Jackson has always been a pretty fantastic sleeper. He’s loved to sleep from the time he was a very tiny baby, and he blew through the majority of the major sleep regressions without too much trouble. Of course, the flip side of having a kid who has high sleep needs is that when he’s deprived of sleep he turns into a total crank monster. My kid absolutely cannot skip a nap or stay up much past bedtime, or there will be hell to pay the next day. It’s not pretty for anyone involved.
So, since he’s such a big fan of sleeping, we’ve always put him to bed very early – Jackson’s bedtime has been 6:30 for as long as I can remember, and it’s always been a really good time for him to go to sleep. He usually sleeps until about 7:00 in the morning, and we rarely stray from the routine.
But. (There’s always a “but” isn’t there?)
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Garland and I have noticed that Jackson isn’t always going to sleep right when we put him down. He’s always been pretty happy to hang in his crib and talk to himself for a little while before falling asleep, but it used to be rare for him to fall asleep any later than 7:00, 7:15 on a really bad night. However, we’ve noticed lately that there are some nights that he’ll lay in bed and babble until 8:00 before he finally passes out! He’s rarely upset or irritated, and he never fights bedtime, so we’ve continued with our normal routine but the longer we go the more I’m wondering if 6:30 isn’t an appropriate bedtime for our toddler anymore.
Taking a dreaded car nap!
Mr. Garland and I have toyed around with the idea of pushing his bedtime back a bit, but then we’ll have a night where he passes out within minutes of us laying him down. And, of course, occasionally when we start bedtime later than normal our whole routine turns into an absolute mess – he screams and cries while we’re changing him, and he usually is a pretty cranky mess the next morning too. We haven’t quite figured out what would be a good balance between not letting him lay in bed awake for an hour and a half before falling asleep and keeping him awake so long that he’s overtired.
So far we haven’t been able to pinpoint any sort of pattern to the nights where he stays up later than normal, and more often than not he’s still asleep by about 7:15…but I sure do feel guilty when I hear him chatting away to himself almost two hours after I laid him down in his crib! We’re reaching a point in the year where it would make a lot of sense for us to scoot bedtime back a bit – our summer starts this week, so Jackson won’t have to wake up early for daycare anymore, which means it’s not the end of the world if he needs to sleep in a bit while he adjusts. Of course, I also don’t want to create a cycle where he’s too tired and starts waking up even earlier, either!
It seems like the decision of when your kids should go to bed would be a simple one, but there is so much more that goes into this decision than I’ve ever realized! I’d love to hear about your experiences – how do you decide when you should move back bedtime? And when you do, how far do you move it back?
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I think bedtime is definitely one of those things you sometimes have to just tweak a little. We moved to a 7:30 pm bedtime (going up for bath and books at 7) around 18 months and then around 2.5 tried to push it back to 8:00 (7:30 for bath and books) and wound up with early wake ups. We settled on going up at 7:15 and that is the sweet spot for us right now. That being said, I think some kids (just like some adults) just need a little while to settle down for sleep and I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong if they are up there babbling a bit. Our almost 3 year old will sometimes be up there rolling around for an hour before bed, making his stuffed animals talk and singing to himself. If he was crying or upset, I wouldn’t be comfortable with it, but he is happy and I think it just takes a bit to wind down from the day. Some friends use audiobooks or music and have it play for a set amount of time while they wind down as well.
cantaloupe / 6730 posts
I would definitely play with bed time. My husband takes a solid hour to get to sleep every night and that’s not something I would ever want my kid to get into the habit of just because she was going to bed before she was tired. I would move in small steps though. Try 6:45 for a while and see how it goes. Then 7:00 if it still seems to early. Don’t just jump to 7:30 or 8 off the hop.
persimmon / 1270 posts
That might be really important learning time for him. He is processes his day and figuring things out. If he is happy and sometimes still needs that sleep it might be nice to leave it or move it just the littlest bit. I am not sleep expert…. just love the different ways kids find what they need.
pomelo / 5621 posts
I’m with @Grace: and just try moving it back in small increments.
Up until around 18 months DS went to bed around 6:30, at 12 months I had gone back to work and getting him to bed this early was hard, so we just slowly his bedtime. First it was to 7, then after being there a while we got it to 7:30. At 3 he still goes to bed at 7:30, later and the next day he is a disaster.