Your Toddler Won't Sleep? Here's What Actually Helps

It's 7:30 PM. Your toddler has been rubbing their eyes for the better part of an hour — and the moment you head toward the bedroom, they're suddenly wide awake and ready to explore the entire world. Or they cry, heartbreakingly, and nothing you try seems to land.

And this happens even though good, age-appropriate sleep plays such an important role in your child's development. Sleep helps them unwind and refuel for the next day. A shortage of it, on the other hand, tends to produce restless children who struggle with irritability and a short attention span.

I'm Sarah Mann, a baby sleep consultant and mom of seven. In this article, you'll find out why your toddler doesn't want to sleep and what you can do so that your little one — and you! — can start the next day rested and full of joy.

1. My Toddler Won't Sleep! Why?

There are a handful of possible reasons why toddlers resist sleep.

The Impressions of the Day

Toddlers learn an incredible amount every single day, and they take in a huge number of impressions that all have to be processed. Especially after a demanding, exciting day — the first day at daycare, for example — it can be genuinely hard for a child to settle and stick to quiet phases. The sensory overload is simply too much.

In cases like that, it's completely normal for a child to sleep poorly. They need time and quiet to process all these new experiences.

Also make sure your child isn't being put to bed only once they're already overtired. That backfires, and it's one of the most common reasons behind restless sleepers.

No Routine

One of the most frequent reasons toddlers sleep badly or have trouble falling asleep is a missing routine.

A consistent bedtime routine doesn't just give your child an enormous sense of security and make the whole bedtime process far more pleasant. It also supports the natural release of melatonin in your child's body. That hormone helps your little one wind down and drift peacefully into a sleepy mood.

(Which tells you something lovely: our bodies are built to want routines, and they simply work better with them.)

Smartphones, Tablets and Co.

One of the biggest tiredness-killers of our time is screens — TVs, tablets, phones.

The blue light they emit reduces the release of the sleep hormone melatonin, which means the body gets tired much more slowly. Trouble falling asleep and staying asleep is the result.

In my opinion, children under two shouldn't be using screen technology regularly at all.

And as a general rule for every human being: it's worth putting all electronic devices away one to two hours before bedtime.

Food

Food can also make it harder for toddlers to find their way into sleep.

Sweet food or drinks (sugar, aspartame) wind children up and are best avoided in the evening.

Heavy meals can make falling asleep difficult in the same way.

Physical Discomfort

Naturally, pain or general discomfort can trigger poor sleep too. Teething, fever, developmental leaps, sleep regressions (the 15-month regression, the 18-month regression, and the 2-year regression) — all of these belong on your radar so you can respond to them.

The 18-month regression in particular has a reputation for turning a good sleeper upside down for a couple of weeks. It passes, and it can absolutely be handled with warmth and patience rather than panic.

2. Toddler Not Sleeping: How Much Sleep Do Toddlers Need?

If your toddler takes a very long time to fall asleep or wakes up often at night, it may be that their sleep needs or their bedtime aren't well matched to them.

Every child is different and has their own individual requirement, but as a general rule you can say that toddlers between 1 and 3 years old need around 12–14 hours of sleep per day. At least 10 of those hours should be night sleep.

Toddlers need a lot of sleep to develop and grow well. When they don't get enough, they can become tired, unbalanced, and irritable. It can also lead to trouble concentrating and difficulties with learning.

And at night, too, the effects of too little sleep or too late a bedtime show up as restless sleep.

The optimal bedtime for toddlers is usually between 7 and 8 PM. To make sure they get enough sleep and don't tip into overtiredness, they shouldn't go to bed too late.

When your child drops their second nap, move bedtime earlier.

3. Your Toddler Can't Find Their Way into Sleep? Start a Routine

As I mentioned above, rituals and routines are absolutely essential to a child's falling-asleep process. If you want to do something to help your toddler fall asleep and you don't yet have a consistent bedtime routine, that's where to begin.

This is one of the very best strategies for helping toddlers fall asleep.

The key is that your child isn't racing around right before bed but coming to rest through small elements that you introduce for every single evening.

Every child has their own preferences, of course, and different things will appeal to different children.

(Our own routine is built around a lot of closeness and storytelling, and even our one-and-a-half-year-old daughter already loves it. She's slotting into her older siblings' sequence more and more, and it helps her get in the mood for sleep too.)

It's also important that children have had the chance to play and let off steam at some point during the day.

Elements for a bedtime routine might be: reading, cuddling, a massage, singing quiet songs, bringing stuffed animals into the process, talking about the day, and so on.

On top of that, pay close attention to keeping your toddler's bedtime the same every evening. This helps your child's body get used to it and prepare itself for sleep.

4. Your Toddler Won't Fall Asleep? Check the Sleep Environment

For your toddler to sleep well, it's worth paying attention to a good sleep environment.

Make sure the room isn't too warm or too cold. A temperature between 61 and 68°F (16–20°C) is ideal for good sleep. Also make sure the room is dark and quiet. Darkness genuinely promotes good sleep and helps your toddler relax — children sleep noticeably better in a properly dark room, and it's one of the easiest things to fix.

Before bed, it's also worth getting fresh air into the bedroom. Air the room out before you put your child down.

And make sure there are no toys lying in the bed. Stuffed animals, on the other hand, can help, because they give your child a sense of security.

5. What Else Can I Do When My Toddler Won't Sleep?

Learning to Fall Asleep Independently

Separation anxiety and habit are common reasons why toddlers struggle to fall asleep without Mom or Dad. At the same time, it's important that children learn to fall asleep in their own bed.

Why?

A night's sleep is made up of different sleep phases. Between these phases, we all wake up more or less briefly — adults included — check the situation (usually unconsciously), and go back to sleep.

But when children are used to having certain forms of help as they fall asleep (being held in your arms, being stroked), they want that same help when they briefly surface, in order to be able to keep sleeping.

So if your toddler has learned to fall asleep on their own, they can use that same skill at night to keep sleeping on their own.

There are various methods for practicing this. For toddlers, the one I especially recommend is the chair method. With this approach, you sit beside your child while they fall asleep and accompany them with words or with physical contact. Then, over the following days, you gradually let those falling-asleep aids fall away and move the chair you're sitting on further and further from the bed.

In other words, you practice with your child in small steps, so that they can let go of you at bedtime and manage the process themselves.

(This approach is very typical, by the way, since we help our children rehearse all sorts of challenges as they grow up: staying at daycare on their own, sleeping over at their grandparents', going to school, and so on.)

Soothing Words

Words can have a deeply calming effect during the falling-asleep and staying-asleep process.

We've made a habit of closing the bedtime routine — or encouraging sleep during the night — with the same sentences every time (Sleep well! Mommy is here and loves you. Keep on sleeping.)

Words like these have a strongly calming effect on children. Especially once they're used to them and associate something with them (It's sleep time now).

Music

Quiet music has often helped our children fall asleep better, too. Not every child likes it, but sometimes it distracts them and calms them down.

Consistency and Good Preparation

At some point, toddlers discover their own will. And that can mean getting them to sleep becomes a notch harder.

You often get the feeling that the little ones are leading you around by the nose and simply refuse to go to bed. But with a bit of consistency and good preparation, you can counter that.

First of all, think through in advance exactly how the going-to-bed sequence should look. When should bedtime begin? Which rituals come before falling asleep?

These routines shouldn't be too long, and they mustn't trigger big discussions. They should also happen at the same time every evening. That way the little ones get used to the sequence and know exactly what happens next.

It's also important to decide beforehand which points your child gets a say in and which they don't. For example, your child may get to decide whether they'd like one more story or a song — but not whether they get to stay up for ages or skip bed entirely.

Generally speaking, remember that you want to teach your child to make decisions. So giving them a few choices over the course of the bedtime routine relaxes things enormously and helps your child's development.

Further examples might be:

• There are two sleep sacks. Your child gets to pick which one they wear. (But not whether they wear one.)
• There are two toothbrushes or toothpastes. They get to pick which one they use. (But not whether they brush their teeth today.)
• They get to pick whether they're carried to the bedroom in your arms or on your back. (But not whether it's time to head to the bedroom.)

In our experience, these small mini-choices bring a lot of ease into everyday life with children — and not only at bedtime.

Watch the Length of the Midday Nap

Your child's wake windows between sleeps shouldn't be too long or too short. For toddlers on two daytime naps, 3–4 hours is appropriate. If your child is down to one nap a day, aim for wake windows of between 4 and 5.5 hours (with the one before night sleep a little longer).

That way your child will be tired at the right time in the evening — and not overtired.

6. My Toddler Keeps Waking Up at Night! I Can't Do This Anymore!

When children don't sleep the way you'd hoped, it can really fray your nerves. And when it doesn't just happen a few times but regularly, sleep deprivation is the logical — and utterly draining — consequence.

So what then?

Here are a few tips for rescuing the day after a bad night.

Power Nap

In everyday life with a toddler, it's usually hard to catch up on a lot of sleep or take a long midday nap. What's far more practical, and genuinely helps, is a power nap: 15 minutes of short sleep.

Fresh Air

Simply airing out the apartment properly often has a wonderful effect. But when it fits into your day, a walk in the fresh air is worth a great deal more. It doesn't just create movement and new energy. It does our children good, too.

Help from Others

When it's possible, it's incredibly precious. Someone who takes your child for a walk, runs the vacuum for you, or brings something to eat — it's so helpful.

And don't feel guilty about it. People like to help, and they're often relieved to get concrete suggestions for how to support you.

Go to Bed Earlier

If it's at all possible, give going to bed early a high priority. Even if other things fall away because of it, it's the best route to good, valuable sleep.

Split the Night

It isn't always feasible, but when it is, it can be a huge relief for Mom and Dad to divide the night between them. Who checks on the child when, and who gets to sleep.

Dad can be a great help at other times, too. At bedtime, for instance. If your little one has only ever been put to bed by you, it's worth letting Dad take over the routine step by step — most children adjust within a week or two.

Give Yourself a Break

Sometimes you simply need to switch off and come to rest. Especially in phases of sleep deprivation, and in times when you have to be there so much for your child. It does you good to sit down with a cup of tea, take a hot bath, or do something else relaxing that you haven't made time for in ages.

That matters, and it may well need to go into the calendar.

Help Your Child Toward Better Sleep

It isn't always the right moment (when your toddler is sick or in the middle of a sleep regression, for example). But to improve your situation, it makes an enormous amount of sense to work on your child's sleep itself.

There are wonderful ways to help your child sleep better — ways that keep you right there beside them, with plenty of closeness and reassurance at every step.

7. Frequently Asked Questions

My Toddler Doesn't Sleep Through the Night — When Will That Change?

Let's look at the research to get some concrete answers to this question.

A large-scale study in the UK with nearly eleven thousand participants found the following:

• More than 1/3 of all babies still wake regularly at night at 12 months.
• Nearly 1/4 of 2-year-olds still don't sleep through the night.
• 16% of older children remain little night owls and continue to wake regularly.

What does that mean concretely?

Nearly 33% of all children don't sleep through the night at age one (which is fairly normal at that age).

But now, pay attention:

About 25% of children still don't sleep through the night at age two.

You can see that the difference is strikingly small — from about 33% to 25%, only 8% fewer.

In plain terms: roughly 3 out of 4 children who don't sleep through the night at age one still don't sleep through the night at age two.

(What's unclear is whether the remaining 1/4 even managed that step on their own.)

And further: over 60% of two-year-old children who still haven't learned to sleep through the night carry their sleep problems on into preschool age.

(The rate of "through-sleepers" only falls from about 25% to 16%, meaning 64% of the 2-year-olds kept their fragmented sleep patterns long-term.)

A Concrete Example

To make sense of all these numbers, let's work through a small case study.

Take Megan (a made-up person). Megan and her little Benjamin, one year old, are having their share of sleep troubles. She's hoping these sleep problems will resolve on their own over the next 12 months.

But the UK study shows that this won't happen in 75% of cases.

At minimum.

The probability could be even higher, since Megan wants Benjamin to learn to sleep well "on his own." That wasn't a condition in the study — plenty of the families surely tried something actively in order to belong to the other 25%.

And Megan needs to watch out, because there's at least a 45% chance (75% times 60%) that Benjamin is also among those who still have sleep problems at preschool age.

What Do We Learn from This?

Even though sleep problems do decrease with age, this holds especially from 12 months onward: in a great many cases, we're genuinely talking about years without sleeping through the night.

So: if your baby is still sleeping badly from around 10–12 months (the point at which night feeds are theoretically no longer necessary — and I set that boundary very gently and very late compared to leading sleep experts and pediatricians worldwide), then it's highly likely that your sleep problems will be with you for many more months, or even years.

Because from the first year of life onward, sleep problems rarely grow out on their own — or only very slowly.

In that sense, it's great that you've landed on this page and are looking for solutions. From my own experience, I can only encourage you to actively try to improve your sleep situation.

My Toddler Cries When Falling Asleep — Is There Cause for Concern?

Here you should always check for physical complaints first. Is your child sick? Did they take a fall at some point during the day? Are they tensing up? Might they be getting new teeth?

If you can rule those things out, check their other comfort needs: a full diaper, hunger, thirst, too cold or too warm. Growth spurts or a regression can be the reason as well.

If it isn't any of those either, your little one is most likely fighting overtiredness (in bed too late), overstimulation (many impressions from the day, few quiet phases), or has separation anxiety (doesn't want to be alone, hasn't yet learned to fall asleep independently).

→ See also: Baby Cries Before Every Sleep? How You Can Help Now

My 2.5-Year-Old Wakes Up Screaming at Night — What Should I Do?

If your child wakes up screaming at night and can't be calmed, it may well be what's known as a night terror.

These can give you a real fright, because the screaming sounds so panicked. Still, you can generally be reassured, since it's harmless. It also has nothing to do with nightmares.

As a parent, beyond talking gently and stroking them, there's usually not much you can do except wait until it's over.

But it's also possible your child had a bad dream or is remembering some less pleasant experience from the day.

In that case, try to comfort your child and tell them everything is all right. Hold them close in your arms and stroke them gently until they've calmed down. If possible, stay with them until they've fallen back asleep.

In most cases, children are only occasionally woken at night by nightmares or fears. If this happens more often, however, or your child seems extremely frightened, you should see a doctor.

→ For more reasons behind screaming wake-ups, see also: My Baby Wakes Up Screaming? 15 Reasons and Solutions

And Now?

I hope the tips I've shared help you better understand why your toddler doesn't want to sleep and what you can do to improve the situation. It's important to take action and help your toddler sleep better. It can be a challenge, but I know you'll manage it.

With love, Sarah