I am working on a series of helpful materials on common toddler sleep troubles and would like to know your #1 question when it comes to getting your toddler to sleep better. What is the biggest challenge when it comes to your toddler and his sleep? Please leave a comment below or e-mail asknicole (at) babysleepsite (dot) com.
This article will outline tips for limit setting with your toddler or preschooler. Although I will use sleep in some of the examples, the tips can be used outside of sleep, too. Because my first son is very persistent, I have had to learn early ways to set limits.
In general, the most important thing you can do is focus on the positive things your toddler or preschooler does. Always give positive reinforcement about what he is doing RIGHT to encourage repeat behavior. Sticker charts are good for positive reinforcement and very visual for both parents and the child. Some kids simply test more than others and it highly depends on personality and temperament. For those testing moments, here are 16 limit setting tips for your toddler or preschooler:
1. Focus on behavior, not the child
It is important when your toddler misbehaves that you focus on what they did, not them as a person. You don’t want to cause self-esteem issues. Avoid saying things like “No one likes you when you cry,” for example. For me, it’s also important for my son to know it’s ok how he feels (like when he gets angry), but it’s not ok what he might do with that feeling (hit).
2. Be direct and specific
Don’t be too general in your instructions. If your toddler is known to stall, you might tell him “I want you to put all your toys away in the box before we play that last game of Chutes & Ladders before bed. If the timer goes off and you aren’t done, we won’t play the game tonight.”
3. Use your normal voice
Being firm does not mean you have to yell. Being firm is not being mean. Being firm means you are in control of the situation and confident in your decision, so use your normal voice and lead by example.
4. Tell him the consequences
If your child is strong-willed, like mine, it is very effective to state consequences before he has a chance to disobey. It takes practice, but works very well once you master it. You can use the same example as above. Another example might be “If you get out of bed tonight after bedtime, I am going to close the door for a few minutes. If you want the door open, you must stay in bed.”
5. Make sure he understands
Make sure he understands your instructions and consequences. We always ask our son “Do you understand?” to make sure he has digested what we said to him.
6. Don’t argue
If your toddler or preschooler pushes back and challenges you, it’s easy to get sucked into an argument about it. You explain yourself, she challenges back and it repeats over and over again. At some point, you need to just stop. You are the parent, she is the child. I do give my son an explanation such as “No, you can’t do that because it’s dangerous and it’s mommy’s job to keep you safe,” but then after that if he is still trying to argue about it, I will say something like “No, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I don’t make a practice of ignoring my children, but I will ignore continuous pleas for something once my decision is final.
7. Limit choices
It is easy to overwhelm children with choices, so it’s best to limit them. For example, “Do you want to brush your teeth first or put on your pajamas?” They like control and it gives them a sense of control to give them a choice, either option is fine with you. Another example is when they are doing something you don’t want them to like using a crayon on the wall: “You can keep your coloring on paper or I will put the crayons away.”
8. Use a timer
If your toddler or preschooler stalls, use a timer and tell her what the consequence is if the timer goes off before she does the thing you are asking her to do. This will especially help if your child is easily distracted or perceptive. This is especially helpful if your bedtime routine has gotten to be way too long. In that case, a timer can do well, as long as your schedule is set properly. Sometimes too much resisting at bedtime is due to a too-early bedtime once your toddler or preschooler is older.
9. Hold Firm
It is tempting to “give in” to whatever your child wanted if they promise not to do it again, however, they are testing you and if you then give them the privilege they lost, you lose ground. Instead, use it as a teaching moment that you mean your consequence by saying “That is a good choice for next time, but this time
10. Allow cool-off time
Everyone gets angry and emotions flare, including the parents, especially if one or all of you are intense Sometimes it’s best for everyone to take a cool-off time out and then address the situation at a later time.
11. Don’t be afraid to apologize
Sometimes even we lose our tempers and might yell or do something that goes against the very thing we are trying to teach our children. Don’t be afraid to be human and normal (we all make mistakes) and apologize. It doesn’t mean what they did was okay or you give in to what they wanted.
12. Don’t think it’s you
Some parents might have the tendency to take things personally and think your child is doing something TO you or getting back at you, but it’s their job to test and figure out how the world works. It’s nothing against you.
13. Immediate Consequences
For most misbehavior, it is best to have immediate consequences. As soon as that toy is thrown, it gets put away. If your toddler gets out of bed at bedtime, you might close the door (assuming he wants it open) for 2-3 minutes each time he does it, as a consequence.
14. Be Consistent
Consistency is key. You see that everywhere. But, it’s true!! When your toddler is testing you over and over again, it must be met with the same answer every time. It’s with inconsistency that more testing happens and problems linger.
15. Relate consequences
If possible, relate consequences to the action. A toy is thrown, that toy gets put away. If he makes a mess, he cleans it up. A child hits, remove them from the situation. It is not always possible to relate the consequences and for us, sometimes it’s been more effective to find out our son’s “currency” at the time. He could care less about money at this age, but he loves his matchbox cars, so if he is having trouble “being a good listener” then we might say that his cars will go on time-out. This has been more effective than he going in time-out many times. Tips for implementing time-out is a whole other article, so I won’t get into that here.
16. Don’t harp
Once your child has “paid the price”, tell him a brief summary about what happened, why the consequence happened, and then let it go. He has already paid his due. We say something like “You got a time-out for talking back.” and we ask him to apologize and then we hug and off we go.
Limit Setting Reading
For more reading, by far the most useful books I’ve read on the subject have been Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Child and 1-2-3 Magic. I’ve read at least 3-4 books on the subject of discipline. For less strong-willed children, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk is also a good one.
It’s not easy having a persistent son, but I try to look at the positive and know that there are many good reasons to be persistent and strong-willed. Doctors don’t become doctors without being persistent. I’m sure Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, or Angelina Jolie were told no a few times before they got their first break, too. It will be our job, as parents, to direct their persistence in a positive way.
Many parents with babies who are troubled sleepers figure the baby will outgrow the issue. Some do, but many simply don’t. If your 4 month old is waking up a lot at night, you might think it’s normal. But, when she is 12 months, 18 months or 2 years old and now a toddler, you’re wondering just when she might outgrow this night waking problem or if she will at all.
There are a number of reasons why toddlers wake up at night. This article will outline a few main reasons:
The same way your 4, 6, or 8 month old can struggle with sleeping all night, so can toddlers, if they don’t know how to get back to sleep without your “help”. I say “help” because all of our good intentions to help our babies and toddlers to sleep sometimes isn’t help at all and it only continues the night waking longer than necessary. Of course, I don’t fault anyone. I fell into the same trap. I didn’t know how complicated sleep could be until I had my first son!
The place we fall asleep and how we fall asleep is important. If you fall asleep on your bed and wake up at 2am and you’re on the couch, you would be disoriented and wonder how you got there. If you fell asleep on a pillow and you wake up at midnight without your pillow, you might have trouble going back to sleep without looking for it. Very often we become our baby or toddler’s “pillow”. Therefore, it’s important to have good routines that set the stage for sleep, but when it comes down to that moment when your toddler falls asleep, it needs to be in the same environment he will wake up in periodically throughout the night. This is highly related to his personality and temperament. Some children can be rocked to sleep at bedtime and wake up 12 hours later while others will need to be rocked and re-rocked every hour or two. The key is to break the sleep associations, if they are a problem.
I read about the “too long in bed problem” in Ferber’s book and has been so right on in numerous situations I’ve come across.
The gist of this problem is your toddler is in bed more hours than he can physically sleep and it causes schedule problems. This problem can show itself in different ways. Your toddler might take too long to fall asleep at night, wake too early in the morning, be up for long periods at night or a combination of the three. Waking too early or going to bed too late can usually be fixed by simply shifting his schedule.
When your toddler is up for a long period at night, the trick is to know what the cause is. If she doesn’t have a sleep association problem as described above, she gets a good amount of sleep for her age (e.g. 2 year olds need 11-13 hours in 24 hours, including their nap) and especially if she used to sleep well and now she’s up for 1-2 hours in the middle of the night, you can pretty much guess this is the issue. A toddler with this problem will genuinely not be able to physically sleep, no matter how hard she tries. No amount of cry it out or taking away toys or anything will help.
If your toddler has this problem, usually the best course of action is to make bedtime later. This is very backwards from almost any other situation I talk about on this site where an earlier bedtime will help, but in this case, it’s true. Even if your toddler goes right to sleep at bedtime, making bedtime later can help this problem. Another key is not to let her “sleep in” the next day, which is sooo hard because look at all the sleep she lost last night! The goal is to keep her in bed for as long as she can sleep, including her nap(s), and no more.
I personally went through this twice before, the most recent earlier this year with my older son, who was 3 at the time. He had been sleeping so well and all of a sudden he started coming into our room at night. At first it was just once or twice a week and no, it was not nightmares. He would not be scared or anything. Then, it started happening every single night. He kept saying “I’m not tired” but being the sleep fighter he is, I did not really believe him. We’d take him back to his room and he’d want his music on and sometimes we’d need to turn it on again if the CD finished after 45 minutes. He started staying up 1-2 hours almost every night and we were becoming our old exhausted selves.
Sometimes it’s hard to see your own problems, which is why I help others so well because sometimes you need an outside party to take a look. In my case, I didn’t really have anyone but to reread my Ferber book. His explanation of first, “the afternoon dip” and the “too long in bed problem” was DEAD ON! It hadn’t dawned on me that my son’s bedtime was too early. I mean he wasn’t napping anymore and staying up 12 hours straight already! And, he’d seem so tired at dinner (but that was just his afternoon dip we all have). But, sure enough within 3 nights of moving his bedtime 1 to 1 1/2 hours later (from 7:15 to 8:30 to 9pm — yes he is a night owl!) he stopped waking up at night! Well, he does have a night waking occasionally if he does have that bad dream, but mostly he sleeps straight through, again.
Unfortunately, teething night wakings don’t go away for everyone until both the one-year and the two-year molars come in. My first son just had molars one day without too much upheaval, but my second son, wow! His one-year molars took MONTHS to come in. Fortunately, his rough sleep nights were only here and there with his worst being just over a week ago when he was also sick with Roseola. See my article about teething for more information.
When your baby was less than a year old, you had teething and learning to crawl and all sorts of fun things to keep him awake at night. Well, your toddler may have some night waking due to developmental milestones, too. The biggest one is learning to talk and the language explosion she will have around 18 months old (my son did not have his until closer to 22 months). Some toddlers could be sensitive to other developmental milestones, but if they don’t have sleep associations, the night waking is usually minimal during these.
Soon, I will be writing a whole series on nightmares and night terrors, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but nightmares obviously can wake up toddlers. After their imagination starts to really blossom, they become more aware of the world, develop reasoning skills, and start to put together that we are mortal (i.e. we can die), things start to scare them. Also, disruptions or stress at home can cause nightmares too. The main thing to do is try to talk to him during the day about what might be scaring him and also make him feel safe and secure in his room and bed. This nightlight really helped my son feel more comfortable. He didn’t have any nightlight until around 2 or 2 1/2 years old after he transitioned to a toddler bed when we were pregnant with #2. I did have to cover it up 85% with a washcloth because it was too bright. LOL!
All situations are unique and there could be other causes of night wakings, but these are the main reasons. Typically, once they are toddlers, they don’t need any feedings in most cases. If you need help on dealing with your toddler night waking, please contact me. I’d love to help!
When it comes to encouraging a toddler or preschooler to do something you want them to do (like stay in bed during the transition to a “big boy/girl bed”), some will find a sticker chart as a good positive reinforcement tool. Rather than jump to punitive methods such as timeout or taking away privileges, using positive reinforcement to encourage behavior can be much more effective.
Your child’s temperament and personality will be a factor in how effective a sticker chart is. The use of a sticker chart takes a certain level of understanding and self-control on your child’s part, though, and that age will vary. There is a difference between knowing what he shouldn’t do and being able to control the impulse that “makes” him do something he can’t do. This is the primary reason that in the 2 to 4 year age range, most methods won’t ever work the first time for persistent children. While you might think your 4 month old (or 6 or 10 month old) is strong-willed now, by the time he reaches the age where he begins to try to become more independent, it can be very difficult to encourage the right behavior. A sticker chart is a good way to teach kids about cause and effect and rewards for hard work (After all, it’s hard work to control your impulses! Adults have trouble with that!).
1. A sticker chart does not need to be fancy. You can start with a simple piece of colored construction paper and write “Jane’s Sleep Chart” or “Michael’s Good Job Chart” or that sort of thing. You can have your child help make it by coloring with crayons and other decorations.
2. Think about what is important to your child. Every child will have a “currency”. I don’t mean money. Your child might be into dinosaurs or dolls or M&M’s or TV or a special game with just mommy or daddy. All parents will have a different philosophy. Some won’t want to use food as a reward and others don’t allow TV. This “currency” will be unique to you and your child. When we were potty training my first son, we used Matchbox cars as an incentive when he had trouble pooping on the potty and it worked well. Those cars were VERY important to him and he rarely wanted to share them because he did work very hard for them, but we potty trained in 2 months (pee within a week, but poop took some time) and he was potty trained before the age of 3.
3. Try to keep the rules simple enough for your child to understand. Children will vary when they can understand the concept of the sticker chart rules. Some will be able to understand at 2 and others not until 3 or even 4. They all develop differently so this isn’t a reflection on intelligence. Also, your child may be able to understand the chart, but can care less about it until you either find the right “currency” or he gets a little older.
4. Decide how many stickers she needs to win a special “prize”. For particularly difficult problems, you might have to start with an instant gratification and work your way up to using stickers, but if you are using stickers you’d choose a number of stickers they must earn before they get a prize. For example, if you are trying to keep a child in bed all night, you might start with bedtime and tell them that every time he stays in bed at bedtime, he gets a sticker and after 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5) stickers, he will get the prize (his “currency” from #2).
5. Be consistent! You can’t make rules and then change them. I also don’t believe that you should ever take stickers away. She earned them fair and square. If you earn a paycheck at work and make an error at your job, they don’t take away your pay (usually), so once she earns something, she should be able to keep it. It is tempting when she is misbehaving that you take some away, but this will sabotage your efforts. If she feels like they can be taken away, she will stop wanting to earn them. Imagine if you felt your paycheck could be taken away on a whim, you’d likely stop wanting to do any work for fear you’d do it for nothing.
6. Put the sticker chart where he can see it. You want to reinforce the idea of the chart and if he can’t see it, he won’t think about it. When we were working on a sleep problem (because, for us, they never go away 100% for son #1), we put his sleep chart taped on his bedroom door.
7. Involve your child in putting the stickers on the chart. You must involve your child as much as possible in the entire process. If you just announce there is a chart, explain the rules, put the chart in a drawer and you’re the one to put the stickers on, she won’t find the chart fun whatsoever. You have to be energetic and excited in creating the chart, involve her in the decorations and make it exciting. Let her have some control (toddlers looooove control) by putting the sticker on the chart herself. It doesn’t matter if the sticker is on crooked or in the “wrong” place.
8. Make sure it’s clear when she has earned a prize. You can put circles where the stickers will go and a star at the end of a row, so she knows when she gets to the end of each row. This is important, especially if he can’t count yet. Another alternative is you can make a small chart (think a piece of paper the size of a book) and once he gets his 5 stickers and his prize, you make a new chart.
9. Praise, praise, praise! Keep your excitement up when your child does well and praise often. They generally want to please you. Praise behavior you like, ignore behavior you don’t (unless it warrants time-out such as hitting or another “serious” offense — I highly recommend Hands Are Not for Hitting for hitting).
10. Slowly transition away from the chart. Once your child’s behavior has been consistently the way you want, you’ll want to slowly transition away from the chart (well, if she conveniently forgets about it, I’d just go for it!). You can play up the fact she is getting to be such a big girl and now she needs 7 stickers (or however many) to get the prize or change the prize or change the rules in some way that make sense and keeps her excited.
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