The One Thing You Ever Need to Know About Toddler Sleep
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This is an unprecedented time for parents. Caring for a baby or toddler non-stop with no breaks, coworkers who are unsympathetic, wildfires making the air unbreathable, and kids bouncing off the walls and furniture - I’m with you because in addition to being a professional nanny, I am a mom too.
But it’s more than just work/life balance issues at stake either — I’m talking about sleep (or the lack thereof!). There are more sleep issues that children go through than maybe you realize - and they are affecting exhausted parents who are already on the edge.
Toddler tantrums and night time waking are most common from age 1.5 to 2 years when there are enormous developmental leaps occurring. Learning to talk and communicate needs effects their brains tremendously — and physical leaps like learning how to walk, balance, climb and run can take over as their little brains push harder and harder for them to become independent.
They don’t compare toddlers to teenagers for just any old reason. Their little bodies and minds are on overload. And so toddlers wake up in the night sometimes with nightmares, sometimes night terrors and sometimes they are just 💯disoriented.
So they wake up screaming and in a full tantrum, or they may wake-up and refuse to leave your side. Either way, they need your help to learn how to notice their sleepiness and calm down. Joanna Clark, certified Gentle Sleep Coach from Blissful Baby Sleep Coaching, describes the three stages to falling asleep as “self-regulation, self-settling, and self-soothing” and if they can’t get to the self-settling step they won’t go back to sleep easily.
Our jobs as parents to guide them through that first stage of self-regulation and trust that once they are calm they will lean on the self-settling and self-soothing skills they learned as babies.
But how do you do this at 2 am?
Studies have shown time and time again how valuable meditation is for adults and how body scans in particular can lower stress hormones like cortisol. These methods regulate our emotions and also the nervous system as a whole.
A body scan can provide an anchor point for your child to learn the foundational skill called 'body awareness' which will help them to notice their body's sleepiness and down-regulate from wiggles or tantrums.
Just like your bedtime books are a critical part of your bedtime routine, you can rely on a book for the middle of the night too. The Middle of the Night Book is the first bedtime board book to use a body scan meditation to help your child notice their sleepiness.
Based on their age every child needs something different:
Babies need a strong bedtime routine to cue to them that it's time to sleep.
Toddlers need to learn to regulate and calm their bodies so they can access their own self-settling and soothing skills learned as babies.
So be prepared to help your toddler with their 3 AM “back to sleep” routine before you’re too tired to think and preorder your copy of The Middle of the Night Book today.
Stef Tousignant is a professional nanny and author of The Middle of the Night Book who lives in the Bay Area, you can order on her book here.