3 Tricks We Actually Used to Get Our Toddler to Sleep Through the Night

Mar 10, 2021

Can’t get your toddler to sleep at night? Yeah, us either. Until recently! We finally cracked the code on how to get a toddler to sleep through the night and now that we’ve been through a few weeks of getting a toddler to sleep through the night on his own, I figured I would share some of the mistakes we made, what we learned along the way and my best tips on how to get a toddler to sleep.

I’ll be honest, until midway through December we were struggling with how to get our toddler to sleep alone after co-sleeping.

This entire saga of how we got our toddler to sleep through the night alone starts way back in January of 2020, maybe even December of 2019. Back then, our son was about 9 months old and had been sleeping pretty well through the night… until he didn’t anymore. He started waking up consistently in the middle of the night and would take 45 minutes to an hour to get back to sleep. While my husband and I never imagined ourselves co-sleeping with any of our children, we quickly entered survival mode and started bringing our son into bed with us when he would wake up. I convinced myself it would only last a week, maybe two at the most. Then I traveled across the country from Alaska to Virginia alone with him in January while my husband was away on military duty. Needless to say, this did not help my baby sleep through the night as we were dealing with a 4 hour time difference on top of being in new places. So we kept co-sleeping. I’ll deal with it when we get home, I told myself.

Then February happened and my husband found out about his upcoming deployment. What started off as a few months of solo parenting turned into an extended deployment thanks to the pandemic and needless to say, trying to get my toddler to sleep on his own through the night wasn’t a priority. We were in survival mode and one of the best pieces of parenting advice I’ve ever received is “prioritize good sleep over everything else” so that’s what I did.

In December of 2020, we took an in-state trip to my in-laws and decided if we were going to get our toddler to sleep through the night it was now or never. After a few weeks, I’m happy to report that my toddler’s sleep schedule is now great, we’re no longer co-sleeping, he takes great naps, and we’re even starting to work on transitioning him from a crib to a bed as I’m writing this.

A quick disclaimer before we get into the details of how I actually got my toddler to sleep through the night: I am not a sleep expert. I’m just a mom who needed to do what worked for our family in order to get my toddler to sleep. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach to toddler sleep. You’ll figure out what works best for your family! I just wanted to share my experience in an authentic way as I always strive to do with this site.

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My Best Tips on How To Get a Toddler to Sleep

Create a solid routine for your toddler at both naptime and bedtime

Routines and good sleep habits for toddlers go hand in hand. My toddler lives for a solid routine. While he’s flexible if things change, he knows what to expect when we’re getting him ready for naptime and bedtime and I think that helps him to cope with going to sleep on his own more than he was originally. Now, we’ve started to enter the stalling phase as we get closer to age 2 but that’s a topic for another day. The best thing you can do to set your toddler up for success with getting a toddler to sleep through the night on their own is to establish a consistent bedtime routine.

Their bedtime routine doesn’t have to be anything major, it just needs to be consistent. Our son loves playing in the tub during the day, especially when we’re stuck inside most of the time due to the Alaskan winter so a bath isn’t usually included as part of his nightly routine. However, our nightly routine consists of dinner where he gets to start drinking his milk, once we’ve finished dinner we move into the playroom and he plays his heart out with our Nugget Comfort Couch. This nighttime routine works really well for us especially because my husband works sometimes long hours with his job in the military and it gives them a little extra time to bond at night. Once 7:20 rolls around, I move our toddler upstairs to conduct the rest of his routine. He gets his Vitamin D, brushes his teeth, and gets lotioned up and dressed for bed. We then read a book together in his room with the lights dim. Once the book is done, he turns on his sound machine. Getting your toddler involved with their own nighttime routine is key! Toddlers love to show their independence in any way they can. Before I put him in his pack-and-play for the night, he picks a lovey to sleep with and I give him lots of kisses. Then I lay him down, sing a song, and say goodnight!

Use sounds and music to help signal transition

One of the greatest pieces of parenting advice I’ve ever heard is using music and different sounds to help children understand and recognize transitions. We all know how crucial it is to have white noise for new babies but as they get older you can start incorporating other types of sound and music into their routines to help them understand when a transition is happening. In my experience, this really helps with preventing toddler sized meltdowns. Our son still uses a sound machine with white noise at both naptime and bedtime so he is familiar with that type of noise signaling that it is time to calm down and sleep. Something as simple as signing him a lullaby before I leave the room, once we’ve finished a book or two and he’s all tucked in has been a huge help with getting him to easily drift off to sleep on his own. Get your toddler involved in the different sounds too. You can even use separate sounds for winding down and that sort of thing. We also have our son’s Hatch Rest sound machine set to switch to a new noise when it is an appropriate time for him to wake up. This step isn’t 100% necessary but with a toddler who was waking up at 5 in the morning ready to play, I was willing to try anything. I love that the Hatch gives me the ability to set routines so I don’t have to worry about switching his sound machine and I can control it from my phone if I ever need to (like when he turns it off after I leave the room and he’s trying to avoid taking a nap).

Choose which method you’re going to use and stick to it

There are many different types of toddler sleep training methods out there and some are more controversial than others. However, you have to decide which method is going to be the right fit for your family. Our toddler is very strong willed and, as I mentioned, he was requiring me to stay with him upwards of over an hour at night in order to fall asleep. I knew that we were never going to get our toddler on a sleep schedule if we continued to do this. So we decided to work with a modified version of crying it out. Once we had a solid evening routine in place, I would go through the motions of that routine, place him in his pack-and-play and say goodnight. Naturally, he would start crying as soon as I started to walk away. We started small with how much time we left him alone to cry. I knew that he was safe and that crying wasn’t going to hurt him. So I started going in after 5 minutes, then 8 minutes, then 10 minutes. After 4 nights, he figured out that he didn’t need me there for him to be able to go to sleep and actually got really good at entertaining himself until he eventually fell asleep.

*At the time I’m writing this, we have now fully transitioned him into sleeping in his own bed (queen size floor mattress) for both naps and nighttime and it’s going so well! If you’d like to hear our experience with bed transitions as well, let me know!