Hi, Dana here. Let’s talk about toddlers today. I have a couple of favorite quotes when it comes to toddlers. One is, “They are high on will, short on skill.” And the other is, “Toddlers are like little night-watch people. They go around checking all the doors but they don’t really wanna find any that open.” So let’s unpack that a little bit today.

So when I talk about their will, if you have a toddler, you know exactly what I’m talking about. They are very strong-willed. And they’re very clever at figuring out what kind of behaviors work best. And when it comes to bedtime, there can be a lot of pushback. So I wanna talk today about how to keep bedtime moving smoothly and on track and avoid a lot of the fights or resistance that comes up around bedtime.

So the first thing to consider is that your toddler needs a warning. Toddlers don’t do great with transitions. And by transitions, I mean, if they’re busy and engaged in something and it’s time to switch gears and do something else, they have a hard time just adapting to that quickly. So a great strategy for that is to give a five-minute warning. And I love to use timers. You know, I use timers all the time in my life. But they’re really handy when it comes to little ones. So set a timer for five minutes and just let your little person know that when the bell rings, it’s time to get ready for bed.

This also is so helpful because it takes the blame off of you. It’s not really your fault that it’s time to get ready for her bath. It’s the timer’s fault. It’s the bell’s fault. And then you have to follow through on that. So when the bell rings, it’s time to get up from whatever he or she was doing, and off we go to the first step of the bedtime routine.

Now, if you’ve planned your bedtime routine well, your toddler should enjoy most of it. I love to start a routine with a bath. I think I haven’t met too many kids who dislike a bath, and they tend to have a lot of fun there. Don’t worry that they’re not relaxing. No toddler, like, relaxes back in a bathtub, you know, with soft music and bubble bath, but that’s you, not your toddler. So it’s totally fine that they’re playing and having a great time. We just don’t want that to go on too long. We want it to be enough time to have some fun but not too much time. Now it’s pushing into overtiredness, and maybe they’re getting a little wound up by the end of that more due to the overtiredness than the playtime in the bath.

Another great place to use your timer is at bath time. Set that timer for about 10 minutes. And again, once that timer goes, it’s time to get out. And even if the child is protesting, it is still time to get out. And the more you stick to those rules that, hey, you can get out of the tub the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is that we cooperate. You get out of the tub, and we move on to the next piece of the routine. The hard way is that you cry and then I have to pull you out of the tub anyway, and we still proceed with our routine.

I used to use that phrase with my kids all the time, “Do you wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?” Right? It’s happening one way or the other. So eventually, they start to pick the easy way. And then we move on to getting jammies on. I’m sure you’re brushing teeth. Brushing teeth tended to be another place where sometimes my kids pick the hard way. And the hard way meant that, well, okay, I’ll take the toothbrush, and I will brush your teeth. You can cry if you want to, but it’s still happening. I mean, brushing teeth is a non-negotiable, right? I think we can all agree on that. The easy way is that you do it. You have the toothbrush. You can brush your own teeth. I might help guide you around a little bit, but the easy way is you get to do it yourself, and off we go.

And then I love story time. You know, I think stories are a great piece to include in a bedtime routine for all ages. I started reading stories to my kids even when they were infants. I love it. But there’s some rules around it. If you’re gonna cooperate, then we can have stories. And if you’re not gonna cooperate, then there will be no stories. So if you know we’ve got a lot of fuss going on through the bath and now the teeth, then the consequence to that kind of behavior is no stories. And you can set that as the expectation. If you can cooperate, we will have story time. If you can’t cooperate, there will be no story, and then hold yourself accountable to this. If they fussed all the way through this routine and pitch to fit every step of the way, then there will be no story time tonight. It’ll be kisses and into the crib or bed and lights out.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with offering a consequence to a child. You know, there’s consequences we face daily, every day, day in and day out. And it is a good skill to teach your child to start thinking through, thinking a little bit through to the end result. If I don’t cooperate, I don’t get a story. If I cooperate, things move along nicely, and I get a story. That’s a great way to keep things on track.

Another little tip I like to do with toddlers is give some choice along the way. Because they have such high will at this age, we wanna give them a little opportunity to flex that will a bit through the routine. So that can happen with jammy time. You know, I like to put out two sets of jammies on the bed and say, “Which one would you like to wear tonight?” And then they feel a little bit powerful that they’re making that choice.

Another place is with stories. So I might lay out four stories and ask a child to pick two. And that, again, is a great place to have some power. Just a couple of words of advice around that. Not too many choices, cuz that can be overwhelming. And don’t budge around how many. No matter how much they beg for three or all four, it’s two and two only every single night. And that, again, goes to that second quote about not wanting to find doors open. They’re gonna test you. They absolutely will. That is part of their job. They’re part of the learning process at this age, is to test boundaries. But they don’t really wanna find those doors opening cuz that leaves them feeling really insecure, and then they’re not sure now what, you know, where the rules are, where the boundaries lie, and no toddler really likes living in that space.

So I like two. Two is a perfect amount of time to have a good time with stories but not push into overtiredness and not, you know, get overwhelmed with a ton of stories in their mind right before they go to bed.

All right, I hope that helped. Thanks for watching. Sleep well.