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Home › Articles › Sleep Issues › Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

Helping Toddlers Build
Healthy Sleep Habits

By Alex Powell

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Is bedtime a battle? Does the patter of not-so-tiny feet keep you awake at night? If you're dreaming of the day your toddler sleeps through the night, you may be dreaming for quite some time.

"Children do not outgrow sleep problems," says Dr. Jodi Mindell, author of Sleeping Through the Night: How Infants, Toddlers and Their Parents Can Get a Good Night's Sleep (HarperCollins, 1997). According to Dr. Mindell, many toddlers' sleep issues actually develop during infancy. "Whatever habits were instilled before are going to continue unless parents make a change," she says.

The good news is that it's never too late to help your child develop better sleep habits.Here aresome simple changes for more peaceful nights.

There's Tired and There's Too Tired
Convincing toddlers to go to bed can be a tough sell. Feeling exhausted, parents often fall back on the strategy of keeping their child up to tire him out. But letting toddlers skip naps or stay up very late can be counterproductive, says Dr. Mindell. When young children are overtired, they don't act sleepy; they act wired, taking longer to settle and longer to finally go to sleep. In fact, overtired toddlers even wake more often during the night. So hang on to those naps most toddlers will continue to need a daytime rest until sometime between 3 and 4 years of age. It's also important to choose a bedtime that's developmentally appropriate. For most toddlers, aim for a bedtime between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., says Dr. Mindell.

 

Work on Routine
Having a set bedtime is indeed a good idea. "Children have very strong internal clocks," says Dr. Mindell. "If you have your kids going to bed at the exact same time every night, they are going to get sleepy at the exact same time every night." The same principle applies to naptime.

Holly Salmon doesn't want to jinx it, but she cautiously admits that her 2-year-old, Joe, is a great sleeper. Salmon, fromNew Haven, Conn., finds that a bedtime routine is important to Joe.

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