Need to sleep train your toddler or older baby? Here’s a quick guide to help you get started helping your little ones sleep longer and later.
Mama needs some rest.
Babies need some rest.
How does everyone in the house get the rest they need?
Sleep strategies that are peaceful and work.
If your older baby or toddler nap well, won’t go to sleep in their own crib or bed, wakes multiple times a night for you, and still won’t sleep through the night no matter what you do… you’ve come to the right place.
What's in this post...
Why sleep training toddlers is different than younger babies
The main difference is this.
Baby is older, more alert, more set in their habits, more independent, and more able to throw some 1 year old tantrums or Meltdowns your way to avoid having to change their sleep habits.
From the newborn age you can have a good sleep schedule that will help minimize crying and whining. And those habits can carry on throughout the first year.
However, if you’ve already got a baby 9 months or older – particularly 1 year or older – then the game has changed a bit. In some ways it may be easier if your child is naturally cooperative and you have a good plan.
On the other hand, they may resist your efforts and put up a fight which – over time – may wear you down and make you feel like giving up.
Read: The Top 10 Indicators It’s Time to Sleep Train
What you’ll need to do to begin:
When embarking on sleep training toddlers, there are a few things to note. Don’t give up, everyone needs sleep and I’ll help you get it.
- Create a plan (my sleep program will help) that’s realistic that you can stick to. It will take between a few days and a couple of weeks to change entrenched habits.
- Get help. Choose a weekend to begin these efforts when your husband is home to help. If you are a single mom or solo parent, get help if you need it.
- Carve out time. Teaching new sleep habits will take effort and follow through. Intermittent reinforcement will actually make it much worse for you and baby.
Read: The Smart Toddler Bedtime Routine That Minimizes Meltdowns
What sleep training is and what it isn’t
Sleep training is, plain and simple, helping teach your sweet bundle of joy to sleep on their own without your frequent intervention.
It’s helping train them to transition through sleep cycles peacefully without needing to fully wake up because they have a “job” to do.
AKA, they wake up frequently when they need to make sure you are still in their bed, in their room, rocking them, patting them, etc.
It’s removing the parent from the sleep equation so baby can sleep as long as they need on their own.
Read: Common habits that help and hurt baby’s sleep
Fast, simple, and free strategies to implement if baby can’t get to sleep, won’t stay asleep, or is unsettled in general.
Encourage yourself, you and your toddler can do this!
Often it takes a mindset shift for us to begin the sleep training process and really mean business. Of course, we want our babies to sleep well. And we want to sleep well ourselves.
And yet, there are questions, doubts, and ‘what ifs.’ These can plague us until we start taking shortcuts. And shortcuts create unhelpful habits we’ll have to break later.
Left to its own devices, a baby might sleep through the night as early as a few months or as late as… never.
When parents begin teaching baby nurturing sleep habits, babies can sleep long stretches at night from 3 months on wards. All babies are developmentally able to sleep through the night by at least 6 months.
Whether or not yours does depends on many factors. Most of which are in your control.
Read: The surprising reason your baby doesn’t sleep well
Ultimately – with sleep habits – the buck stops with mom.
Maybe you thought sleeping habits were up to baby. Not the case. Ultimately you are the one who must develop good, nurturing habits that allow your baby to sleep unaided.
Some children will surely have high sleep needs and sleep well from birth, but others need to be gently guided to promote good sleeping habits.
Lack of sleep is very detrimental to anyone’s health and sleep deprivation isn’t used as a torture method for nothing.
While sleep training most definitely need not involve hours of screaming, be prepared for some fussiness and whining. This is because you are attempting to break ingrained habits and baby is protesting change.
Read: Get A Tired Baby To Sleep — In 4 Simple Steps
Create sustainable sleep habits for your little lamb so the whole family can sleep peacefully without the stress, drama, and tears.
Learn MoreComfort appropriately
Imagine me having a long conversation with my husband about how tired I am. I am exhausted, I just want a few hours to sleep uninterrupted, my brain is fuzzy and I feel like a zombie.
What if he looked at me and said “I have just the thing, I’ll be right back,” and then comes back with a bacon cheeseburger and cheesy chips. I might salivate a little over my comfort food, but ultimately I would have to tell him that the cure for exhaustion is not a bacon cheeseburger.
The cure for exhaustion is sleep.
Sure, I’ll eat the burger because hey, I’m human, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to help me feel better. It’s just going to make me feel full.
Just because your baby momentarily calms when nursing doesn’t mean that’s the root of the issue. If they’re exhausted, they need sleep, not more milk.
Read: Why frequent night makings make you crazy
This should be encouraging!
I don’t say this to discourage you, but rather to encourage you. If you know your babies are exhausted now is the time to start gently training them to sleep on their own.
When baby cries in the night, feeding him might initially help him back to sleep, but the goal is to help them build healthy sleeping habits that don’t require you all night long.
The goal is not to deprive our babies of milk or comfort (of course not, why would we?). Instead, the goal is to comfort appropriately.
Comfort for a hungry baby is food.
Comfort for a tired baby is sleep. If you think they are not really hungry, yet need to feed to get back to sleep at night, then keep reading.
Read: Is Sleep Training a Baby Bad or Dangerous? Let’s Talk Facts!
Easy to implement routines, rhythms and schedules from birth through school-aged kids to help you streamline day-to-day life with kids, including a step-by-step guide for getting started.
Learn MoreGet your toddler’s food intake right
The goal is to give older babies and toddlers ample nourishment throughout the day. This will mean they don’t need to feed at night.
If baby is drinking over half of his milk intake at night he’s not going to sleep well. When baby drinks enough milk and eats enough food in the day he won’t wake from hunger.
He may wake from some other reason, but not from hunger.
When you remove hunger from the equation it’s much easier to determine the cause of baby’s night sleep disruptions.
Read: Baby & Toddler Snacks – The Best Times, Rules & Food
Orient your little one towards sleep time independence
Orienting your baby to sleeping independence can be done quickly or in a more relaxed fashion gently over time. I go over all the methods for weaning from sleep props and creating new sleep associations in my baby sleep program, but this will get you started.
- If you are focusing on nighttime weaning, fill the baby up during the day and find other methods of comfort for night wakings.
- If they are used to feeding at night it will be a bit of an adjustment. You can choose any number of sleep training methods to wean baby from this habit.
- If baby is waking up with a “job to do” aka curling your hair or getting a pacifier, you’ll begin removing that crutch so baby can learn to self-settle.
- Within time (and often not much time) baby will begin going to sleep on their own. And going back to sleep if they wake in the night.
Some easy ways to encourage sleep independence
- Another way to help your baby learn to sleep on their own is to put them in their crib drowsy, but awake, to sleep.
- At naps and bedtime, maintain your routine whether it’s singing, rocking, reading a story, etc. but then before they drift off to sleep put them in their crib.
- This will help them learn to go to sleep on their own and will aid greatly in helping them transition from active to passive sleep throughout the night.
- If your baby wakes seemingly every 45-90 minutes, you know they are unable to get back to sleep as they switch sleep cycles, and this will help.
- Choose appropriate nap times and bedtimes to capitalize on the sleep waves.
How long does it take to sleep train toddlers and older babies
The first couple of nights seem interminable and unending, but take heart. It actually does not take much time at all to help a baby learn to sleep on their own throughout the night if you are consistent and they are an older baby.
If your child is only waking up to feed, but is getting ample feeds throughout the day, they will quickly sleep through on their own once you stop offering the bottle or breast.
In my experience, once you get down to sleep training and you really mean business, it can take as little as 2 days to a week. Day 3 you might want to pull your hair out, punch your husband, and run away, but remind yourself it’s almost over.
With consistency and, assuming there are no medical considerations, your baby will begin sleeping through the night soon. And the baby and everyone else in the house will benefit from this in more ways than one.
I’d suggest starting sleep training on the weekend when both you and your husband have the possibility of a sleep in.
Sleep Training Older Babies & Toddlers
Fast, simple, and free strategies to implement if baby can’t get to sleep, won’t stay asleep, or is unsettled in general.
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I was hoping you would do a post like this!
I hope it helps, Jacinta. Come back and tell me if you hit a snag!
*cries*
Stace…… are your girls putting you to the test?????? THERE IS HOPE!
Just one. I have tried everything. I have been consistent. I have hoped she’d grow out of it. I am tired as ;-)
What do you feel, deep down, is her reason for waking up? Comfort, fear, reassurance?
mmmm half habit, half reassurance? I have seen her literally wake up and get out of bed in one move. It’s not like she wakes up and then thinks “oh I’m alone! freak out!”, she just immediately gets out and goes for the door. Sometimes she’s crying, sometimes she’s perfectly silent, but I don’t know what drives it. She happily goes back to bed but I often need to stay there until she’s asleep again. Which, when that’s 45 minutes and I’m freezing and tired can be… not fun.
Let me do some thinking and I’ll send you an email! Sweet girl, she loves her mommy. She doesn’t know she should just love her mommy in her sleep. Ha.
I have a 6 year old boy who as a baby never slept the night. I assume it was because i breastfed him and he got too attached. But now with my 17 month old daughter, I am unable to put her down at 7pm which is when i try everyday. She wakes up two to three times a night, sometimes more. Each time i am giving her milk, and the next time a soother, milk, soother. Also, each time she wakes up crying she gets out of her bed (double mattress on the floor) and she walks to the door and sits there till I get to her. Today is Friday, so I will try feeding her lots (she’s 31 pounds tho, she eats good already) and no milk at night and see if that works. I hope it does. This was a very informative post.
Best of luck, Kelly! And it is only a problem if you feel it is! Maybe try a hearty bedtime snack like banana or something fairly filling? Might help the night wakings!
WOW!!! So after the horrible troubles with my son as a baby..and noticing my daughter was starting the same habits, I couldn’t believe it when after two nights she was sleeping the night through. It was crazy!!! The first night she woke up once, i gave her a soother, she was still in her bed, and she went back to sleep. The next night (the 2nd one) she slept through, and again last night. I give her four heavy meals a day, no snacking, no milk or water at night at all and it works. I didn’t think i would ever have a kid that slept the night. I can’t wait to read other articles you’ve written now. Thanks.
KELLY!!! JACKPOT! The soother is my go to when I truly believe they aren’t hungry but need help settling. Gives them a little help without the habit. Woohoo!
I find this so interesting, I did this with my twins. It took a little perseverance, but was far from a traumatic experience and they slept through the night routinely from 10 weeks old. What I find particularly interesting is that now they are 16 (years) they are still good sleepers, yet so many of their friends who never learned to go to sleep alone when they were little have terrible sleep troubles now. I can’t really believe that there is no connection.
I agree, Chloe. I have friends with older children now (10 years and up) who say their kids STILL wake super early and have bad sleeping habits and always have. I know there are often extenuating circumstances, of course, but if it’s possible, I’d really suggest getting great nighttime habits. It honestly benefits the ENTIRE house!
I’d like to know what are in your hearty meals, and how you encourage toddlers who prefer to snack and graze to sit and eat. I think this would help my son (16mo) quite a bit. Thanks!
Hi Gina! As for hearty I try to do thick type purees if they are young. Carrot alone is thin but I add potatoes or sweet potato so it sits longer in the stomach. Or so I believe! And as for snacking, my 15 month old is the same so I try to sit him work a snack before he is starving that is substantial enough he doesn’t keep coming back. A whole banana and cup of juice/water or milk. It is more about habit for us I think.
My almost 2 year old daughter is a horrible sleeper….she relies in us to lay down with her to fall asleep and wakes frequently crying even if she is sleeping right beside us… I’m at the end of my rope and don’t know what else to try! I have read your article ….. How do you suggest to put her down to wean her of laying with us? She also is still on a bottle before bed (purely habit) and we got rid of her soother in the first week of October.
Hi Kelsey, Let me think of what might work and in what order. Since she is 2 that means she’s able to understand what you are saying to her so the first thing I would do is take about 5 days or so (seems a long time) and tell her very clearly, multiple times, each night that in 5 days (or whenever you choose) she is going to start sleeping in her own bed by herself because she’s a big girl. You can try pulling out a special pillow, blanket, toy, etc. and say that when she goes in her room by herself she will get this. Second, I would try to isolate if she’s having nightmares or if she’s just waking out of habit. If she is having nightmares it might be a phase, but if it’s habit then only consistency and her beginning to feel safe and sleep better will break it. Also, I would try putting her to bed earlier if she’s going to bed any later than 7:30pm. Any later than that, start moving it up gradually. You may find that the earlier she goes to bed, the less tired she is, and the more she will go to bed willingly. And I wouldn’t take away the bottle since you just took away the pacifier, let’s do one thing at a time!
We were fortunate with our daughter in that she was very good at falling asleep on her own from birth…went through a bit of a setback when she was 4 months old and had a rough 2-3 nights getting her settled back into a good sleep pattern, but since then she’s been a sleeping champ, going down at 7:30pm and waking at 5am to feed then back to sleep until 7:30-8am.
The only issue I’m having a hard time working through is when her schedule gets disrupted with teeth/illness. We’ve had a solid 7 week run of back to back teeth/sick/teeth/sick sleep disruption and it’s so hard in the moment to know what the balance should be and when the right time to ‘hold the line’ and get back on schedule is. Right now she’s 90% recovered from a bronchial infection, but is still waking around 90 minutes after going to sleep and gets so upset that one of us has to go in and comfort. Historically when she’s been sick or teething, I’ve breastfed her to get her back to sleep and she’s dropped this feed on her own once she was feeling better and sleeps until her normal 5am feed time. With this new wakeup time so close to going to bed she’s literally catching me within minutes of my before bed pump time (it’s like she knows!), so I’ve just been holding her and singing until she settles and then laying her back down awake.
I’d be really interested to know what strategies you have for getting back on track when illness, teething or other development milestones throw a wrench in sleep patterns? This is where I struggle the most…I have a good sleeper and want to help her grow in those healthy patterns and sleep habits, but I also want her to know I’m available and be able to comfort her when she’s not feeling well.
Amanda, that is a super question and one I’m actually dealing with RIGHT NOW with my 15 month old. Previously great sleepers can really be thrown for a loop with illness and then if it isn’t set back in a timely (according to their recovery) fashion it can create habits. let me give it some thought before I respond… I have handled it badly in the past and don’t want to advise that. Ha!
What if your 17 month old was a great sleeper until a few months ago and can still put themselves to sleep at the beginning of a nap and the beginning of the night but they have started waking up waaaaay earlier and have started barely napping. AKA, what if they went from sleeping from 8-8 at night + two 1.5 hour naps/day to sleeping from 8-5 at night + one 30 minute nap during the day? I mean, I know she’s not waking from hunger, so what is going on and what am I supposed to do about it? I’ve been trying to help her sleep longer for months now and it’s just gotten worse and worse!
Have you tried putting her down for a nap earlier and seeing if she wakes at the same time? Mine did go nuts when they were teething. Like way nuts. Crazy naps and early wake times. If she used to sleep well and long and all of a sudden stopped (but doesn’t seem happy and healthy about it) then I’d say that it’s something physical going on. And I replied to your other comment as well!
Thanks! I might see if there’s something physical I’m missing.
my 22 month old has never been a good sleeper. Ever since I found out breastfeeding her to sleep was the way to make her sleep, we have both depended on the breast for her sleeping. Her babysitter and two other people in the family can make her sleep naps without the breast obviously, but never myself without it being so dramatic for denying her the breast. After 2 years of sleep deprivation, not knowing how many times a night she will wake up or how long it will take me to put her back to sleep I’m mentally and physically exhausted and desperate.
We have started to move her back to sleep Into her own room, still bfeeding but at least avoiding bringing her into our bedroom which believe me helps a bit on my sleep at night since it’s easier to just breastfeed her in our bed and continue sleeping. We are sort of trying to break that habit before night weaning her, sort of a one thing at a time kind of deal.
I see what you say about the hearty meals but 1. She tends to get chubby very easily and being that there is overweight relatives in the family I’m always scared of her falling into the same problem and 2. Lately she barely wants to eat at all! Every meal is trial and error, she is starting to become very selective with food, just like I needed any more problems in my life!
She is an extremely energetic little girl, I mean extremey energetic, which for what I’m reading, it migh be signs of her being tired??
We have been told to take her naps away because she doesn’t need them anymore as well as try her napping once and twice, either way she won’t sleep through the night, we don’t know what the right advice is anymore!!
I defenetily c she uses the breast as comfort, but some nights when she wakes up we offer a bit of yogurt or something and she chows it down which makes me thing she could be hungry, not sure anymore.
As you can c I’m lost and totally confused and desperate, any advise would be greatly appreciated. I see your post is a bit old, I hope I can get an answer, I will leave my email just in case. Thank you!
gp_hutto@hotmail.com
I’ll send you an email, girl!
I left a comment on another post but wasn’t nearly clear enough I don’t think. Mason will be 1 on January 9th and has never slept all night. He sleeps with us and I would dearly love to have my bed back!
He is with me 24/7 because we don’t do babysitters, so I sort of understand why he is staying so close. He wakes up 3-5 times a night for a bottle, but not to eat, just to have it in his mouth. He refuses cups, and sleeping in his own bed. When we try to get him to sleep in his own bed, the second his body touches the mattress, his eyes pop open and he’s awake! I need so much help! I can’t let him cry for super long periods of time, but a little fussing is so fine just to get him on his bed and sleeping through the night! In case you can’t get my email it’s beth_almeida1980(@)hotmail(dot)com
If you can help or give me a plan to follow, I would love you forever.
I think I’m going to read thus 2 or 3 times more, and then take a leap of faith. I’ve got a 10 month old who hates to sleep on her own–always has. Her naps are consistently 30 mins or less, and I think I’m gaining sleep anxiety at night.
Oh no, Cheryl!! Be sure to check out all the posts on my sleep category tab. It’ll repeat quite a bit but in a good way!
What a great article!! I´ve been fighting with this issue for a few weeks with my 5 month old son. He wakes up thru the night 4 or 5 times!! I am exhausted!! He falls back asleep by breastfeeding for only 5 minutes. Then wakes up about 1 or 2 hours later. I still haven´t tried to feed him solids since here in Argentina, pediatricians recommend exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months. I will try not to breastfeed but it has been very hard since he seems to be hungry. Tonight I will try to feed him with a bottle to test if maybe he is hungry. Wish me luck!!
Sorry for my english!! Cheers from Argentina
Mercedes, GOOD LUCK, GIRl! I’d say if you think he’s starving thten it might all sort itself out at 6 months as well. If they are in a growth spurt and need more solids, they often start sleeping better without you doing anything else when they get that food. You’re almost there :)