It can be the last and most exhausting struggle of the day: convincing your little one to go to bed and actually stay there. When my three oldest were young I looked forward to 8 o’clock each night as if a genie was going to pop out of a bottle and grant all my wishes. Honestly, just having the chance to sit down for more than 10 minutes at a time and have an uninterrupted conversation with my husband was all I was wishing for most nights (although some really good ice cream would have been nice as well). So when one of more of the kids spent the next few hours coming out of his room to tell me he needed a drink or a story or crying because his bed didn’t want him to go to sleep, I wasn’t a very happy mom. In case any of the rest of you have had this same problem (and I’m guessing you have) I’ve gathered up 13 tips for getting your little kids to go to bed and stay there.
NOTE: some of these tips will work better for some kids than others, and you might be more comfortable implementing some ideas than others. That’s ok. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to parent, just sharing ideas! Please take what seems useful to you and be respectful of what might be useful to someone else.
1. Race Dad (or Mom) to bed. This can turn into a nightly tradition to help little ones who are reluctant to head into their rooms at night. Be sure to spend some time talking it up, saying things like “you’ll never make it into your room before me!”, etc., to get your little one excited about the prospect of beating you.
2. Use a sticker chart to track your child’s nighttime routine, including going to bed the first time she’s asked and staying in bed all night. You can institute rewards for when the chart gets a certain number of stickers, but often just the chance to put up stickers is incentive enough, especially for toddlers. Use this bedtime routine sticker chart
3. Introduce an incentive for the child to go to bed by himself. For example, if he walks in and lays down all by himself he gets to hear 2 stories, but if Mom has to carry him to his room he gets 1 (or none). Be sure to be consistent! It won’t work if you cave and give 2 stories anyway.
4. Spend 10 or 15 minutes snuggling with your child in her own bed. This will help her relax and feel comfortable and give you guys a chance to have some 1-on-1 time. It might be helpful to set a timer and tell your child at the beginning how long you will stay so she doesn’t beg you to hang out for the next two hours. If she cries or doesn’t let you leave when the timer goes off, she doesn’t get to snuggle tomorrow.
5. Talk about what will happen tomorrow. This can be especially helpful for a child who’s happy to go to bed but doesn’t want to stay there. Remind him he has to fall asleep before tomorrow can come and he can go to preschool, play with friends, have his favorite breakfast, etc.
6. Use a ticket system. Another option for kids who don’t want to stay in bed is to give her one ticket per night, which she must turn in to you if she needs to come out for any reason. Once her ticket is gone she must stay in bed. Follow up with a consequence if she continues coming out.
7. Discourage continually coming out of the room by putting one item from the child’s bedroom in “time-out” each time he comes out of the room. Oftentimes just the possibility of a favorite toy being taken away for the night is enough to keep a child in her room.
8. Purchase a bedtime clock, which shows kids when it’s nighttime and when it’s ok to come out in the morning. These are especially helpful for early risers who wake you up at 5 am every morning. This Ok to Wake clock
9. Allow kids to “read” in bed for a while each night. For pre-readers, try these electronic “Me Reader”
10. Try an earlier bedtime. When kids are very tired, they tend to get cranky and oppositional, making putting them to bed even harder than it might otherwise be. Try an earlier bedtime, maybe as early as 7:00 or 7:30 for a toddler, so you’re putting her to bed when she’s still in a good mood. Allow her to stay in her room with the light on for a while and read or play as she gets tired.
11. Try the “Super Nanny” system. The first time your child comes out of bed, put him back in, explaining why he needs to go to sleep. If he continues to come out, continue to put him back in bed, but don’t speak to him. Don’t yell, don’t bargain, don’t explain. Just calmly pick him up and put him back in bed. You may have to do this over and over the first night or two, but he should learn quickly that coming out gets him nowhere.
12. Offer a privilege pass if you child goes to bed by herself and stays there until morning. The privilege could be snuggle time in the morning, extra story time, or even a slightly later bedtime the next night.
13. Shut or lock the bedroom door. Let your child know that after the first time he comes out the door to his room will be shut, and if he comes out again, the door to his room will be locked. Do not open or unlock the door in response to crying from the child; instead, explain that as soon as he calms down and chooses to stay in bed the door will be opened again. Be sure to unlock and open the door before YOU go to bed so the child would be able to get out in case of any danger. An alternative to this is to use a baby gate in the door (if your child cannot climb over it). That was he can still see out into the hallway but is unable to keep coming out of his room.
Above all, whichever method you choose to try, BE CONSISTENT! It will likely take at least a few nights for any new technique to be effective, and being inconsistent will make it take much longer. On the flip side, if you’ve tried something consistently for a few weeks and it’s just not working, it’s ok to switch strategies – kids are different, and the things that work well for one child may not work at all for another. And hang in there – it really does get easier!
If you have any ideas that have worked great for you that I didn’t mention, please share them in the comments!
Kerstin says
I am very sorry to say , but this is absolutely horrible. I hope you never get to experience a person doing some of these things to you. Keeping a child locked inside a room alone? Taking away snuggling time or only threatening to take it away? This is ridicoulus and it makes me wonder, why I should act like this towards my child?! I liked to read your blog and followed you on pinterest, but I don’t think, that I can take any more of this. There are so many ways to keep a child inside a bed. Taking away love, not talking to the child, taking away privildges or turning a child’s room into a cage is definitely NOT an option.
Veronica says
Totally agree with “Kerstin”… Especially the locking and shutting them in their room… That is n
Denise Brown says
You may not agree, but it’s not heartless and mean! Would you ever leave a crawling toddler in a bedroom to crawl around all night instead of in a crib? No, you CONTAIN them in a space where they’re safe! When you lock the door of a child’s bedroom it does the same thing. We have used this technique with all of our kids. We lock the door until they’re asleep, and then we unlock it on our way to bed in case they need us in the middle of the night. And guess what? I love my kids more than life itself. No need to judge.
Kerstin says
Dear Denise, maybe you should read neurological studies about what letting your baby / toddler / kid stay alone in a room, maybe even though it is crying or sreaming does to a child’s brain. There is NO crying itself to sleep. It is a biological reaction, that the brain just kind of gets shut off. It is no healthy sleep but kind of a coma. In our brain there are only two options when it is confronted to fear: to fight or to flee. A child is not able to do one of these. So the brain is simply turned off, only life supporting elements are working (breathing, keeping the body’s temperature…). So maybe their bodies are safe locked insde a crib or a room, their brains definitely aren’t.
Denise says
Thanks for the laugh. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Tracy says
I have turned the door knobs on my 3 yr old door and 4 1/2 yr old doors. I lock them when I put them to sleep; they may come and try to open and cry for about 5 mins but they always end up in their bed and fast asleep. They are not hurt, or being emotionally damaged. They are trying to get our attention by crying (fake) to get us to go back in there. I have a monitor on them all the time and when I see they are sleeping, I unlock the door so if they need me they can come and get me in the middle of the night. I think a few of these responses are a little overboard and extreme on what dangers they “think” are happening to our kids.
Mcb says
Unfortunately for you Denise, kerstin is right. There really isn’t a circumstance that locking your child in their room alone crying u til they fall asleep is ok. It’s far far far from ok. Those poor bubs. Do some research into it, hopefully it will make you think twice and you may just regret your actions enough and feel bad enough you will stop promoting such irresponsible actions towards our most vulnerable. They trust us to care for, protect and guide them. Don’t let your inconvenience and desperation for your own time cloud your judgement. Get through this phase with them, lovingly as it will pass.
R says
Totally agree with Kerstin. As I read this I thought, I would never do that to my kids. I love snuggling. And they’re only this little once. Eventually they grow out of it when they’re old enough to understand that they need to sleep in their own bed, and perhaps even receive a different type of incentive. My five year old grew out of this when I offered him the chance to see one episode of Sesame Street in the morning each time he woke up on his own bed. And sure enough, that cured him right away! And i only gave him the incentive for about a week, and now I don’t need to bribe him at all.
Jessa says
sometimes things like this are required. i stayed over at my sister in-law’s place for the night while my brother was on a business trip, and woke up at 3:00 in the morning to their oldest (3 years old) half way on the counter in the kitchen where all of the absolutely NOT kid friendly kitchenware was stored. thank god that they had purchased a childproof knife block (effective to the point that i had to ask how to get the knives out of it). they had a baby gate on the bedroom door, but i guess that night he had figured he would climb over it. it is much better to have a child stuck in their room that is kid friendly, regardless of tantrums, during sleep time when you may not be awake than doing things like this.
Magda Estrela says
I used a few of these with my daughter too. not all worked but we kept trying until we find the ones that did. shutting the door included. yes, it sometimes made me feel like I was a bad mother, i would read others saying i shouldn’t do that, others said it was the only way to, some like mentioned above, said it might be a last resort. After all, I stopped reading on how i should raise my kids and just do what my heart told me to. there are too many studies out there, and they are contraditory. My daughter is a healthy and happy kid, and now she goes to bed by herself, and stays. Happily, no drama, no trauma.
Klaudija says
Emotional damage is not visible but shows up later when your child will throw into your face looking him/her in the room.
Great solution for parents who don’t want to deal with their kids.
Dee says
Thanks for the range of suggestions! I especially like the sticker chart. As for now we don’t need it, my 3 yr old mostly goes to bed and stays in her bed when she should and my almost 2 yr old is still in a crib (plus he LIKES to go to sleep.) I will definitely be re-Pinning this just in case I need to use one or all of them in the future. Oh and I’m adding that ‘ok to wake’ clock to my Amazon wish list. It’s a little bit of a splurge, but I think it’s a great idea and I could see it coming in very handy.
Ahmed Arram says
I have used several methods with my two daughters the super nanny method works great til now then we moved to shut or lock the bed room method ( and I don’t consider myself to be cruel or unloving father as Kristen said about this method ) please please keep up the good work and I have allowed myself to translating your tips for arabic so that arabic readers can make use of it and I have written you as the source ofcourse
ramneet kaur says
it’s really very great article. i have a little daughter. she is three year old. today i learn from here best tips for how to help kids for better sleep on time.. Really i need this article because my daughter always sleep after 11 p.m it’s too late. So thanks for post this great article.
Susan kenney says
What about just putting them to bed and making them stay there? There shouldn’t have to be all this foolishness going on,, especially LOCKING a child in their room as if they were an animal in a cage. Set very clear boundaries for when bedtime will be, give a 5 minute warning to start picking up their toys, homework, etc, and then bedtime. Don’t tolerate any argument or pleading, just do it. My parents never went through all of these antics to get us to bed, we were shown our boundaries and lived within them. And no, my parents did not spank us into submission, we were taught what was expected of us and we learned to do it.
Acacia says
Curious how you make them STAY in their bed… You sound like a magician! Seriously though… How do you do it? I have a prococious sweet determined 3 1/2 year old who is a jack in the box. We set lots of boundaries and he is a great kid and a great listener. I need your technique apparently. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT ALL KIDS ARE DIFFERENT? My daughter who is now 6 never did this, we said time for bed and off she went, tucked her in and didn’t see her again until morning…but apparently according to you I have done something incredibly wrong to NEED any of these techniques. Just curious, why were you reading this blog if your kids stay in their bed when you tell them to?
Sadia says
I am stunned that some people are actually acting as if any of these techniques are cruel. For instance, locking a bedroom door TEMPORARILY or not responding to crying/screaming when you’ve repeatedly tried to settle your child and they are simply being DEFIANT, clearly, you’ve had an easier road with your children, and be grateful for that, but DAMN, how dare you criticize or judge another parent for trying techniques that are SAFE and offer routine development and discipline in a proper way. You must have not had much experience with any children that may have behavioral issues! Thank GOD, but so long as someone isn’t doing these things to tor child without your permission, BACK OFF. Leave well enough alone. Sometimes it requires desperate measures so that we may continue to be loving, kind and attentive parents instead of allowing our children to run us ragged with anxiety, stress and no sleep. WOW.
Lexi Michelle says
His bed didn’t want him to go to sleep? That is hilarious! We have an almost 2 year old that starting to give us trouble at bedtime. Luckily he’s still in his crib so he can’t escape lol but the tips that’ll work for a 2 year old we will definitely be trying!
Mcb says
Some helpful tips thank you. I don’t agree with closing and/or locking them in even if crying. How terrifying for them? You don’t really know the truth of what’s going on for them. It may be just not wanting to go to bed but just the same it may be that they’re scared. Don’t lock your children in their rooms ever. Never mind the thought of leaving them licked in there alone crying??? How hideous. Practice your patience as difficult as we all know this can be sometimes. Be the adult. Be the parent. Love your children and help them through.
Frances Walker says
It is not unloving to discipline a child and sometimes we need to show some tuff love. My first two children would go to sleep at 6pm and not wake until 8am. I was blessed. Then came number three and what a difference. I needed to use some of the tuff love actions and they worked. He did not go to sleep but stayed awake until 10 or 11 pm and still does at 20. He got up at 8am as the other two when he was small. When we were growing up we always had our doors shut to keep the warmth in so I do not think it is imprisoning them at all. Just keeping them safe.
Robert Randklev says
Thank you for the advice. So many sleepless nights because of our little not wanting to go to bed or stay there… That’s the darker side of parenting for sure!
Cristobal Landen says
The ticket system seems really interesting. But I bet that friends of our family would see it as being overly strict (not that I care anyway…)
Samantha Kirkland says
These are all really great suggestions. I especially like the idea of a sticker chart – we will definitely have to try that and get back to you.
We’ve tried to discourage him from coming out out his room, but usually, that makes him upset and unhappy to fall asleep. I think it’s a better idea to try and encourage him to sleep. Using the carrot instead of the stick!