Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of The Sleep Sense Program. If you’d rather read than watch, I’ve transcribed the text of this video below.

This week’s question is from Ingrid. She writes:

“My son is two years and three months, and he takes anywhere between 30 minutes on a good night to two and a half hours to go to sleep. My problem is that and he is happy. He gets out of bed constantly and plays in his room or reads books. It is not a matter of an upset boy. It is a matter of a tired boy the next day. I feel like I have tried every possible solution from getting angry to returning him to his bed. What can I do?”

Well, I think everyone assumes that when you are making changes to your child’s sleep habits, that you are going to be met with lots of tears and lots of protest but often (even with a baby) they are just happily playing in their crib and then you wonder what you should do. If you know he does not seem upset, you might wonder whether you should go in or leave them be.

Here are some suggestions for you. First of all, I am wondering if he still napping during the day. That could be causing part of the problem if he is. At two years and three months, he could be starting to transition out of his day time nap.

What tends to happen with that is that the toddler will seem ready and happily go down for a nap and sleep for a couple of hours, no problem. However, when bedtime rolls around there are lots of games or protests and stalling and bedtime gets pushed later and later, into the 8:30-9:00pm area. If that could be part of if I would consider pulling his nap. It will be tough because it takes about a month for a toddler to transition out of a daytime nap. So there will be days when he is grumpy and he seems like he could really use a nap but just hang in there and maybe move bedtime earlier to compensate.

If he is not napping, he should be going to bed between 7:00-7:30 PM and what you might want to do is just make sure his bedtime routine is really predictable and step by step. I a half hour routine of getting him ready for bed with a bath, getting jammies on and reading stories. Because of his age, depending on how verbal he is and how his comprehension skills are, you could try offering a bit of a reward system. Choose something really simple and I suggest you write it down; it tends to seem more concrete when a toddler sees that it is being written down. Make it so that if he stays in his bed and tries to sleep, in the morning he can have a smartee or a cookie or a sticker. Something that would be rewarding enough, that he might give it a try. It might not make a difference, but I think it is worth a try to kind of keep it on the positive note. Make it known that he really needs to stay in his bed that he needs to be quiet and really try to go to sleep. Once he is in his bed and lights are out I suggest you leave; it does not sound to me like he has got fears of being in there on his own or anything like that. So there is no point in staying; I would just make your exit and good night.

Another thing you might want to do is take things out of his room that are causing distractions. I know in your question you said he gets up and he plays with his toys and he reads his books. Move all that stuff to another location and maybe it can be part of the reward for good behavior. So that if he has gone for a whole week without getting out of his bed and without playing with toys or reading books, then he can have those things come back to his room, as long as he makes good choices about what he should be doing it bedtime. Take out all distractions. I know it is a bit of a hassle and I have had clients who have stripped the room bare so that all that is in there in his bed. You have a job to do, which is instilling bedtime routines and making sure that the boundaries are clear, but you can’t actually force someone to sleep if they will not.

If he wants to lay in his bed and have a bit of a chat to himself or do a little bit of singing before he goes to sleep, you can not really do much to control that. Maybe it is part of his winding down that he sings a few songs he remembers through the day, or whatever the case maybe. I would not worry too much about that, because as long as he is in his bed and is being reasonably quiet. If he is bouncing up and down and yelling loudly, then it is definitely worth going in to remind him.

I do not know if he does come out of his room, but if does should be some sort of consequence. So if he came out of his room I would say, “That is one warning. You may not come out of your room or there will be a consequence.”

For toddlers, a consequences are might be closing the door. A lot of toddlers like to have their doors at least partly open and do not like the idea of being closed solid. You might say “If you are going to come out again, I am going to close your door.” You do not have to close it for the entire night, you can just close it for five minutes and then remind him again he needs to stay in his room or you will close the door. If he comes out again, you close the close the door for five more minutes. First should be for five minutes and then it would be ten and then fifteen. Usually they stop testing pretty quickly into that, because most toddlers really find that and undesirable consequence.

If that is going to make no difference to him then maybe he has a teddy that he sleeps with or special blanket that is a big part of his sleep strategy. You can withdraw that item if he is not cooperating. Go in, remind him, take teddy, and walk out for five minutes. Then bring teddy back and again remind him of the rules. If he is still not cooperating, go in and take teddy for ten minutes this time and bring it back and again. Those sort of consequences also stop the behavior fairly quickly. There is no point at getting angry at him, because lots of toddlers are looking for attention, so even negative attention is still attention.

Just be really neutral; the less talking you do the better it goes. You might just have to go for a few nights of looking in this room for distractions, totally ignoring him. That way he is not getting rewards out of it and that should help speed things up a little. Eventually he is going to get bored of lying in his bed and singing and trying to get you to come in and he is going to stop.

That is my best suggestion for your son. The good news is that he is comfortable being on his own, which is a struggle for a lot of parents so, you don’t have to battle that one. It is just a matter of reminding him what the rules are about bedtime and that these are things you can do and these are things you cannot do. That should help steer him in the right direction.

Thanks for your question Ingrid — and sleep well!