If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
A 2023 study on 9,273 French children who were examined at 2 months, 1, 2, 3.5, and 5 years showed that there were 5 groups of children who followed distinct paths
“Maternal depression during pregnancy and sleep habits at age 1 year (parental presence in bedroom after putting child down to sleep, feeding to fall asleep, or sleeping at least part of the night away from own bed) were common risk factors associated with the most disordered sleep groups.”
Conclusion: After you soothe your child to sleep, put your baby down drowsy but awake and leave the room (Blog Post 16)
The bedtimes for the 5 groups of children were presented in the ‘Results’ section of the paper but ‘bedtimes’ were not mentioned in the ‘Abstract’, ‘Discussion’, or ‘Conclusion’ section of the paper.
I asked the author if an analysis of the bedtime would show the ‘bedtime’ to be an important variable. She replied, “We looked at the association between bedtime and the different trajectory groups. Later bedtime is clearly associated with the poorest sleep trajectory and is an important variable.”
Parents and Pediatric Sleep Researchers Often Overlook the Importance of an Early Bedtime
Ten other examples of papers that looked at many different variables but overlooked the importance of the bedtime are discussed in Blog Posts 109, 129, 145, and 182.
Early Bedtimes Help Children Sleep Better: An early bedtime produces longer night sleep duration and/or better quality sleep.
Early bedtimes are discussed in Blog Posts 23, 74, 91, 123, and 174.
A Few Minutes of Extra Sleep, Over Time, Makes a Big Difference: Move the Bedtime Earlier!
In the study above, looking at the bedtimes, the difference between the best sleepers (Group 1) and the worst sleepers (Group 5) was only 12 minutes at ages 2 and 3.5 years and only 6 minutes at age 5.5 years!
The power of just a few extra minutes of sleep is discussed in Blog Posts 6, 137, 195, and 162.
Moving the bedtime earlier produces longer night sleep duration, better quality sleep, or both.
A few extra minutes of night sleep, over time, makes a big difference!
You were so helpful with getting our little one back on track around 8 months. Moving bedtime earlier has been such a game changer.
We’re now 13 months and I think she’s starting to drop a nap but isnt fully ready. If we do two naps (930 and about 2p) she isnt ready for bed until around 8-830. If we do one nap she’s ready for bed by 4pm. Is this too early? Any recommendations?
Please read the section of transitioning from 2 naps to 1 nap in my book to fully understand why there are many variables and therefore, there is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy.
Most importantly, there may be times when the bedtime is moved earlier (temporarily) when she begins to take a single nap.
Please consider writing a narrative account of your sleep journey and post it here so that I may use it as a Blog Post. Mothers might be more attuned to your voice than mine.
Today I woke her up at 7a. Napped from 915-1015. Got out of the house. Napped from 1-230. Put to bed just before 6. An hour later shes still periodically calling out (cries and calms) but now she is crying. She was rubbing her eyes and fussy. So is she overtired and having difficulty settling?
“She was rubbing her eyes and fussy”. What time did this occur?
Which strategy (as described in my book) did you decide on to get through this ‘2 to 1’ nap transition?
Thanks for all your help. We’ve followed your book and of course had some ups and downs but generally have a good sleeper.
She is 22 months now and for 2 months she has started to wake up at 5am everyday.
She naps 12-2 daily. Bedtime routine at 645pm and by 715pm after a book she goes in her crib awake and puts herself to sleep in a minute. Sleeps through the night but 5am everyday.
I know things could be much worse but if we could get her to sleep until 6 instead of 5 it would be ideal. We’ve tried later and earlier bed times for a few nights each and nothing seemed to change.
Should we be shortening her day nap? Or sticking to a consistent earlier bed time? Maybe a clock in her room and tell her she doesn’t get let out until the alarm goes off?
Thanks for any advice.
When alone with toys (no screens or parental interactions) between 5:30-6:30pm, please describe her mood and behavior.
Please carefully review Blog Post 83 and 115X.
Honestly Ive tried 1 and 2 nap strategies and sometimes things go smoothly and sometimes they dont.
Yesterday-slept until 9am, napped 11:45-3pm and went to bed at 7 just fine
Today-slept until 815. Napped 1115-130. Rubbing her eyes by 430 and laying on the ground. Ate dinner and put her down by 530 (easily straight to sleep). She woke up around 6-615 screaming bloody murder no signs of calming. Got her up and couldn’t get her to resettle until 915.
“Honestly Ive tried 1 and 2 nap strategies and sometimes things go smoothly and sometimes they dont.”
In general, I discuss:
1. Consistently attempt a single nap + a temporarily super early bedtime (for example, 5:30pm), perhaps this makes more sense for an older child.
The conflicting goals are;
a. attempt to get a mid-day nap by keeping your baby awake.
b. avoiding presleep arousal when keeping your baby up
2. A variable schedule based on how your baby looks mid morning and declare each day to be either an attempt at 2 naps or 1 nap with a more variable bedtime, perhaps this makes more sense for a younger child.
How old is your baby?
Did you consistently try the first strategy for 5-10 days and then consistently try the second strategy for 5-10 days? If not, I am not sure how you could tell which maight be best for your child.
Please read Blog Post 195 and be optimistic that you will successfully get through this sleep speed bump. It’s messy and may take a few weeks.
Thoughts?
My son is 21 months, nearly 22 months. He was an easy sleeper without us doing anything until around 4 months old after which we found your book and implemented your sleep training advice and our great sleeper was back. It was a bit tricky dropping one of his naps after he was one year old, but we got through it. Now that we’re nearing his 2nd birthday we are stuck with early wake ups, between 4:45 and 5:30 but he is seemingly not falling asleep until later and later. We also recently had daylight savings time and it just seems like it’s thrown him off and we can’t recover. I am concerned about the amount of sleep he gets at night. It’s about 10-10.5 hours. He naps for about 1.5-2 hours a day, occasionally longer but that’s not very common. Reading your book it seems like he should be getting more sleep at night and I am very concerned. Especially because his mood is slowly degrading the longer this goes. And I’d very much like my happy easy going boy back.
He also has recently began waking up crying which has not happened since he was sleep trained so long ago. Sometimes the crying is off and on until we go in, sometimes it’s only for a few minutes and then he’ll lay in bed sucking his thumb until we go in.
We put him down at 6. He happily lays in his crib for about an hour, and falls asleep at 7’ish. He wakes up between 4:45 and 5:30. He naps between 10:30 and 11 (depending on how his mood is). He wakes from his nap between 12:30 and 1:30. Occasionally, he will sleep until 2, but if I allow him to sleep later than that then bed time is drastically thrown off which ruins the following day as well, so unless there’s a good reason I do not let him nap that late. But again, he rarely naps that long on his own anyway. We do not enter his room until 7am. The time we go into his room has been consistent ever since he was sleep trained.
Is it normal that it takes him about an hour to fall asleep at night? This has been going on ever since we began the process of dropping from 2 naps to 1. He seems happy so we didn’t know if we should be concerned. When we were in the process of dropping his nap we would sometimes put him down earlier depending on his mood, 5 or 5:30. And even then it would take an hour for him to fall asleep. He falls asleep pretty instantly for naps. I have recently tried a 5:30 bedtime again, but it took him well over an hour to fall asleep, so we moved it back to 6 so the time he was laying awake in his crib wasn’t so long.
I am a little worried about the amount of time he spends alone in his crib awake in the complete dark. Since it takes him an hour or more to fall asleep, and he wakes up so early and we do not go in until 7 he’s spending 2-3 hours not sleeping but also not really doing anything except laying there sucking his thumb. He is having developmental speech delays so my anxious brain automatically wonders if that’s valuable social time being wasted since it’s not being used for sleep.
I am hesitant to drop his one nap, since he’s not even 2 yet. But, I am starting to wonder if no nap, or a shorter nap, along with an early bedtime would help him fall asleep quicker and sleep later.
Another interesting thing I’ve noted is, even with the time change, he consistently wakes up at the same time. The time he fell asleep for bedtime and naps naturally shifted by an hour, and it took a while to get him moved back to his original time. But his wake up time stayed extremely consistent, when in theory it should have shifted with the rest of his sleep schedule. Which makes me wonder if there is a noise or something that consistently happens at the time in the morning. We do live near a landscaper with a big diesel truck that starts up early, which I have wondered about. However, he already has a white noise machine in his room at the maximum safe levels. And his window is covered with three layers of thick curtains. If there is a noise causing the early wake ups I am at a loss what to do about it. And, I am not sure if that is even the issue.
Please share details regarding his evaluation and diagnosis of “developmental speech delays”.
At his 18 month well check our pediatrician was a little concerned with the Ages & Stages questionnaire we filled out. He sent a referral to the state run early intervention program. Our son had an evaluation at 19 months old (he is now 21 months old). And the evaluators found him to be delayed in the areas of Adaptive and Communication. He was found to have a 25-32% delay in both areas which qualified him for state provided services. We see a specialist for 45 min 4x/month. His specialist said his adaptive skills have increased, but he has not had a second evaluation so I don’t know what his percentage of delay is in that area currently. She also said that his receptive communication seems to be in line for his age. It is his ability to communicate that is delayed. He tends to favor one syllable words that begin with a consonant and end with a vowel. He can sign a few things – “more”, “all done”, “eat”, “water”, “milk”, “help”, “please”. He babbles a lot. He used to babble and vocalize constantly when he would lay in his crib before falling asleep, but now he tends to just suck his thumb with only a little vocalization. If there is anything else you would like to know please let me know. Thank you so much!
Thank you. Please ask the specialist if there might be some association with his sleep issues and his developmental speech delay. Let me know. What follows are observations and suggestions that might help.
When he went from 2 naps to 1 nap, because of less day sleep, his bedtime was too late and he slowly acquired cumulative sleepiness, his sleep debt grew. This caused more difficulty in falling asleep at night (pre-sleep arousal) and because he awoke in the morning too sleepy, it resulted in a single nap that occurs too early. Even though you have already tried some of these in the past, my suggestion is to look ahead to a 4-7 period and try the following. Start on a Friday night so that your husband is available for the week-end nap duty. Do not attempt this if you cannot commit to a 4-7 day trial.
1. A 5:30pm bedtime (he is bathed, fed, soothed, and you are leaving the room at 5:30PM)
2. Extinction at night
3. Do not go to him before 5am in the morning to start the day.
4. Slowly and gradually move the nap to mid-day when his circadian nap rhythm occurs.
There are conflicting outcomes here:
A. By delaying his nap to mid-day, he will more easily fall asleep in synch with his nap rhythm.
B. By keeping him up in the morning, he will have more pre-sleep arousal and thus, more difficulty taking a mid-day nap
Have father do nap duty on the week-end. Your child will need more soothing and distraction as you shift the single nap to mid-day. This will require trial and error. It may take substantially longer than 4-7 days.
5. When the nap occurs in the mid-day, then the bedtime can be shifted to a later time, based on drowsy signs.
6. Keep a written record.
How does this sound?
Thank you so much for the plan and all the information. I do have a few questions to make sure I am totally following you.
When he dropped his second nap, we did put him to bed between 5 and 5:30 depending on how he was acting and then slowly shifted it later because we noticed he was starting to fall asleep later. So even with that earlier bedtime that was still enough to cause a sleep debt?
What do you define as a midday nap? I would just like to understand what I am aiming for. We had tried slowly shifting his 11am nap later by 5 minutes a day, but it was making his night sleep even worse and his naps very disrupted. So we gave up and just kept it at 11 since that seemed to be the sweet spot when he got the best quality nap and also woke up with enough time to have the earliest bedtime we could achieve.
It sounds like I am waiting until his nap is at midday before I start shifting his bedtime. Is that a correct understanding?
Also, if he sleeps past 5 am I to let him sleep? Or do I need to get him at 5am every day?
It will be over a week before I am able to give you an update. We have family in town this coming weekend, and although I’d like to start immediately I know that is not realistic. So I will keep a sleep log next weekend when we are able to commit for the 4-7 days.
Thank you again! Your help is much appreciated.
“When he dropped his second nap, we did put him to bed between 5 and 5:30 [For how many days or weeks?] depending on how he was acting and then slowly shifted it later because we noticed he was starting to fall asleep later. So even with that earlier bedtime that was still enough to cause a sleep debt?” I had the impression that he was not falling asleep at that time even though the bedtime was early. Maybe the single nap was les restorative because of it s timing. Please clarify.
A midday nap begins between 12 noon and 2pm and once established, the bedtime will hopefully be a little later, and thus, avoid the “5:30 Rut” as described in my book.
If you hear him early in the morning, before 5am, wait until about 5am before going to him; if he is asleep at 5am, never wake him. The later the wake up time the easier it will be to shift the single nap to the midday.
Your plan to start next week is excellent. Once you start, although there might not be any improvement after only 2-3 days, please post a progress report after 2-3 days.
Is this OK?
To clarify on dropping his 2nd nap, we decided to drop it when he he was no long able to sleep during his second nap for multiple days in a row. He’d get tired around 9, and would nap for about 2 hours and wake on his own, but then when it came time for his 1pm nap he wouldn’t sleep and we would have to put him to bed very early, around 4/4:30. So, I slowly shifted his 9am nap to 11, in 10-15 minute increments depending on how he was doing that day. While I was transitioning his 9am nap to 11 we also were shifting his bedtime by the same increments. The transition I believe lasted for approximately 1.5 weeks. And it was sometime in that transition that he began to stay awake for an hour or more after we’d put him to bed (happily at least). So once the transition to the 11am nap was done we figured we’d change his bedtime to 6 since he was staying awake in his crib anyway. 11 was the latest I could get his nap without his naps or night sleep being disrupted with frequent wake ups. After the nap transition we discovered that window of awake time would move with his bedtime. So, for example, if we put him to bed at 6 he’d fall asleep at 7, 6:30 he’d fall asleep at 7:30, and 7pm bedtime would equal 8pm asleep. If we put him to bed before 6 then it was more than an hour before he’d fall asleep. So 6 just seemed to be make the most sense since he was awake for the least amount of time alone and in his crib (although an hour still seems very long). I didn’t keep a log so I don’t remember for how long he was consistently at a 5:30 bedtime. But I hope that helps clarify a little more. But, also, I suppose what’s done is done. Thank you so much for the clarification on the rest of my questions! Once family is gone we will work on the plan you described, I will keep a log, and report back!
Please carefully review Blog Posts 83 and 115X for cues for evening bedtime soothing.
I reviewed the blog posts and I do have to admit that I have a harder time reading his drowsy signs as he is getting older. Perhaps it’s because he’s crashing into fatigue signs like your blog mentions, from being overtired.
We ended up starting on Sunday night. My plan for the coming weekend ended up not being feasible so we began earlier. Every night he has been in bed by 5:30, lights off, door closed, etc. I left this out in the log below, since it was consistent every night. He gets whiny and seems tired every day around 7:30am but that seems far too early for a nap so I’ve kept him awake. I did try a 9am nap one day, but he didn’t sleep. So the next two days I did 10am. I am not sure if I should be keeping him awake or not. He has been much more restless than normal and making noise during the night, but we do not go in at all between 5:30am and 5am (or when he wakes).
Sunday: Asleep 6:30pm.
Monday: Awake and vocalizing 4:40am, checked monitor at 5am before going in and he appeared to be asleep again. Sleep seemed restless. Awake 6:20am. Almost fell asleep in the car around 8:50am. In crib at 9am. Left until 10am but did not nap. In crib for 2nd nap attempt 11am. Asleep 11:30am. Awake 12:30pm. In good mood after nap. Asleep 6:15pm. Noisy and restlessness at 10pm 1-2 minutes. Again for 15+ min at midnight.
Tuesday: Some noises at 5am but still seemed asleep. Awake 6:20am. In crib 10am. Asleep 10:20am. 11:50am awake (no noise, I just happened to check the monitor). In average mood. Asleep 6:30pm. Noisy and restless 9pm.
Wednesday: Noisy and restless for 1-2 min 3am and 4 am, but appeared to be asleep. 5:30am awake. In crib for nap 10am. Asleep 10:10am. Awake 1:10pm. Very bad mood. 6:40pm asleep.
Are you able to continue the plan for a few more days?
Is the latency to sleep onset the same as before?
Do you think that a longer duration of soothing at bedtime might shorten the latency to sleep onset?
What are your thoughts regarding trying (for 3 nights only) either a 5pm or a 6pm bedtime to see if it will reduce the latency to sleep onset?
How do you feel about trying to delay the nap until 11:30-12noon which would require more soothing/distraction to keep him on an even keel? Perhaps consider doing this on the coming week-end with father doing nap duty and you leave the house.
Was this done?: “Please ask the specialist if there might be some association with his sleep issues and his developmental speech delay. Let me know.”
Yes, we can continue for a few more days.
The latency to sleep onset is the same, about an hour. The shortest we’ve seen is 45 minutes during this 5:30 bedtime process. The longest is 1 hour 10 min. Prior to speaking with you it was about the same (occasionally longer).
I’m not sure if a longer duration of soothing might help. We’ve never had any issue putting him in his crib, he’s always happy to go, so I never considered it. But I’m happy to try. I will review the posts and your book about soothing.
I do not mind trying 5 or 6pm to see if one or the other helps. Prior to speaking with you his bedtime was 6, so I’m thinking 5 might be more worth exploring. My only concern is the earlier bedtime so far seems to have caused far more disrupted sleep at night. Last night was the worst, he was awake from 1:45am to 3:20am. But he was happy and vocalizing the entire time and we did not go in to try to help him (in our experience going in tells him it’s time to wake up and does not help him sleep). But perhaps earlier will help.
I don’t mind trying to postpone his nap. I just wasn’t sure if I should start trying to do that yet since night sleep still isn’t going well. But I’m happy to try! I think it’s possible to simply do it one big jump. Or I could start postponing in increments as I did before when he dropped his 2nd nap.
I have not met with his developmental provider since we began speaking. I will see her tomorrow, and I plan to ask. I’m not sure sleep is something she’s well versed in, but I still plan to talk with her about it.
Experimenting with a 5:00pm bedtime for a few days will tell you whether it helps or not.
Perhaps jumping to a mid-day nap (now or after a few more days of this current trial) would succeed and eventually allow the bedtime to be later and reduce the latency to sleep onset. I can’t predict whether this will work or not but after a 3-day trial, you would be able to have a sense whether it was helping or not helping.
I do want to alarm you or imply any suspicions on my part, but perhaps you can also ask the developmental provider whether she thinks his developmental speech delay is an isolated expressive language issue or whether she has any additional concerns regarding neuro-atypical issues.
I spoke with his developmental provider. She said she didn’t believe his delays were sleep related given the timing of when his sleep issues and his developmental delays began, but she felt it was hard to say for sure. Sleep is an area she does not have much expertise in. She took a bunch of notes and said she would try to reach out to a sleep specialist on her team. So hopefully she is able to make contact with her colleague. The discussion of a-typical issues is not alarming. He was screened for autism by his pediatrician and there does not appear to be any concerns in that regard, and his developmental provider agrees that he does not appear to be on the spectrum. ADHD does run in the family, but so far his pediatrician is unconcerned about that as well. But we will see how things progress in that regard as he gets older. But the fact that ADHD does run in the family is what makes me extremely driven to get his sleep back on track.
We did try a 5pm bedtime for 3 days. The first two days were great with no wakings during the night. The third night was terrible though with a 1.5-2 hour awake. However, sleep onset still did not occur quickly during these 3 days. We did try longer soothing, however, with the 5pm bedtime it was extremely difficult for us to find the time for all 3 days. We returned to 5:30 last night so we could realistically trial a longer soothing time. But, as of last night, it does not appear to have lessened his onset to sleep which took 1 hour 45 min. He still consistently gets very cranky around 7:30/7:45 and begins to act tired but we have held off on his naps until 11 (his regular nap time prior to the trialing). The moodiness passes about 15-30 minutes. Sleep log is below.
Thursday: 1:45-3:20am awake and vocalizing. 6:55am awake. In crib 10:30am, asleep 10:45am, awake 1:15pm. Good mood. 10 min extra soothing. 5pm in crib. 5:50pm asleep.
Friday: Noises at 2 and 3am 1-2 min but still seemed asleep. I woke at 6:07am and checked monitor, saw some movement but he was silent so maybe still asleep? Noises and awake at 6:20am. 8am cranky. In crib 11:20am (meeting with developmental provider meant a later nap). Asleep 11:50am, awake 1:50pm. In crib 5:02pm. Asleep 6:15pm.
Saturday: Checked monitor 5:40am awake but no noises until 5:55. Cranky 7:30am. Cranky 10:30am. 5 min extra soothing. Crib 11am. 11:20am asleep. 12:50pm checked monitor and awake but no noise, so don’t know when he actually woke. Cranky immediately. In crib 5pm. 6:25pm asleep.
Sunday: Awake 1:30am until 3 or 3:30am. Awake 6:55am. Fussy mood. 11am crib. 11:30am asleep. Extra 10 min soothing. In bed 5:30pm. Asleep 7:15pm.
Monday: Awake 6am. Cranky 7:45am.
Thank you. Not your child, but other children with ASD may have challenging sleep issues.
Please consider turning off the monitor: Your sleeping brain is so sensitive to your child that if there is distress vocalizations, it will awaken you. The amplified quiet sounds from the monitor may needlessly disrupt your sleep. But if your household arrangements make it necessary, ignore my comment.
Here’s a thought. Although it will be a challenge for you to soothe and provide distraction, try to put him down for a 12-1pm nap (it might require a longer soothing to sleep time because he will be a bit overtired with some pre-sleep arousal. Maybe in the beginning, you might only get to 11:45am. Hopefully, he will take his great 2 hour naps. The nap will end later and hopefully reduce pre-sleep arousal in the evening and the bedtime will be based on drowsy signs, not clock time. The idea is that with the later timing of the nap will cause less pre sleep arousal in the evening, his latency to sleep onset will be reduced and hopefully, over time, his night sleep duration will increase so he is less fussy in the early morning which in turn will make it easier to get a single midday nap starting around 12-1pm.
This may take some trial and error and the desired results might evolve over several days or a week or two. How do you feel about this?
It sounds like a plan! When we had tried to move his nap later before it was resulting in shorter and shorter naps which was leading to difficult evenings and longer times before night sleep onset. But perhaps we just need to give it longer. It’s good to know it could take a couple weeks. I wasn’t sure how long was OK for him to be missing out on so much sleep, so I believe I’d only given it 4 days previously before I got too anxious (although I wasn’t logging so that’s just based on my memory). Thank you!
“When we had tried to move his nap later before it was resulting in shorter and shorter naps which was leading to difficult evenings and longer times before night sleep onset.” Maybe you were keeping him up too late.
Here are the conflicting goals:
1. Keep him up for a nap that starts at 12-2pm so that the nap is in synch with his nap rhythm for a better quality nap.
2. Keeping him up fro a nap might cause pre-sleep arousal so that the nap is brief or doesn’t occur.
Look for a sweet spot (this is tricky because it might vary based on how well rested he is when he awakens to start the day).
The early bedtime is necessary during this trial to maximize night sleep so that you are more able to delay the onset of his nap.
How does this sound?