This week, we are celebrating five years of Via Graces!! It doesn’t feel like it’s been a full five years, but at the same time it feels like it’s been way longer.
So in honor of five years, this post is going to walk through the five key pieces to successfully sleep training your baby, toddler, or young child.
Whether you’re sleep training a 5-month-old, a 15-month-old, or a 5-year-old, these five key pieces count. And whether you DIY a plan yourself or hire help, these five pieces should be included:
- A solid sleeping environment
- An age-appropriate schedule
- Consistent and supportive routines
- A sleep training method or plan
- Time + Consistency!
So let’s jump in!
1. A Solid Sleeping Environment
This may seem basic, but if your little one’s sleeping environment isn’t conducive to sleep, you could have the best sleep training plan, but sleep will be a challenge!
We want their room to be pitch black and we want it to be cool – the ideal temperature is 68-72 degrees Fahrenheit. And we want it to be quiet. Having consistent white noise in there (not music!) to help cancel out any extra noises, like the TV, or a fire truck, or the neighbor’s loud dog will help your little one sleep more soundly.
And if your toddler or young child is afraid of the dark, it’s totally fine to have a night light. But it should be dim, away from their head, and ideally, a red or orange color to not interfere with their sleep.
That solid environment could make the difference between short or long naps, taking 10 minutes to fall asleep or 45, 10 hours of overnight sleep or 11-12 hours of overnight sleep, and night wakings versus none. So environment is always step one, and it’s actually the first page of our sleep plans.
2. An Age-Appropriate Schedule
Page two of our sleep plans is always the schedule!
Let me start by saying that overtiredness is the worst, An overtired baby or toddler is going to be super fussy (or hit a crazy second-wind), and when we’re overtired, it not only makes it tougher to fall asleep but also stay asleep.
But I will also say that undertiredness is the worst! You can’t just put a child to bed because you feel like it. If a baby isn’t tired enough, they’re likely going to make it very known, and they may even have a short nap or extra night wakings. And an undertired toddler will definitely make it known, or take forever to fall asleep, and again, might wake more in the night or extra early in the morning.
An age-appropriate schedule is all about helping our little ones get the right amount of sleep pressure – basically the perfect build-up of tired so that they can not only fall asleep well, but stay asleep!
For babies still taking multiple naps, this age-appropriate schedule means following awake windows. Sure, you can keep their tired cues in mind, but you’re paying more attention to the clock and the age-appropriate length of time they can handle being awake. Even if they don’t “seem tired.”
For babies and toddlers on a one-nap or two-nap schedule, this looks like following more of a set, clock-based schedule. The schedule is built around awake windows, but we’re more trying to set their body clocks up with the clock so day to day their schedule is pretty much the same.
An age-appropriate schedule also refers to the number of naps they take each day! Or maybe no nap at all, if they’re preschool-age.
Everything we do with a child’s schedule is to help set their naps and nighttime sleep up the best we can.
So if you have a baby and you’d like more help finding the best schedule for them, I want you to know we have a free resource for you with every schedule you’ll need from 4-17 months old, and you can snag that here.
3. Consistent and Supportive routines
You’ve probably heard this a million times, but routines are so helpful for our little ones, and that includes sleep routines.
Having a consistent and predictable nap and bedtime routine each day is so important to help prepare our little one’s mind and body that it’s time for sleep. And whether it’s mom, dad, or grandma putting them to bed, or whether we’re at home or away, it will be the same!
Using something like the Hatch for morning wake-up times also counts as a routine here. How does your toddler or young child know it’s time to start the day? When can they get out of bed? Well, I don’t get out of bed until my Hatch turns green. That’s routine!!
So the consistent part is pretty obvious, but I said consistent and supportive routines.
A supportive bedtime routine is not one that takes an hour long because your child is constantly stalling and running out of their room and asking for five more books.
A supportive routine is also not one that gets your baby or toddler drowsy before laying them down. If we’re laying them down drowsy, they’re either going to pop those eyes open the moment they touch the crib, OR they’re going to stir 30 minutes, or three hours later, and need help getting back to sleep again.
You can’t fully sleep train by laying your baby down drowsy, or half asleep – it will backfire! So if your baby still nurses or needs a bottle in their routine, you should make it the very first step! And ideally in the living room or a well-lit room, so the purpose is purely to fill their little bellies – not start to doze! And there should be no feed in the nap time routine.
Additionally, when you sing or cuddle at the very end, keep it brief! It’s just that final 30 seconds of the routine, not to get them drowsy.
A supportive routine also means no milk in the bedtime routine. After 12ish months (it’s different for every baby), they no longer need milk in the bedtime routine. So no, your toddler doesn’t need a warm glass of milk before bed. That could backfire on you, too!
Similarly, we don’t want sugary snacks right before bed, as those could cause a sugar crash that makes bedtime or the middle of the night tough.
And finally, part of this supportive routine is no screen time at least an hour before bed, though two hours is ideal. We don’t want to block that wonderful, natural melatonin from releasing.
So when we’re talking routines, we’re not just talking about having any routine, but we’re making sure the steps of the routine are actually supporting your little one’s sleep.
And if you’re reading this and you have a toddler or older child who has gotten really good at pushing that routine and it’s starting to take forever, make sure you snag our free bedtime routine chart and boundary cards!
4. A Sleep Training Plan/Method
This might seem obvious, but if your end goal is to be able to kiss your baby or toddler goodnight, walk away, and know they’ll fall asleep within about 10 minutes, you need a PLAN!
What are you going to do when you lay them down and they’re upset? How will you respond? When will you respond? Will that response look the same at bedtime? Overnight? Nap time?
This is not something you want to make up on the fly, because when it’s 2 am and you’re only half awake, you’re going to choose the quickest and easiest option. Or when they’ve been crying for five minutes and it’s really hard, you need to know exactly what you plan to do!
And that plan is essentially a sleep training method. You can learn more about each method in this post, but the four most common sleep training methods include:
- The “No Cry” Method
- The Chair Method
- Check and Console
- The Extinction Method
There can certainly be some flexibility here. I’ve had some families start with the chair method and realize it’s too stimulating for their little one or just too rough to be in the room the whole time, so they switch to leave and check. And that’s okay!
What we don’t want to do is sit in the chair the first night, do leave and check the next two, then bounce back to the chair method, etc. Because that plan is not really much of a plan anymore, and your little one isn’t going to know what to expect.
This leads to our last and final tip…
5. Time + Consistency!
Sleep training is not an overnight process! When we work with babies 4-17 months old, it’s a two-week plan. And for toddlers and young kids 18 months and older, it’s a three-week plan! We definitely see progress that first week, but it can be a roller coaster.
And it’s not just a matter of time, but of consistency. If you’re going to take the pacifier away, you have to actually take the pacifier away – get it out of our little one’s room so it’s not a temptation in the middle of the night or during that nap they’re just refusing.
Similarly, all caregivers should be on board! We can’t have mom nursing to sleep whenever she does naps and bedtime and then dad doing 10-minute check-ins – that’s confusing! If you have a nanny during the day, she should ideally be on board, as well.
And if your little one is at daycare, there will certainly be some things that are just different and out of your control (i.e. environment and schedule). But you can absolutely tell them not to give your little one a pacifier and not to feed them to sleep.
Here at Via Graces, we also recommend night and nap training together. Because think about it…if you are expecting your little one to fall asleep independently at night and after night wakings, how confusing to co-sleep for naps during the day! So we always start plans at night, but then continue the next day with naps. Sure, some naps will be on the go, but we aim for more than half at home, when possible.
Conclusion
This may all seem super basic, but I can’t tell you how many families we’ve chatted or worked with who tried sleep training on their own and one of these pieces was missing – they just didn’t know.
Maybe they were doing the Ferber method, but their baby was almost asleep every night when they laid them down, so bedtime was extra brutal! Or they were doing the chair method, but there was a super bright white night light in the room making it extra distracting our tough to fall asleep.
Or they were doing the cry-it-out method but their baby was still on a three-nap schedule and was actually ready for a two-nap schedule – so they cry and cry and cry because they’re just not tired enough! Or they can get their toddler to finally fall asleep at bedtime with a few check-ins, but overnight they just co-sleep because they’re exhausted.
We’re of course always so happy to help – that’s literally our job – AND we want to help catch people who want to DIY a sleep training plan and make sure they’re truly set up the best they possibly can be.
That’s why this blog and podcast exists!
That’s why we’ve expanded and have an adult sleep coach on our team – so the whole family can get the best sleep possible!
That’s why we have free resources and comprehensive guides, and why we’re so active on Instagram.
That’s why we work with families and build step-by-step sleep plans, for their kiddos, and support them up close and personal during those 2-3 weeks together.
That’s why we created our online A to Z classes – they have all the ins and outs of those five key pieces to sleep training, plus way more, so you can put together your own sleep plan, with confidence that it will work!
In all of this, remember that there’s not one best way to sleep train. There’s not a best age to sleep train. There’s not a right or wrong way to put your child to sleep. It’s all about what’s best for you and your family! And that may change child to child, or year to year, and that’s great.
With Grace,
Lauren
