Evening play (often noisy and excited!) and other sensory motor adventures help with a toddler's sleep

Enjoy sensory adventures with your toddler in the evening until his sleep pressure is very high

To keep the settings of your toddler's body clock healthy, it’s best if evenings are like daytime, filled with light, noise and sensory motor nourishment.

It’s not necessary to dim the lights in the evening. When your toddler's sleep pressure is high enough, he'll fall off to sleep easily with a quick breastfeed, feed or cuddle, whether the lights are on or not, as long as he is dialled down. We want to make your toddler's sleep as easy and as no-fuss as possible!

If your little one doesn’t seem to want to go sleep in the evening, that’s alright, try again later. His sleep pressure isn’t high enough yet.  

But you're already so tired in the evenings!

When you read this, it's quite possible your heart falls and you feel despair. You're already exhausted beyond belief by the time evening comes around! You just want a moment alone, or some time alone with your partner, or some time to get some things done. Maybe you have other children to care for in the evenings, too. The suggestion that you fill your toddler's evenings with rich sensory motor nourishment, keeping her dialled down while her sleep pressure climbs high, can seem extremely unattractive.

Here's the problem. If you have a high sleep need toddler, you might be able to put your toddler down early in the evening, with only a few wakes in the night until she starts the day at a civilised hour in the morning. But most of us have medium to low sleep need toddlers. If this is your situation, attempting to put your little one down early in the evenings can make everything worse, resulting over time in your toddler

• Waking constantly before you go to bed yourself. You can find out more here.

• Waking excessively during the night. You can find out more here.

• Starting the day unmanageable early. You can find out more here.

It's swings and roundabouts. Making sleep as workable as possible means trade-offs for most families. Parents get through this time of life, when the evenings seem especially long and tiring, by

• Reminding yourself that this is just a specific life stage, which will pass soon enough (though I know it seems to go on and on right now!)

• Reminding yourself of your values, such as wanting to be there for your little one rather than leaving him alone to fuss or cry in the cot, for instance

• Seeking out people who share similar parenting values - and maybe even socialise with them in the evenings!

• Practicing self-compassion

• Planning ahead to create the most interesting and enjoyable evenings you possibly can as a family.

Ideas for making evenings with your toddler as enjoyable as possible.

If you are often or always alone with your toddler in the evenings, it's true that you're in a particularly challenging situation, which requires a great deal of self-compassion, and some forward planning. You can find out more here.

Here are ideas for providing your toddler with rich sensory motor nourishment in the evening. You might

• Put your toddler in a carrier or backpack carrier so that your hands are free to do tasks. Evenings can be transformed when toddlers are transported in carriers. You can find out more here.

• Stay out at the park through the sunset, just as late as possible or sensible

• Plan ahead to be around other people in the evenings – invite them in, or go out to visit them

  • Invite friends or family over for regular evening time together

  • Schedule a spread of evening activities throughout the week

• Visit the markets or the shops

• Dine out

  • At your friends' or family's homes

  • At a café

  • In an outdoor setting such as an evening picnic in the park, if climate and location permit

• Prolong your toddler's meal time, allowing lots of sensory play with food

• Play together in the bath for long periods. This can be a great, splashy way of bonding with a parent who isn't around much during the day, for instance. You can find out more here.

• Take your toddler outside, if this is safe

  • Go for night walks or even jogs

  • Watch the stars and clouds and night trees together

  • Spot night birds and creatures

• Turn on music you love and dance with your toddler, which is exercise for you and great sensory motor nourishment for your little one

• Cuddle your toddler up in your arms for a (hopefully final) night-time walk, either around the home or outside, when you think her sleep pressure really is nice and high, if you're planning to tip her into sleep without using milk. The key is to keep her dialled down, as best you can, so that the sleep regulators kick in easily.

Does noisy, laughter-filled physical play 'overstimulate' toddlers in the evenings?

You might have heard that you have to keep things quiet for your toddler in the evenings, to bring on sleep and help her sleep better. You might have heard that this keeps her cortisol levels low. None of this is true. You can read about cortisol and infant sleep here.

• Loud, laughter-filled physical play with your toddler, rolling around together on the floor, or swinging and lifting her in your arms, or using tunnels or swings or hide-and-seek, or any very active physical engagement with your little one which makes her laugh, is wonderful for her developing nervous system! Lots of giggling and happy shouts and excited screams are the kind of sensory motor stimulation which contribute to both short-term and long-term dialling down of your toddler's nervous system.

• This is because laughter (including those great, screeching, heaving bouts of laughter only a child knows how to do!) bathes her nervous system in hormones which suppress cortisol and increase serotonin and dopamine. Loud, laughter-filled, highly physical play is extremely good for your little one's body and nervous system!

• Physical play and laughter are good for parents too - especially for a parent who isn't the primary carer. Physical play is a highly responsive, embodied form of enjoyment which strengthens emotional bonds and attachment. It dials up the hormones of joy.

Creating flexible, adaptive toddler sleep

We want your toddler to know how to drop off to sleep in many different places. This has been the case for human babies since the dawn of time, as small children fit around the adults' social life. This remains the case in a majority of human cultures today.

We don’t want your toddler to learn that the only place sleep happens is in the cot, because this locks your family into the home in the evenings, spoiling your social life. Families are usually happiest when they are able to continue showing up flexibly for evening events in the neighbourhood or in friendship networks or pursuing a cultural life, accompanied by their little one.

We want to shift the focus in the evenings away from the toddler, on to meeting your adult needs for an interesting, socially and culturally engaged life, with the toddler fitting in around your activities and falling asleep in response to high sleep pressure and rich sensory motor nourishment, wherever you are. Once your toddler has fallen asleep, your evening's socialising can continue on.

Selected references

Akimbekov NS, Razzaque MS. Laughter therapy, a humor-induced hormonal intervention to reduce stress and anxiety. Current Research in Physiology. 2021;4:135-138.