Oh Snap, He Took Another Nap

Ah, nap time. Most of the time, it is a relief when your toddler naps. After all, many kids need at least one nap a day until they are about five years old. Of course, my oldest son, Dylan, gave up regular naps around the age of two and a half. He naps maybe once a week, if that, on days when there is a conveniently timed car trip involved. Blake is 17 months old now, and has been napping only once a day since around his first birthday. When your child transitions from two naps a day down to … Continue reading →

Toddlers and the Time Change

Toddlers are notorious for bedtime battles, so the twice yearly time change for Daylight Savings Time can be a sore spot for parents. It can be difficult to predict whether the change will have any effect on your particular child or children. It can also be difficult to decide whether you should try to orchestrate any changes to your evening routine and bed time in the days leading up to the switch. Since we are due to spring forward in a few hours, I decided to start our evening routine an hour earlier than normal. I made sure to include … Continue reading →

Two Possible Causes of Toddler Bedtime Battles

A good bedtime routine is helpful in getting your toddler to bed at a decent hour every night. Some combination of a bath, books, cuddling, or other quiet and calming activities for about an hour before bedtime is essential to help your child unwind so that he can fall asleep. That said, the bedtime routine is not the only factor that determines whether your toddler will actually go to sleep at bedtime. One thing that can affect your toddler’s willingness to go to bed at bedtime is that he simply is not tired. This can happen for a couple of … Continue reading →

Toddler Sleep – Night Terrors vs Bad Dreams

About a week ago, Dylan did something that was very frightening. It was about ten o’clock at night, and he was asleep in the bedroom. I was in the living room, doing some work on my computer. The house was silent, until all of a sudden, Dylan started screaming. Really screaming, as if someone were torturing him. I rushed into the bedroom, and tried my best to comfort him. I asked him if something were hurting him, and he just thrashed about, mumbling things that made no sense. I tried to hold him close, but he cried even more. Finally, … Continue reading →

Praise And Your Toddler

It’s tough work, being a parent. It seems like every other day, I read something that lets me know that I am doing something incorrectly as far as how I have been parenting my little boy. That’s okay, though, I am open to new ideas and to learning which things make sense for me and my family and which ideas are best left to other people and their own families. Today, I read some interesting information about how praising children can do them more harm than good. Until about an hour ago, I was generously doling out praise to Dylan … Continue reading →

Time For A New Bedtime?

The other day, it took an inordinate amount of time to get Dylan to bed. Yesterday, I noticed that a repeat performance was underway. After we had read our books, it was eight thirty. Dylan was not at all sleepy. It was 8:30 and he had not napped. He had also only gotten nine hours of sleep the previous night when he had been regularly sleeping for twelve hours. I did not know what to do to avoid another late night, so I asked him what he thought he needed to have or do in order to fall asleep. Dylan … Continue reading →

To Nap or Not To Nap?

Did you know that your child’s need for a nap is not something that remains consistent? Lately, I have been just about tearing my hair out trying to figure out why for weeks at a time, Dylan will take his nap regularly without protest only to then go for a period of time where he refuses to nap. Some days, I exhaust myself spending an hour or two trying to coax him to nap before I can bring myself to accept the reality that the nap is just not happening that day. As a parent, it was helpful for me … Continue reading →

Go To Sleep!

I have written many times about the troubles we have with getting the toddler to sleep. She has been having terrors about being left alone in her room and going to sleep. She’s also waking in the middle of the night and having trouble going back to sleep. If there’s a thunder storm, we’re guaranteed to have her awake and wanting to sleep in our bed. We just don’t know what to do. I bought some children’s books on thunder to help Jessie with overcoming her fear, but she mindlessly ripped them to shreds along with one of her Fancy … Continue reading →

The Thunder Rolls

Sleep has become a big issue in our house. The toddler is not having any of it. She’s done. She wants to be out partying and doing whatever everyone else is doing. It’s really not all that exciting out here, but I’m sure it is for her. Jessie was such a good sleeper when she was a baby. We would put her in her bed and she’d flop over and go to sleep. She’d sleep through the night. She took three good naps during the day too. It was wonderful. We had a few rough patches with sleeping but they’ve … Continue reading →

Bedtime Struggles

We had a hard time transitioning Jessie to her big girl bed that we gave up and put her back in her crib with a crib tent. When we needed to move Baby E out of the swing where she’d been sleeping because of severe reflux to her crib, we wanted to move Jessie to her new room so the children wouldn’t wake each other. We knew, however, that Jessie still wasn’t ready to sleep in her twin bed so we moved her crib into her new room. We hoped that sleeping in the room she’s not used to in … Continue reading →