Toddler Sleep Can Get Worse?
Episode 9: Toddler Sleep Can Get Worse? Solo Episode with your host Rachael Shepard-Ohta (of Hey, Sleepy Baby)
Are you struggling with bedtime battles, nap refusals, or other struggles with your toddler or preschooler? SAME. In this episode Rachael gets real about what she’s currently dealing with having a three year old with some very strong opinions. She talks about the REAL reasons so many little kids struggle with bedtime and naps, plus takes listener questions! In this episode you’ll hear about:
Why little kids often have a hard time going to bed
Power struggles and testing limits at bedtime
How to use Connection to your advantage for a smoother evening
How to move away from Bed Sharing with your toddler or preschooler
Thoughts on providing bedtime snacks
Are toddlers being Manipulative?
When and how to drop the nap
For more about Toddler Bedtime Struggles, check out the Better Bedtimes Guide from HSB, and get $10 off for listening to this episode! Use code BEDTIMESPOD
Blog Post on Bedtime Snacks (with snack ideas!)
Blog Post on “Fighting Sleep” and Bedtime Battles in babies and toddlers
Listen to the full episode:
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Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of No One Told Us. I'm your host Rachel and today it's just you and me. We're gonna be talking all about toddler sleep, struggles and bedtime battles and nap stuff and all the things that come up when your baby's not a baby anymore, but things are still a little bit tough or maybe something new has popped up that wasn't an issue when your little one was an infant. So let's get into it. We're gonna start today by just kind of talking a little bit about norms for toddlers and preschool age kiddos when it comes to sleep and overnight sleep and bedtime and naps and everything.
And then I'm also gonna take some listener questions which is one of my new very favorite things to do. So I'm really excited to get your questions and to chat all about toddlers today. If you've been following me on Hey Sleepy Baby for any length of time, you know that I love to talk about how you can't spoil a baby. And this is a sentiment that I see on social media a lot, right? This idea of like you can't spoil a newborn, you can't spoil a baby. I love that, I love that people are talking about that but what I find kind of sad is that we're meant to believe that like that idea has like an expiration date.
Okay, you can't spoil a newborn, you can't spoil a baby, but what about your 18 month old or what about your two year old or your three year old or your four year old? Like can you spoil them when it comes to sleep? Can you give them too much support? In my opinion, no, like there is so much to this. There are so many reasons that your older child might struggle with sleep or with independent sleep. I just want you to know that it's okay to support your toddlers and bigger kids too and they still really need you too, sometimes even more. Toddlers don't necessarily stop needing us once they're not babies anymore, right?
So I actually find sometimes the opposite is true. So sometimes they actually have increasing needs as they grow and change. They're going through so many different things as they grow up and fears and anxiety and imagination, all of the things that they're exposed to during the day, they might be separated from you because of school or whatever it is. They really do need just as much if not more support as babies.
What it looks like for sleep is a little bit different for every child, right? So there are some little kids that are pretty independent that, you know, have no real problem going to bed or staying asleep overnight or sleeping alone.
That's great. It doesn't mean that it'll stay that way forever. I always like to say sleep is not linear and that goes for during the baby stage and the toddler stage and the little kid stage. My oldest is what I would call my best sleeper and we've still gone through phases with him that were a little bit tough because of different things that have come up.
So you just kind of always have to be, you know, ready for that and know that everything is a phase. Everything passes just because there's a little blip that comes up does not mean it's going to stay that way forever or that you've done anything wrong. So let's talk about a few of the main reasons that toddlers and bigger kids might still be waking up at night. The first is probably the most obvious reason and that's the like we all wake up at night, even adults. So maybe, you know, the next time you're going to bed at night, see if you can think about like, okay, I'm going to track or I'm just going to mentally note or clock every time I wake up tonight, even if it's not about your baby or your child, right?
Even if your child sleeps through the night, lucky you. You are probably going to notice that you don't actually sleep through the night either. So you might wake up and tap your partner to tell them to stop snoring or adjust your blankets or grab a sip of water or get up to go to the bathroom or whatever you might wake up because of a dream.
There are so many different reasons that you might briefly wake up in the night. Babies and kids are the same way. So we all kind of lightly rouse in between our sleep cycles and our ability to fall back asleep without assistance from our parents kind of just evolves over time.
So for some that happens in infancy, for others it takes until toddlerhood or early childhood. And that is really based a lot on temperament. So, you know, we do see these babies and toddlers who are able to link a few sleep cycles together, sleep for a few hours at a time without needing help getting back to sleep. And then there are other little ones who really do kind of wake every sleep cycle or two and need a lot of help getting back down in between. So it really does just depend on temperament and environmental factors and things like that.
The second reason that a lot of toddlers are still waking up at night is to feed. So I think that this is kind of a taboo thing to talk about. But there are toddlers that still nurse at night and that is okay. Lots of toddlers are still waking up for feedings.
There's no like magical thing that happens when your child turns one that says that they no longer need or will want overnight feedings, especially if you're breastfeeding,
especially if you're co -sleeping with them and it's just like available. So that is something that, again, is very common, even though nobody really likes to talk about it.
The third reason that toddlers, little kids, might still be waking up is because they have such busy brains and they have such busy bodies. So our little ones are constantly developing new cognitive skills. They have these big language bursts. You know, they're meeting new physical milestones all the time. They're also dealing with different attachment needs and having little bouts of separation anxiety at certain ages,
things like that. They're also going through maybe some more separation with things like school. They might be potty learning, exposed to new things like media or screen time or different access to types of books or things that their peers are watching or doing.
And so things like fears and anxieties and their imaginations are running wild. Like all of that stuff can mean that sleep becomes a little bit more disrupted. They are having a harder time at night, kind of like turning off their thoughts and turning off their brains and their imaginations.
Lastly, toddlers, little kids, they wake up at night because it's just normal. That's just what they do. So one of my favorite studies on sleep for infants and little kids is from 2020. And it looked at two really large birth cohorts. So in each cohort, there was between 1000 and 2000 children, which is a really great big sample. And this study found that the ability to self soothe was relatively uncommon. So the highest rate that they saw was at 18 months old and it was at 50%. So 50 % of those 18 month olds were able to quote unquote self soothe or you know, fall asleep alone, kind of soothe themselves back to sleep if they woke up through the night, things like that. They found that 18 months old had an average of one waking per night. Two year olds had an average of 0 .9.
So about one waking per night to keep in mind those are averages. And so there were babies and toddlers that slept through the night at that age. And there were others who had many more wakings than just one per night. The study also found that consolidation in the nighttime sleep area was seen during the second year of life when the frequency of night waking significantly decreased. I think that's really important to remember is that we imagine that sleep is going to consolidate that our child is going to start sleeping through the night when they're still a really young infant. And that definitely does happen for some, but it's much more common for it to happen during that second year. So in between age one and two is when we really see things start to kind of trend in that direction.
And if it's not happening for you, again, no need to panic, no need to worry. It does not necessarily mean there's something wrong. But you know, by age two, if your little one is still waking very regularly, it might be something that you kind of just want to look at, make sure there are no other symptoms going on, just to be on the safe side.
Another study on toddler sleep found that toddlers were waking an average of four times per night. Now, this doesn't mean that they always called out or that their parents were aware of all of those wakings, but they were waking four times per night. Sometimes they needed parental assistance to go back to sleep, sometimes not. It also found that toddlers tended to have later bedtimes and that they sleep less than we might think that they are.
So they were sleeping like eight or nine hours per night on average in this particular study, even though they were in their beds for longer. So I think that's just a really interesting point to keep in mind, too. Parents are often really worried about how much their toddler is sleeping, thinking they need to be sleeping like 12 hours overnight plus the nap. What you'll find is actually, you know, once toddlers are taking that longer nap in the middle of the day, which happens usually by 18 months, their nighttime sleep might decrease a little bit. Lots of times, this is why toddlers have very late bedtimes or they might not be sleeping quite as much overnight anymore is because they're still hanging onto that daytime nap.
They still really need that nap or the parents really want the nap still to have that break in the day. So just keep that in mind. If you're finding that bedtime is getting way too late or the nighttime sleep is really fragmented or they're waking up early in the morning or the nap is just really hard to get them down for, then those are all signs that either the nap is too long or it might be time to kind of cut it all together.
Those are some kind of stats just to help you feel a little bit more sane,a little bit more normal about your toddler's sleep. I think it's so important for us to just kind of like to remember that our kids are people and to just meet them where they're at. And I know sometimes it feels like we're going backwards with our child's sleep, especially when, you know, things maybe were going really well when they were a baby. And then all of a sudden it's kind of falling apart And we just, we really wonder like, where did we go wrong? What did we mess up?
And I just want to reassure you that it's not necessarily something you've done. There's so much development and so much growth happening for our kids at this age.
And really what I find to be a big contributor to bedtime battles and things like that. It's a connection issue that your child is craving you and your time and your attention.
This can sometimes actually be really the root cause of what's happening with their sleep. It really doesn't have a lot to do with sleep at all. It's that connection piece.
We're actually currently kind of going through this with my middle child. She's three and a half and three is a really tough age. So anybody out there with a three year old or a student to be three year old, just know that it is not just you. You are not crazy. Like it is wild out here. We are seeing so many behaviors right now that are just absolutely off the chain.
And it's like our first was tough at this age too, just in a little bit of a different way with what we're seeing right now with my daughter. It feels very intentional.
It feels like she's just throwing up both middle fingers at us constantly, really kind of pushing us to see how far she can get. And so how this has been showing up at bedtime. Normally my kids go to bed really great and really easy for my husband while I put the baby down. This last like week or so, maybe two weeks, it's been like a complete 180 for her.
So she's been climbing on the bunk beds, trying to run out of the room, screaming at my husband, you know, trying to kick, kicking the walls, like just really big behaviors, right? Like really big attention seeking behaviors. There has been like nothing that's changed. nothing in her schedule is different. It's not like a nap versus a no nap type of situation.
Like that's all pretty much always the same. She doesn't really nap anymore. And you know, on the random occasion that she does nap in the car or something in the afternoon like it doesn't really affect us all that much because she is so tired from having such a busy day. But yeah, so she's doing all of this really big stuff. And my husband was kind of like, what happened? Like, what do we do? Because my kids share a room. And so it was really disruptive to my son. And then of course, it was disruptive to the baby because she was coming out of the room trying to come find me and I'm trying to put the baby down.
So we pretty much chalked it up to her needing some extra mom attention. And this is a tricky one because when you have multiple children, you know, there's only so much of you to go around. And when you're the primary parent or the preferred parent, sometimes it feels like everybody wants you and you can only be there for one person,
at a time, right? So it was kind of tricky to figure out what to do because she was wanting me to lay with her. My husband usually lays with the kids till they fall asleep, not all the time, but most nights, they like that. And it doesn't take long, he doesn't mind it. So we still lay with them at night. And it's just not a big deal for our family. She was seeming to want me. And so a couple of nights we tried it.
And I said, okay, I'll be the one to lay with them instead. Why don't you try with the baby? Well, of course, baby also wants mom. So baby was not super stoked about the idea of dad putting her down. And I even said like, you know, honey, you don't have to put her all the way to sleep. She nurses to sleep. That's fine. I don't mind nursing her to sleep. So maybe you just like read books with her or try rocking her or something until I'm done with the big kids.
That didn't really work out. So, you know, the baby was getting really upset. She's tired. She wants to nurse to sleep. So what do we do? Right? We have this conundrum of like, I can't split myself in half and everybody needs me kind of at the same time. So what we decided was for me to just lay with her for a few minutes.
So I said, okay, mommy is going to lay with you for a few minutes before bedtime. And then I'm going to go put Lenny to bed and daddy's going to lay with you guys until you fall asleep.
So I was kind of just saying, I'm going to lay with you in your bed for a few minutes, but you're still awake. And you know, I'm not going to stay here the whole time till you fall asleep. But instead of focusing on what I wasn't going to do. So, you know, I didn't say like, Oh, I'm not going to be here while you fall asleep. I'm not going to be here for a long time. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. No, no, no, no, no.
Instead of framing it that way, I said,okay, mommy's going to lay with you for a few minutes after books and we can snuggle. And so I was kind of giving her like this extra little bit of me and framing it in that way. It has literally turned everything around.
She hasn't had a bad bedtime since we've started doing this. And actually in the last three or four nights, I haven't done it at all. We've just like kind of naturally fallen back into our regular routine.And it's been fine. It's been totally fine. So sometimes they really just need a little extra of you and you have to get a little bit creative with like how and when and where you'll fit that in.
Maybe it's not even at bedtime. Maybe it's somewhere else in your day where you find some really nice connecting time for you to spend just one on one if that's what you think they're searching for. But yeah, this really worked for us. Thank God. And we are kind of back on track until you know, the next thing pops up and we need to think of something else. It just goes to show that like so often, these big behaviors, these big battles at bedtime, so often they really can be solved in such a simple way. Really all they want at the end of the day is us.
They just want more us, right? So I hope that's helpful. I'm gonna answer some of your questions now about toddlers.
The first one is from Leah.
Hi, Rachel.My question is about toddler sleep. I have an almost three year old who currently bed shares with us. She sleeps in our bed and I'm trying to figure out how to get her to gently go back and sleep in her own bed.She has a floor bed in her room and we've been trying to use it, but one of us will end up sleeping with her in there after she wakes up the first time. She cries out for us otherwise multiple times a night.
And so one of us has to go in to support her and we usually just fall asleep in there. Anyway, I have a new baby at home. And so being up with both kids multiple times a night is just really,really tough. So I'm trying to figure out, would love your advice on ways to figure out how to get my toddler maybe to sleep a little better in her own bed. Thanks.
Okay, Leah, I know this is such a common predicament when you have, especially when you have a toddler who's used to bed sharing and then you have a new baby or you're expecting a new baby, I'm sure so many people listening can relate to this issue and are wondering what to do or thinking about what they might do if and when they're in this situation in the future.
So I actually have a webinar all about this because there are so many things to consider and I can't possibly fit them all into this one answer, this one episode.
But you mentioned, I think that you said she does have her own bed in her room and you guys are trying to use that. I think that what you wanna do is kind of just lean into that and start having that be like the go -to for bedtime.
You know, you can start by, if you don't already have a strong bedtime routine, I would definitely think about starting a bedtime routine that you can incorporate every single night, the same order of events every night.
And at three years old, I would also use maybe a visual schedule or some type of checklist that she can be in charge of. Three -year -olds love to be in charge of things. They love to make lists .So you could even just like have her help you write down a list of all the things you're going to do at night and check them all off as you go. Three -year -olds love that kind of thing. So I would try that and then I would try her own room.
And with three -year -olds also, you can get a lot of buy -in with having them picking out the sheets or, you know, making other small little choices to really get that buy -in and really get that sense of like ownership.This is my bed. This is my room. I love this to make them fight it a little bit less. So those are definitely some things that I would try. And then try the bedtime routine in her own bed, whatever you do to support her to sleep in your bed normally, just try to do in her bed in her own room. And then what I always say is it's a lot easier to take ourselves out of their room than to take them out of our room.
So even if that means one of you sleep with her for a lot of the night or for a good portion of the night in her room, it will be a lot easier for you to eventually peel back that support than it is to,you know, over time get her out of your room. So I would definitely focus on starting in her room and then supporting her through the night as much as you need to before kind of peeling that back.
The other thing you can try if she is crying for you in the night and really feeling like she wants your presence is you can give her like a little piece of you. So maybe you give her like a special t -shirt that smells like you that she gets to sleep with or,
you know, some other type of lovey that will remind her of you or you wear a matching bracelet or something like that, just something that will make her still feel kind of connected to you even when she's in her own space.
My daughter actually used to sleep with a little family photo underneath her pillow or like right next to her pillow. And you know, she had like a million babies and levies and stuff in there too when she was about two and a half or three. And she doesn't need that anymore, but it really helped at the time when she was feeling like she just, you know, she was going from bed sharing to being in her own room all by herself. So that really did help her as well.
Good luck with that. I hope it goes well. Let me know. Definitely shoot me an email to let me know an update on that.
Okay. So our next question is from Hannah.
So first of all, I would just like to say thank you to both of you for all the information you provide. It is so beneficial to so many people. So thank you. My question is about bedtime snack. We have a 27 month old. We usually eat dinner around six. She has a late bedtime, usually nine 30 or 10 o 'clock, and we usually aren't eating breakfast until eight or nine the following day. My husband believes that it is purely manipulation,
the bedtime snack. And I just think it's unrealistic for her to go that long without eating food. She is still nursing overnight, pretty frequently. But I'm just curious if there is any information supporting a bedtime snack.Anyway, I just am looking for something to bring to my husband who is a very analytical Virgo thinker and thinks that our little two year olds manipulating us.
Okay, Hannah. So I actually love the idea of a bedtime snack and I'm so sorry to your husband, but my stance on this is whether or not it's manipulation is irrelevant.
Yes, toddlers can understand cause and effect and they can start to kind of see what they can quote unquote get away with for lack of a better term. I really don't like using the word manipulation when it comes to little kids.
I just don't think it's a fair representation of what's actually happening because a manipulation kind of infers that there's like a malintent, and that's not what it is. They're just trying to get their needs met. And in this situation, if you're eating at six -ish, like you said, and bedtime isn't until three hours later, I would be hungry too. I definitely don't go that long in between dinner and bedtime, especially when she's sleeping until eight or nine the next morning. That would be a lot of time to go without eating or drinking for anybody. You don't have to have your toddler on an intermittent fast regimen.
You can definitely give them a bedtime snack. And honestly, I have a blog post all about this that I would love for you to read if you have more questions about this, because I have like recipe ideas and different snack ideas that are really great.
So, you know, like I said before, whether or not it's manipulation, in my opinion, and in my home, if our kids are hungry, we're going to offer them something to eat, like we're not going to send them to bed hungry.
So, you can be very intentional with the rules around the bedtime snack so that it doesn't turn into, you know, like a free -for -all diner. So, I totally get that, that parents don't want, you know, the kitchen to just be open at all times for their kids to order whatever they want all night long. So, what we do in our house is we have choices for bedtime snacks. So, if our kids are still hungry at bedtime and decide that they want a bedtime snack, they kind of know the options. So, our options that we say, we say,
"Yep, you can have a bedtime snack. It's a banana or an apple." And they can choose. And they just know that. They don't ever ask for anything different. They'll choose a banana or an apple.
They'll eat it while we read our bedtime stories. They'll brush their teeth and we'll go to bed. And it's just not a huge deal. It does not have to be a battle that you fight It doesn't have to be something that is this big drama. It just offer them the snack make it something pretty boring But nutritious make it like the same choice every time Another option that you could do that sometimes will do is if they don't really eat much of their dinner
We'll just kind of leave their dinner out And so if they decide, you know an hour later that they're actually hungry and they actually do want their dinner Then it's still there for them and they can they can pick at that instead. So a couple different ways you can do it But yeah, I definitely I do not agree that it's manipulative And even if it was like they're allowed to have a snack at bedtime That's just my opinion and yeah, so if your child is going to bed around 9 30 or 10 I would just do a snack maybe around like 8 30 or 9 So that's not too too close to bedtime where it's going to cause,
you know Any digestive issues that would keep them up later than necessary. But it will keep them full overnight. So yeah, I will link that blog post in the show notes as well So that you guys can easily find it and get some good ideas for bedtime snacks that you might want to try.
All right, let's do one more question.
Hello, Rachel. My name is Sarah and I have a daughter who is turning 2 in November and I have a question about dropping naps. I just bought your bedtime's guide and Yeah, my daughter goes to sleep super late and her naps are very hard to get Luckily a lot of things have improved with a consistent bedtime routine,but sometimes it feels like It would be easier for her to sleep if she wasn't taking a nap in the middle of the day Yeah, so when is it healthy for toddlers to drop naps and When is the earliest that can happen reasonably? Thank you so much for your time!
So this is such a good question And I'm so glad you asked this Sarah because people really do worry a lot about this You know that the short answer is that yes naps are very beneficial for lots of reasons reasons.
And it's great if you can get your toddler or your preschooler to take a nap during the day. It's nice for them. It's nice for us. It is beneficial for them to take a nap during the day. Most little kids do still need it until somewhere between three and five. So just keep that in mind. At the same time, for a lot of kids, a nap during the day can make their nighttime sleep much harder. And at a certain point, every family kind of needs to weigh whether or not it's worth it to hang onto the nap.
And really every child is so different. So there's things like sleep needs that are different. So one two -year -old might have sleep needs that are a couple of hours different from another two -year -old. So there's no one set number of hours that every single two -year -old needs to be sleeping in a 24 -hour period. So there is variability there. There is a range of what's healthy and what's normal.
Just try to avoid comparing your child to the other kids at daycare, your friend's kids or whatever, because they all have different sleep needs. And so there's not one perfect schedule that works for all kids that are two. So just wanna say that right off the bat. My daughter was like this too. So my middle child around, she was a little bit older, she was like two and a half, and we started to have a really hard time getting her to nap.
She would still nap at school. So she had nap time at school a couple of days a week, but at home it was just such a battle. And even on the days that she would nap, it meant she wasn't going to bed until really late. And then she had to get up for school the next morning. So she wasn't getting the overnight sleep that I thought she needed. So at a certain point, we did kind of say, okay, well, on certain days,
like the days that she has school and they can get her to nap, that's great.
Those are the days she's gonna have a nap. If we are out and about on the weekend and she takes a 30 or 40 minute nap in the car,that's great. She needed that nap. She's going to take that nap." Otherwise, she's not napping, and we're going to go to bed early. We're going to have a chill afternoon, and that just is what it is.
And that worked for us, and that might be something that works for you too, to just have kind of like a flexible attitude about it, where some days it's going to seem like she needs a nap.
You're going to try for the nap, and it's going to happen, and you might need to have a little bit of a later bedtime that night. Other days, it's just not happening, and you're not going to spend two hours of your afternoon fighting to get the nap, and then also having to stay up till 10 p .m. because of that nap, and that just doesn't feel feasible or sustainable. That's also okay, right? It seems like from what you said, there are things that are improving with bedtimes, and that's great. I don't know. I think it really kind of depends on your child, and on your schedule, and your needs. Does she need to get up early for school, or are the late bedtimes okay, and late morning is okay if it means she gets the nap and that rest in the middle of the day?
Because it can be beneficial for them for sure. There are different studies and things that have shown daytime naps to be beneficial. So I wouldn't say to give up on it altogether. I will also tell you that around this age, like the 24 -month mark or so, we do see like that quote -unquote two -year sleep regression where lots and lots of toddlers get into this nap -refusal phase.
So it's another thing to just kind of keep in mind that this might be hard right now, and it also might change. It might get better. It might be something that just kind of passes, and then you realize, nope, they actually still really need that nap, and things are better now. now. So again, always keep that flexible mindset where, okay, we're going to try it like this and just see how it goes for a few weeks or a few days or whatever it is.
And then we'll kind of reassess. So I think sometimes we get into this like false way of thinking where we have to like make this decision to drop the nap. And then the nap is just never going to come back. And it's like, well, no, I'm 35. And I still take a nap when I want to. It's not like, it's not like my mom decided at three years old that I was just never going to take a nap again, you know what I mean? So I think just having that giving yourself that permission for things to be flexible is really helpful.
And then the other thing is like, you can also be flexible with how the nap happens. So maybe the nap is really hard to get if you're home. But if you take a walk in a stroller or if you take a drive in the car, the nap will happen. So you can also be very flexible with how you get that nap, right? So if they need to nap, and they won't do it at home, but you know that they need it, again, nothing lasts forever, you're not going to be driving her around to take a nap when she's 13. This might just be for a few weeks or something like that where that's what needs to happen.
And so that's also okay. So just give yourself permission for it to look like what it needs to look like. And for everybody to stay as sane as possible.
The last thing I'll say about this is that it might still be helpful on the off chance that this is a phase on the off chance because two is young to drop the nap completely. So it does happen. I do hear about it happening. There are plenty of two year olds who stop napping. But it is a little bit more rare, right? So usually kids are going to nap until around three, three and a half at the earliest. Usually not all of course. But assuming that she is just going through a little bit of a phase, maybe it's that two year regression, maybe things are are going to get back on track at some point, keep the nap time routine.
So you can still, you know, have a quiet time or, you where she listens to music or reads books or just plays quietly in her room or things like that.You might want to consider just kind of keeping that routine in the middle of your day and just not putting pressure on her falling asleep. So maybe that means you're with her, maybe it means she's alone, it kind of depends on her personality, but you can still kind of go through the same routine you normally did at nap time and then if and when she decides to nap, she will still fall asleep and otherwise she's just had some quiet time or some time to just rest her body and to reset. Those are a bunch of ideas I know I threw a lot out there.
Take what you need, leave the rest and everybody else the same. So not one piece of advice is going to resonate for everybody or work for everybody and that's okay.
Sarah, thank you so much for that question. I love talking about toddler naps because they can be so hard and they can be so tricky. I do have a free nap guide as well that talks a little bit about nap transitions.
So if you have a younger baby or if you have a toddler that's getting ready to drop a nap and you want ideas for quiet time and things like that, I'm going to also drop that in the show notes so that you can really easily download it and thank you all so much for joining me.
I love talking about toddlers. It's why I created my bedtimes guide. It's called the Better Bedtimes Guide and you can get it at the HaysleepyBaby website and it goes through all of this stuff, goes through the main reasons that toddlers and preschoolers and little kids struggle at bedtime. I talked about connection being one of them, but there are a few other reasons that you could be seeing lots of struggles at bedtime and overnight.
It talks about how to move on from things like nursing to sleep or co -sleeping. Talks about how to manage parental preference, separation anxiety, all the things like literally anything that you could be going through with your toddler when it comes to sleep and nighttime and bedtime and naps all in there.
So I'm going to put that also in the show notes for you and you guys get a special discount code. so be sure you check that out. Click the link and enter the code just for the podcast listeners here and have a beautiful day.
Bye!