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Home › Articles › Sleep Issues › Toddler Early Birds

Toddler Early Birds

Tips to Get Toddlers to Sleep In

By Kelly Burgess

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Once your child is falling asleep on her own, try these tips to help her stay asleep and/or get back to sleep after waking in the wee hours:

  • Go to your child and give her a loving but firm statement, such as, "It's still bedtime and you need to go back to sleep."
  • Use room-darkening shades to cut down on distractions and the room becoming too light too early.
  • If possible, move the child's room to the back of the house to cut down on morning noises, such as trash pickup, paper delivery and early commuters. If that's not possible, try a white noise machine.
  • Don't have a lot of toys out to attract his attention when he does wake up.
  • For an older toddler – say age 3 – try using a cute alarm clock and explaining that "we never get up before the alarm rings."

    Never put toys, food or drink in your toddler's crib or food and drink at her bedside to keep her quiet. The goal, Dr. Tobin says, is not to encourage her to wake and play or eat while you sleep; it's to get her back to sleep.

    As for moving from a crib to a bed – something that commonly occurs in the toddler years – Dr. Tobin says this should cause no more than a temporary disruption of sleep habits.

    "Kids with good sleep habits from the very beginning will always sleep well," Dr. Tobin says. "Even if you started badly it's not too late to fix that and teach your children how to be a good sleeper."

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