This week, we’re talking once again about nighttime routines with certified sleep consultant Kristen Jacob. She has great advice on what to do if you’ve already set up a nighttime routine that’s not working for your family. Is it too late to change course? 

ASK AN EXPERT: Changing nighttime routines with toddlers

We sat down with Kristen Jacob, a certified pediatric sleep consultant. For more sleep help, you can check out her Instagram page and website. 

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Why is it in general that bedtime is so challenging? 

It’s all sorts of things. It’s being away from you. It’s the fact that maybe they’re scared of something in their room that maybe they don’t know or don’t want to tell you about. 

And they have a lot of fun. So their main purpose every day is to play as hard as they possibly can. So it’s boring. They don’t want to stop playing. Sometimes it’s anxiety-provoking. Sometimes they don’t like being alone. 

For toddlers, how much sleep do they need? 

They should be getting 10-12 hours at night. Usually by the time they’re 2-3 they’re doing zero to an hour and a half during the day and 10-12 at night. The nighttime doesn’t change until they’re much older.

For the parents out there– like me– who’ve already set horrible bedtime precedents, how do you rein it back in? 

You can always do that if for no other reason than you’re the parent. You make the rules. If you say it’s time for things to change, it’s time for things to change. I would say, whenever you decide you want to make changes, you should start talking about it early in the day and talk about it often. Nobody likes surprises. The more prepared they are for changes the easier it is for them. 

And you also say to get them involved in the process– how so? 

So they think it’s fun that you’re making these changes. Then talk about it all day long. “Remember tonight we’re starting our new bedtime routine. We’re going to do this and then we’re going to do that? We’ll stay in bed all night like the big girl we know we are.” 

So talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, and then most importantly, do it. 

What happens when the inevitable temper tantrum happens? 

If this is happening during the bedtime routine we tell our daughter, “You might be too tired to read books so we’ll just jump straight to bedtime.” 

Do you accept that there may be tears at a certain point? 

There probably will be because they’re not getting their way. But the tears are happening because on every other occasion, they’ve gotten their way and now they’re not. So this is their way of acting out in a last-ditch effort to get their way. Kids need to be ok with hearing no.