How to make the days work when you have a low sleep need toddler?

If you are the primary carer of a low sleep need toddler, you do face serious difficulties in a world where your little one's nap during the day might be the only time in which you get a break.

And yet we can't make our toddlers take more sleep. Plenty of toddlers no longer need any daytime nap at all! Attempts to make our toddler nap more often backfire and make the days (and nights) even harder.

A low sleep need toddler is also very often a high sensory need toddler, even if it's just because there are many more hours to fill in compared with a high sleep need toddler! In addition to the vital step of planning ahead to make each day rich in sensory nourishment and activities outside the house, here are some other ideas which might help.

• Practice deep self-compassion day in, day out. Become good at it. This is a really challenging situation to be in.

• Get highly social, finding a range of new face-to-face parent groups to join in your locality.

• Negotiate with your child's other parent for assistance during the day, even just for a period of time to get you through this developmental phase in your little one's life. If you are the primary carer and the other parent is earning the income for your family, this may require workplace rearrangements. (It might also not be an option.)

• You may need to organise babysitting or childcare help sooner than you might have intended, in order to schedule in predictable time for yourself and your own needs, a few times a week.

• Find or make friends with whom you can arrange child-swaps a few mornings or afternoons a week.

• If your low sleep need toddler is in childcare, discuss the importance of not having long naps with the carers, so that your nights don't become excessively broken.

• You might decide to approach this window of time with a low sleep need toddler as an unusually rich opportunity to spend a lot of time

  • Walking the streets exploring with your toddler in a stroller or backpack carrier, for enjoyment and maybe for getting fitter

  • In parks or the natural environment

  • In museums and art galleries.

I'd also suggest reading through the whole of the Caring for you section of The Possums Sleep Program. This time of life with a low sleep need toddler will pass much quicker than you can possibly imagine right now, and you'll look back and be glad that you did it in a way that was (more or less) consistent with the things that matter to you, that is, aligned with your values, even though it's hard.