Your Toddler is Ready for a Bedtime Glow Up ✨

So it’s a complete shock when we decide it’s time to shake things up:

• saying goodbye to diapers

• going back to work full time and heading off to daycare

• maybe even eating with a fork instead of their fingers!!

  …the hits just keep coming.

I know when it comes to bedtime you may not be as ready to adjust your routine, the predictable nature of what may be: bath, then milk and snuggles, then bed. But just like learning to eat with a fork, new bedtime skills are important to the development of independence and can offer an opportunity to tackle sleep issues leftover from babyhood. 

1. Provide a lot more wind downtime. Slowing down earlier in the evening can make a huge difference for your little whirlwind. If you incorporate screen time in your evening it should end at least 1 hour before their established bedtime. Other ways to slow down include dimming the lights in the entire house, offering a bath time with a spa-like, calm atmosphere, and finally making sure their room is set up for sleep and no longer a “play zone”.

2. Start the switch from milk to water. This one is a toughy I know and I am not saying go cold turkey, but start the process slowly. By 2 years old your child will need a regular toothbrushing routine and drinking milk right before sleep complicates things. So this is a great time to wean from the night bottle. A simple way to replace milk at bedtime is to offer an insulated water bottle of warm water to drink while you read stories. Then move their nightly milk to before bath and toothbrushing time.

3. Add in a LOT of choices. Your toddler wants to be in charge of their newfound independence, so incorporate small choices into your bedtime routine. You can start by asking what color they want their bathwater to be (use food coloring!), and move on to who will brush their teeth, them? or you? Finally and most importantly they choose a book and you choose a book. It doesn’t have to be just two books, but pick a # of books and stick to it. Always let them choose the first ones and you choose the last one or what is called the “anchor” book. Make sure your anchor book is one that is read pretty often (or every single night if you can stand it) - this book is an important sleep signal to their bodies and brains. Here’s a great example of an anchor book.

4. Time for a big kid bed. There are whole articles written just on this transition so I will share only a few tips, the most important being = choices: new bedding they pick out, a book they can bring to bed now that they are ‘big’, which animals sleep with them, etc. These choices will help to activate your toddler’s feeling of ownership. Another tip is to place their new bed exactly where their crib was or at least make sure it's nestled into a corner. This placement will provide the same sense of enclosure that their crib offered.

5. Learn to stay in bed. Before you transition to a big kid bed, you should introduce a toddler clock. New expectations and skills are best learned separately even these two skills. At bedtime offer one final “check-in” 10 minutes after you tuck them in to allow for any last requests. In the morning, set the clock to change colors earlier than you may want to get up which will set them up for an easy win, then slowly push the time by 5 min increments to get to a more manageable wake-up time.

A solid bedtime routine is incredibly helpful to your toddler and for you as well. Use this opportunity to talk to your child about the new choices at bedtime now that they are “big” and write out their new schedule together. Also remember that when you are ready to introduce a toddler bed make sure you are not also working on another big life change like potty training or starting a new preschool, each one of these transitions deserves developmental time and space, and your toddlers will feel more at ease knowing that even if one area of their life may be changing the rest of their life is solid and secure.

BASED ON THEIR AGE EVERY CHILD NEEDS SOMETHING DIFFERENT:

• Toddlers need to learn to regulate and calm their bodies so they can access their own self-settling and soothing skills learned as babies.

• Establishing a strong bedtime routine is the foundation upon which these more intangible skills will grow.

So be prepared to help your toddler with their new bedtime routine and order your copy of The Middle of the Night Book today.

The One Thing You Ever Need to Know About Toddler Sleep

this content is an Advertorial

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.

The Things I Have Seen — A Nanny’s Take.

There are so many parenting books stuffing the shelves of stores, unlimited options on Amazon, and on IG photo after photo of baby-wearing mamas, babies playing on iPads, and free-range babies laying in fields of flowers…

If there was one way to parent we would all be doing it. Then we would document it with our phones to share how quickly it worked — but that's not what I see, do you?

As a long time nanny, what I have seen is parents who do the best they can for their kids.

And to be honest, I also have seen:

• Moms who are home and don't realize they'd be happier at work and moms who thrive at home.

• I’ve seen parents choosing to work together and parents who resent one another because they don't talk.

• I’ve seen moms driving around so their baby can get some sleep and others who’s baby sleeps blissfully through the night.

• I’ve see houses that are a mess and houses that are eerily very neat.

• I’ve seen sacrifice and exhaustion — and love and snuggles. ✨

But what I haven’t seen is a lot of care. parents actively caring for themselves.

The type of care that comes from real self-reflection and self-love.

The type of care that makes sitting in the middle of the chaos a breeze.

The type of care that helps you to see what your priorities are or what conversation you need to have with your spouse.

So although there isn't one way to parent - I believe there is one way towards greater happiness as a parent.

👇👇👇👇👇👇 👇👇👇👇👇👇

It's choosing you first.

👆👆 👆👆👆 👆👆👆 👆👆👆

It's the practice of daily gratitude.

It's the commitment to rewiring your brain from the negativity bias towards noticing the positive.

It’s the ability to let mistakes go, forgive yourself, and try again tomorrow.

This doesn't require you to change your parenting. It doesn't require you to change anything at all really.

It does, however, require you to start by saying:

I'm doing the best I can - and in fact, I'm a pretty damn good mom/dad/parent.

And then saying that to yourself about a million times a day ✨

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