Breastfeeding your toddler to sleep doesn't cause bad habits

It's normal for toddlers to fall asleep with a breastfeed

It’s usually much easier feeding and cuddling your toddler to sleep than it is trying to put him down in a cot or on a mattress while he is awake. You can find out why flexible breastfeeds make toddler sleep easy here.

You might have heard that

• Breastfeeding your toddler to sleep sets up bad habits

• Your toddler wakes excessively at night because you offer the breast so much during the day

• Your toddler wakes excessively at night because you breastfeed him to sleep.

None of this is true.

From the 1950s and 1960s, mothers have been told that breastfeeding their child to sleep makes life harder than it needs to be, and sets up bad habits. Although this advice is intended to help, it creates disruptions and worsens exhaustion for many families. Sleep becomes much harder than it needs to be if women feel they shouldn't breastfeed their toddler to sleep!

Sleep is under the control of rising sleep pressure and the body clock only. Toddler sleep isn’t controlled by associations or worsened by breastfeeding or cuddling to sleep. Excessive night waking results from disruption to the circadian rhythm or body clock, not from bad habits set up by breastfeeding and cuddling.

Human babies and toddlers dial up if they find themselves on their own in the night, away from a loving adult's body. Being dialled up makes it harder for the sleep pressure to do its job. The way to teach your toddler to feel safe in the night is to respond and keep your child as dialled down as possible.

Most parents adopt a rather relaxed, “I’m here if you really need me” approach to toddlers’ night waking. They wait for a little while in the hope their child will drop back to sleep on his own! But it is important to respond before your little one starts to cry much, or everyone in the household will be wide awake.

Breastfeeding to sleep teaches your toddler good habits, which last a life-time

Your toddler will have learnt that when he wakes during the night, the most lovely way to go back to sleep is at the breast, held close to your body and breast. This is not a bad habit! This is a wonderful gift that you or the breastfeeding mother have given your little one! Once your toddler wakes in the night, she'll want to breastfeed because she has learnt that this is the easiest, loveliest way to get back to sleep, up close and safe in your arms. She has developed the habit of expecting your loving physical response, and this is very good for her developing brain. It sets up

• Mental and emotional habits of expecting life and people to be responsive and caring

• Healthy psychological attachment styles, life-long.

There will come a time, however, when you decide to wean your toddler or older child. That’s when you are ready to teach her something new about going back to sleep in the night. You can find out about night weaning here.

Recommended resources

Flexible breastfeeds help make toddler sleep easy

How best to support a breastfeeding woman so that toddler sleep isn't entirely up to her?

Would it help your toddler's sleep to delay or space out breastfeeding in the night?

Would weaning or increasing the amount of solids your toddler eats help with sleep?

What to do about toddler sleep when you're ready to wean from the breast?

What to do about daytime sleeps when you're weaning your toddler?

Would night weaning help your toddler sleep better?

Selected references

Veile A, Miller V. Duration of breast feeding in ancestral environments. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_818: Springer, Cham.; 2021.

Sellen DW, Smay DB. Relationship between subsistence and age at weaning in "preindustrial" societies. Human Nature. 2001;12:47-87.