Does your toddler need a bedtime routine for healthy sleep?

Toddler bedtime routines

For many families, trying to put a bedtime routine in place makes their toddler's sleep worse, not better.

You might have heard that it's best to have a clearly defined bedtime routine which you stick to, step by step, night after night, so that your baby learns healthy sleep habits. This perspective arises out of the sleep training approaches, which wrongly believe sleep to be under the control of sleep associations. If a bedtime routine is working for your family then you don't need to change anything.

But the latest sleep science tells us that sleep is under the control of the two biological sleep regulators, the body clock and sleep pressure only, not associations or routines.

Although sleep associations don't help toddlers sleep, toddlers do learn very quickly. Some toddlers learn to dial up in response to bedtime routines, because they know that they are now going into a time of low sensory stimulation. Paradoxically, bedtime routines can get in the way of easy, enjoyable bedtimes.

Here are problems which can be caused by advice to create and stick with bedtime routines.

• Efforts to avoid 'overstimulation' in preparation for bedtime dial toddlers up, because of their powerful biological need for rich and changing sensory motor stimulation (a need which only increases as sleep pressure rises). When your toddler is dialled up, the sleep pressure can't easily do it's job of sending your toddler off to sleep.

• Dimming lights in preparation for bedtime doesn't bring on sleep (despite what you might have heard about melatonin). However, your small child may learn that when you dim the lights, she is facing a time of low sensory stimulation, which again dials her up. Dimming the lights can dial everyone up even though as parents you might be trying to project calm, because it narrows attention onto sleep, making the evenings miserable.

• Similarly, because your toddler learns very quickly, she may develop a conditioned dialling up when you

  • Put her into pajamas for bed

  • Put her into the cot

  • Clean her teeth

  • Go into the bedroom.

It's quite common for parents to begin dreading the evenings and the commencement of the bedtime routine. It's all so miserable! Depressing, even, night after night. This anticipation of misery is a kind of conditioned dialling up in ourselves.

Toddler bedtime rituals

I've heard myself say many times to parents over the years that "breastfeeding to sleep is your Ultimate Bedtime Ritual - the only one you need!" If your baby isn't breastfed, then a bottle feed to sleep is the same.

There are many ordinary activities which need to be repeated throughout our daily lives. As parents, you may draw comfort yourselves from certain daily rituals. Bedtime rituals do emerge in family life, and can be a source of enjoyment and satisfaction.

The key here with toddlers is to hold these rituals very lightly, with a focus on enjoyment. If you deliberately cultivate flexibility in the way your little one goes to sleep, your family will be able to enjoy socially engaged evenings outside the home, and as parents you won't feel hemmed in by your little peoples' sleep needs.

Also, if there's one thing you can be sure of, your toddler's sleep needs will vary over time, sometimes from day to day, or week to week. If you focus on enjoyment and flexibility, working with the two sleep regulators but living the most satisfying life you can, including in the evenings, you will be able to create a healthy, no-fuss relationship with your child or children's sleep, right throughout their childhood. You can find out more here.

Recommended resources

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

Breastfeeding your toddler to sleep doesn't cause bad habits