Your little one has been sleeping beautifully. You’ve finally found a routine that works, naps are going well, bedtime is relatively straightforward and you feel like you’ve cracked it.
And then… BANG.
Suddenly, they’re refusing a nap. Crying at bedtime. Taking forever to fall asleep. Waking at 5am. Having random night wakings. Or, my personal favourite, spending a couple of hours wide awake in the middle of the night, seemingly ready to start their day!
Cue the inevitable Googling: is this a sleep regression? Are they teething? Is it separation anxiety? Is it a developmental leap? Have we somehow undone all our hard work?
Sometimes, of course, one of those things is responsible.
But there’s another explanation that I see all of the time in my work as a Sleep Coach:
Their sleep needs have simply changed.
Sleep needs don’t stay still.
One of the trickiest things about baby and toddler sleep is that, just when you think you’ve worked it all out, they grow and change!
The routine that worked perfectly a month or two ago might not work quite so well now.
Babies’ sleep needs change particularly quickly during the first year or two of life. They gradually become able to stay awake for longer periods, naps consolidate and eventually drop altogether, and their overall sleep requirements change. This is why I’m such a big advocate of routines rather than strict schedules.
Average wake windows and sleep needs can be incredibly useful as a guide, but they are just that – a guide. Your little one is an individual, and their sleep needs will continue to evolve.
And this doesn’t stop when they leave babyhood behind! My own boys are now 10 and 7, and I still notice every so often that bedtime needs to shift slightly later. A bedtime that previously worked perfectly suddenly results in chatting, messing around or simply lying awake because (quite simply) they’re not tired enough yet.
The same principle applies whether your child is 8 months, 2 years or 10 years old.
What can changing sleep needs look like?
The confusing thing is that changing sleep needs can present as lots of different sleep problems.
You might suddenly notice:
- Nap resistance or complete nap refusal;
- Bedtime battles;
- Your little one taking much longer to fall asleep than usual;
- Early morning waking;
- New or increased night waking;
- Split nights, where your little one is awake for a long period during the night;
- Naps becoming shorter or more difficult;
- A previously settled child suddenly seeming much less settled around sleep.
Of course, these things can have other causes too. But if your little one is otherwise well, there haven’t been any major changes going on and the problems are becoming consistent, their routine is one of the first places I would look.
“But they were sleeping perfectly before?!”
This is something I hear frequently from previous clients.
A little one who learnt to fall asleep independently and has been sleeping really well suddenly starts struggling. Understandably, parents panic and think:
“They’ve lost their sleep skills!”
But independent sleep skills don’t generally just disappear overnight. Often, when I look at what is going on, their little one has simply outgrown the routine we originally put in place.
Perhaps they need another 15 minutes awake before their first nap.
Perhaps daytime sleep needs capping slightly.
Perhaps they’re approaching a nap transition.
Perhaps that lunchtime nap needs to become shorter.
Or perhaps bedtime needs to move 20 or 30 minutes later.
Sometimes, a surprisingly small adjustment can make a huge difference.
Think sleep pressure before sleep skills.
This is probably the biggest message I want parents to take from this blog…
If a child who can fall asleep independently suddenly starts struggling to do so, don’t immediately assume that you need to teach them how to sleep again.
First ask:
Are they actually ready to sleep?
We need enough sleep pressure to build before we can expect a little one to fall asleep easily and stay asleep well. If their sleep needs have decreased but their routine hasn’t changed with them, you may simply be asking for more sleep than they currently need.
For example, imagine a toddler who has always had a lovely 2 hour lunchtime nap followed by a 7pm bedtime. For months, this works brilliantly.
Then, bedtime starts taking 45 minutes. They begin calling Mummy and Daddy back into the room. They’re chatting, singing, asking for another drink of water and generally doing anything but sleeping.
It would be very easy to see this as a behavioural bedtime problem.
But what if they simply don’t need 2 hours of daytime sleep and a 7pm bedtime anymore?
Capping the nap or moving bedtime slightly later might be all that’s needed.
Be careful what you introduce when sleep goes wrong.
This is where a temporary routine mismatch can sometimes turn into a longer-term sleep issue.
When your previously good sleeper suddenly won’t settle, your instinct is naturally to help. You might start lying next to them. Rocking them. Feeding them to sleep again. Bringing them into your bed. Sitting beside the cot until they’re asleep.
And there’s nothing wrong with supporting your child when they need you. The problem comes when the original reason they weren’t falling asleep was simply that they weren’t tired enough.
If we repeatedly introduce a new way of getting them to sleep, that support can suddenly become something they start to expect at bedtime and during night wakings. Suddenly, we’ve gone from a routine problem to a sleep onset association – when actually a small tweak to timings may have solved the original problem.
So, before changing how your little one goes to sleep, take a look at when you’re asking them to sleep.
Does one bad nap mean I should change the routine?
No!
This bit is important.
Babies and children aren’t robots. One refused nap or one difficult bedtime doesn’t mean you need to overhaul everything.
They may have had an unusually stimulating day. They might be teething. They might be coming down with something. They might have slept differently the night before. Or it might just be… one of those days!
I generally look for a pattern.
If the same issue is cropping up consistently over several days, that’s when I’d start thinking about whether their sleep needs may have shifted.
And you don’t necessarily need to make a dramatic change. Sometimes extending a wake window by 15 minutes, slightly reducing a nap or shifting bedtime can be enough. Make a small adjustment, give your little one time to respond to it, and see what happens.
Nap transitions are a big clue.
Changing sleep needs are particularly noticeable around nap transitions.
As babies grow, they gradually move from multiple naps to three naps, then two, then one, before eventually dropping naps altogether.
The period before a nap is dropped can feel incredibly messy.
One day they seem to need the nap desperately. The next day they refuse it. You squeeze it in and bedtime suddenly becomes ridiculously late. You skip it and they’re exhausted by dinner.
This is completely normal.
Nap transitions are rarely an overnight switch. There is often a period where you need to be flexible while their sleep needs settle into their new pattern.
Keep checking in with your child’s sleep needs.
The routine I give a family when their baby is 7 months old isn’t necessarily going to be the routine they need at 9 months.
And the routine that works beautifully for your 18 month old might need tweaking at 2 years.
Rather than thinking of your little one’s routine as something you finally “get right”, try thinking of it as something that evolves alongside them.
Every so often, check in…
Are they still falling asleep relatively easily?
Are naps still working well?
Are they sleeping well overnight?
Are they waking at a reasonable time in the morning?
Does their current amount of daytime and nighttime sleep seem to suit them?
If the answer suddenly becomes no, don’t panic.
They may not have forgotten how to sleep. They may simply be telling you that it’s time for their routine to change.
And sometimes, a tiny tweak is all it takes to get things back on track.
If your little one’s sleep has suddenly changed and you’re struggling to work out whether their routine needs adjusting, please get in touch. Sometimes having an outside pair of eyes look at their sleep as a whole is all you need to work out what’s going on.
