I’m a parenting expert – four steps to get your kids to sleep through the night
BEFORE becoming a parent, we all knew that those nights with a newborn would be a struggle.
But for some parents, the challenges don’t disappear once they get a little older.
Luckily a sleep expert has shared her top tips on helping your child sleep through the night – and broken down some common myths that might be making your job harder.
Dani McFadden and her husband Chris began working as The Mummy and Daddy Sleep Consultants four years ago and have since helped hundreds of families improve their nighttime routine.
As parents to three young boys, aged four, two, and 12 months, they know how hard it can be to get your kids to settle and sleep through the night.
Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, Dani, 37, shared why some children just don’t seem to settle or wake every few hours.
“If you think about a baby being in mummy’s tummy, when she’s walking about, pacing around doing her thing, she’s rocking her little one…and so they spend a lot of those hours asleep.
“After they’re born, when poor mum tries to lay down at night and tries to get her own sleep, that’s when baby is not being rocked, and they actually spend quite a lot of their hours awake.
“So when little babies are born, they’re already in the opposite day and night rhythm.”
Here, Dani reveals four key steps to getting your child into the right rhythm and sleeping through the night….
WORK OUT YOUR CHILD’S WAKE WINDOWS
Dani’s biggest piece of advice – work out your child’s ‘wake windows’ and let them nap if they need it.
“This is huge – this is the one thing I wish I had known before I was a sleep expert and before I parented my first child.
“Age-appropriate wake windows.
“So the wake window is the period of time your baby wakes from one nap before they go for their next.
“When I had my newborn, I thought he could work with three hours. He was still getting loads of sleep, so why couldn’t he stay awake for three hours?
“But actually it’s closer to an hour for a newborn, and as they get older, that wake window grows.
“So at about six months, a baby’s wake window is anywhere between an hour and two hours.
“But people overestimate them so much, and they think they’re so much longer.
“If they have the appropriate wake time, they are so much more well-rested and capable for their next nap.
“And parents sometimes think that the wake window before bed should be longer…but actually it’s the opposite.”
HELP THEM LEARN TO SELF-SETTLE
“Self-settling for a child is the ultimate pinnacle.
“If your little one is heavily supported to get to sleep, or needs external intervention like rocking or suckling, they’ll need that support again to get back to sleep.
“So I’d love to tell you that it isn’t the Holy Grail, but it is and working with your little one on confidence and independence to put themselves to sleep at night is really the biggest change that most parents can make.”
So how do you make your child learn to self-settle?
“I say this to parents all the time – you don’t want to not offer your child comfort.
“But it’s working out where that comfort is becoming almost a barrier to their development.
“So I always have a lovely bedtime routine…but when they go into their crib, you might just offer them a little bit of support in there, rather than doing it in your arms.”
DO THE DOUBLE FEED
Linking to her second piece of advice, Dani went on to explain how parents can break the cycle of feeding their children to sleep.
“If they want to break feeding to sleep, eating before and after the bath is a really nice way of doing it that isn’t ripping the feed from the baby.
“So feed the baby before the bath and let them take as much as they want.
“Then when they come out, offer breast or bottle again for a top-up feed, before they go into their cot.
“You’ll have the confidence to unlatch or take the bottle away just before they’re dozing off because you know they’ve had most of their feed already.
“It also means your little one goes into their cot with the fullest tummy possible and then has a nice, long stretch of sleep.”
GIVE THEM CONTROL
But what if your toddler still isn’t sleeping through the night? Luckily, Dani had some advice for these parents too.
She suggested giving your little one a sense of control – perhaps by choosing their pyjamas, bedtime story, or bubble bath.
This makes them feel as though they’re leading bedtime and so won’t fight back against it.
“Little ones at this age are starting to learn control and the need for it. They’re starting to realise, ‘hold on a second, I can do stuff myself’.
“So what we do is give the little one as much control as we can, so the child feels that they’re leading sleep.
“Let them do very purposeful choosing. So instead of saying, ‘get your pyjamas out of the drawer’, hold up two pairs of pyjamas and say, ‘which one would you like to choose?’
“They feel that you’re doing this in partnership because they’ve owned the process and the reality is obviously you’ve controlled the big things.”