Between eighteen months and two and a half years, our daughter's sleep was unpredictable in a way that affected everything else. Bedtime took between forty minutes and two hours depending on factors we could not identify. We tried a lot of things before finding what worked.
Why Toddler Sleep Is Different
Newborn sleep is exhausting but relatively simple: the baby is tired, you help them sleep, they wake to eat. Toddler sleep involves a child who is tired but does not want to stop. They have opinions. They have fears. They have an awareness that something interesting might happen if they stay awake.
The developmental context matters here. Between eighteen months and three years, toddlers are going through significant cognitive and emotional development. Separation anxiety peaks during this period. The ability to regulate emotions is still forming. Sleep resistance is often not defiance but genuine difficulty with the transition from active engagement to rest.
Understanding this did not immediately solve our bedtime problems, but it changed how we approached them. We stopped treating it as a battle to win and started treating it as a skill to teach.
What We Tried That Did Not Work
I want to be honest about the failures before describing what worked, because most articles skip this part.
- Strict timing without flexibility: We tried putting her down at exactly 7:30 pm every night regardless of her actual tiredness level. On days when she had a late nap or a lot of activity, this produced an hour of crying from a child who was not ready to sleep.
- Gradual retreat: We tried slowly moving our chair further from the bed each night. She noticed every centimetre and it extended the process rather than shortening it.
- Letting her stay up until she was visibly exhausted: This backfired consistently. Overtired toddlers are harder to settle, not easier.
- Screens before bed: We tried a short video as a wind-down. It had the opposite effect. The stimulation made settling harder.
What Finally Made a Difference
The routine we settled on has three components that we do not vary: the sequence, the duration, and the ending.
The sequence is always the same: bath, pyjamas, teeth, two books, one song, lights out. We have done this in this order for over a year. The predictability is the point. Toddlers find security in knowing what comes next, and a consistent sequence signals that sleep is approaching without requiring us to announce it.
The duration is approximately thirty minutes from bath to lights out. We do not extend it for extra books or songs. When she asks for more, we acknowledge the request and hold the boundary. This was harder for us than for her at first.
The ending is a specific phrase we say every night before leaving the room. It is the same words every time. This has become a reliable signal that the routine is complete.
💡 Tip: Consistency matters more than the specific elements of the routine. What you do is less important than doing the same thing in the same order every night. Pick something sustainable for you and stick to it.
The Nap Transition
Around two and a half years, our daughter started resisting her afternoon nap. This is a common transition point. Some children drop naps entirely at this age; others still need them but at a shorter length or earlier time.
We moved to a quiet time arrangement: she goes to her room after lunch for forty-five minutes regardless of whether she sleeps. Sometimes she sleeps. Often she does not. The rest still seems to help with afternoon mood and evening settling.
When she stopped napping regularly, we moved bedtime earlier by about thirty minutes. This counterintuitive step, putting a tired child to bed sooner, reduced the overtired resistance that had been making evenings difficult.
Handling Night Wakings
Even with a solid bedtime routine, night wakings happen. Illness, developmental leaps, travel, and changes in routine all disrupt sleep temporarily.
Our approach to night wakings is to respond quickly and keep the interaction brief and boring. We do not turn on lights, do not start conversations, do not offer snacks. We check that she is safe, offer a brief reassurance, and leave. This is easier to maintain consistently than approaches that sometimes involve extended comfort and sometimes do not.
The Czech pediatric guidelines we received at our regular check-ups were consistent with this approach. The pediatrician emphasized that responding to night wakings is not the same as reinforcing them, as long as the response is calm and brief.
What We Learned
The most important thing was accepting that toddler sleep is not a problem to solve permanently. It is a skill that develops over time, with setbacks during illness, travel, and developmental changes. The routine provides a stable foundation, but it does not eliminate all difficulty.
We also learned that our own consistency mattered more than any specific technique. The nights when we were tired and cut corners on the routine were reliably harder than the nights when we followed it even when we did not feel like it.