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

Dr Pamela Douglas17th of Sep 202323rd of May 2024

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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.

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Next up in FAQs

Do toddlers become overtired and overstimulated?

toddler looking confused laying on cot

Why The Possums Sleep Program doesn't talk about overtiredness

The concepts of 'overtiredness' or 'overstimulation' don't fit with the latest neuroscience, which is why I don't use them. I find these two terms are not only confusing, but cause families unnecessary stress and distress.

Your toddler could be dialling up for a range of reasons. But you might have heard that dialling up is a tired sign, and that at the first 'tired sign' you should put her down to sleep so that she doesn't get overtired. This way of thinking comes out of the sleep training approach to infant sleep, which originated in the 1950s and 1960s.

The idea of overtiredness can make the days (and nights) quite miserable, since toddlers usually dial up when they need either richer sensory motor experience or a feed. Bedrooms (and indeed the...

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    Will 'capping' naps help with sleep problems when you have a toddler?
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    Why won't your toddler go down to sleep during the day?
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