular and deep, and most other body movement is markedly diminished. In the first month however you may see fast body twitches, called startles, and rhythmical sucking notions while the baby is sleeping in this state.

At birth a full term baby divides his sleeping time roughly in half between active and quiet sleep. Until the age of three months, the baby falls directly into active, REM sleep; after about three months, he falls directly into active, REM sleep; after about three months he falls first into non REM, or quiet sleep. During the first six months of life the quiet mode of sleep evolves into varying stages similar to that seen in older children and in adults. When the child is in the deeper stages of non REM sleep, he can be very difficult to awaken. It is this kind of sleep that enables you to dress him in his pajamas and tuck him into bed without waking him up when he falls asleep on the sofa or floor. By the time he is six months old his sleep moves through cycles of non REM and REM sleep in a way which will remain fairly constant throughout life. In his REM sleep he may awaken if only for a few seconds. He may open his eyes examine his surroundings and shift his position. He might do this as often as nine or 10 times a night.