Imparting good sleeping Habits for your toddler

Today I want to write about children’s sleeping habits. I have read a lot about it before, so I know how kids need to sleep theoretically. But practically it is always a little bit different!)
Let’s start from theory:
In order to adjust baby sleep you need to notice first sings of tiredness. Very often we notice that baby is tired too late when he or she starts to cry or falls into hysteric. But if to look carefully first signs would be:
● Yawning
● Rubbing eyes
● Pulling ears
● Nuzzling
● Hogging his back
● The baby’s view becomes detached
● Baby movements become slow for some time
We need to find this “sleep window” when baby showing first signs of tiredness but not yet overtired. It’s the best time for sleep. If we don’t put baby in bed at his time very soon he will be overexcited because his body will need to produce adrenaline to support being awake. It’s a natural reaction of tired body. So to be ready to jump into “sleep window”! We need to keep a track for these signs of tiredness during 2-3 days. It is time when baby should be in bed already. In order to be ready in needed time we need to prepare before. Example: if we mark the signs of tiredness at 11 we need to start calm time at 10: reading books, drawing, collecting puzzles and etc, (no running and jumping!) And then at about 10:45 we need to start our ritual.
The Ritual is needed for the baby to understand sleeping time. It should be:
● Always before sleep
● Pleasant for both of you
● About 10-15 minutes long
● Calming
● The same order of actions every day
● The same person makes ritual and putting to sleep
Examples of ritual actions:
1. Close the curtains
2. Turn on “white noise”
3. Read book
4. Say “good night” to other family members
5. Put sleepy toy to bed
6. Make light massage
7. Turn off light

• You can invent your own pleasant ritual but make sure it is calming and not too long!)
• Ritual for day nap and for night sleep may be a little bit different.
• The most important is that everybody who puts baby in bed does the same actions in the same order.
• And of course these actions must be done only once before sleep! Baby needs to know that after this he is supposed to be sleeping!
• The healthiest time to go to bed is 7:30 p.m. or 8 p.m. And it really is! Kids sleep better and you have time for your husband and for yourself.
More often than not, we put our kids in bed really late in the evening. I did this mistake with my elder daughter; I used to put her in bed at 11 pm when both of us were already exhausted. Then she would ask for water multiple times and eventually go to toilet those many times! It was our sleeping ritual at that time! And it was really bad!

So I come to the second part of this sleeping story and it’s about reality of the situation! So what we have?
As you know I have 2 daughters. I tried to put them in bed in turns but it didn’t work so now we have our common evening preparation and sleeping ritual.
We have dinner, have bath, then they have some tea or milk, then we read book and look at pictures, talk a little, put toys to bed, say “good night” to daddy, and turn off light and sleep. We do it all together, so it always a little bit messy but we try to follow the order of actions and not to make a big change of sleeping time.
And yes, we go to bed early. It is not all according the theory, but this is enough for us. So you don’t need to implement all of the theory in real life, just try and follow the parts that work out for you and your family.
Most importantly, everything will fall into place if the sleeping habits are pleasant for your and the kids!