When you think of sleep training, babies usually come to mind. But ultimately, kids can struggle with sleep at any age, and we learned this first hand having to re-sleep train Evan at the age of 4. Our initial sleep training journey for Evan started when he was 6 months old. After several days, he was sleeping on his own throughout the night, and this continued up until late last year.

With so many kids going through big transitions right now (new environments, new school, new friends, new activities, etc), I thought it would be helpful to share our bedtime battles, and how we got Evan’s sleeping back on track.

Diana from Dianamartins.ca reached out to me several months ago asking if I needed help with sleep training Oliver. While Nitin & I weren’t quite ready to sleep train Oliver at that time, I decided to ask (with a hint of hesitation) if she ever ventured into the world of youth sleep training. To my surprise, Diana let me know that a large number of her clients were toddlers and older kids. My first thought – I’m not alone! I mean, I hear from family and friends the typical toddler bedtime struggles, but here Nitin & I were at a point of complete exhaustion, where bedtime was taking anywhere from 1 – 2 ½ hours.

To backtrack, our troubles began late last year. We kept Evan in his crib as long as we could – he was happy and comfortable, we were getting sleep. All was great. That is, until we made the transition to his “big boy” bed at the end of December. Evan was 3 ½ at this point, and we decided to remove his crib and introduce a bed before baby Oliver arrived in February. We opted for a floor style house bed, but little did we know that his new found freedom of roaming would disrupt our sleep, and his, for months to come.

With the ability to just get out of bed and walk around, we would find Evan wandering into our room throughout the night. Have you ever been woken up to someone just standing beside you? Scary AF let me tell you. We also noticed that Evan’s bedtime routine was dragging on and on and on, sometimes taking hours (yes, hours!) to get him to sleep. And the negotiations …oooh the negotiations! One more cup of water, one more snuggle, one more books, just oooone more tickle. By the time he was sleeping, Nitin & I were exhausted. But we still had a kitchen to clean, toys to put away and work to be done. It got harder when Oliver was born. Trying to balance an infant with a seemingly never-ending sleep routine was no walk in the park. On top of this, Oliver was sleeping in our bedroom so when Evan would come to our room in the middle of the night it would wake Oliver, and when I got up to feed Oliver it would wake Evan. It was a vicious cycle, disrupting everyone’s sleep. 

Enter Diana. We were eager to get to work with re-sleep training Evan, but doing this in the summer posed its own set of challenges. Nitin & I have always been quite strict with the kids’ bedtimes. We’re never the couple to keep them out late at events, so we either won’t go or someone will watch them. When Evan is out slightly later than he’s used to, we’re paying for it for days to come. For summer sleep training, it was difficult to find a period of 10 days where we didn’t have an event or birthday party to attend in the evening, and could commit 100% of our time to this process. We eventually realized there was never going to be a good time, so we started end of July. If you do plan on sleep training, commit and make sure you don’t have any evening obligations for 10 days. Trust me, it is worth it.

When I had my first call with Diana, I explained to her all about our struggles. It was reassuring hearing her feedback, and how common these sleep issues actually are. After our chat, and filling out a questionnaire, Diana got to work creating a customized sleep plan for Evan. Nitin & I hopped on a video call with Diana to go over all the details, and ask any questions. How do we handle Evan’s middle of the night wake-ups? How do we respond to his evening negotiations? How do we make sure he feels safe and loved while also maintaining this boundary?

Everything was done virtually, and we were sent a detailed plan of action which was extremely informative and thorough. Nitin & I sat down with Evan to explain that we were going to start sleep training. He was very receptive, and loved that he got to earn treats when he stayed in his bed. We explained how it will benefit his mind and body getting a full night’s sleep in his own bed, and he agreed. I will say that Nitin & I take more of a gentle approach to parenting, so we did reassure Evan that if he ever really needs us we are always here, and there was a night or two where he took us up on that.

The first night of sleep training went better than expected.  We logged everything in the app Diana provided, from the time we started bedtime to the time Evan fell asleep, how often he was up during the night, and when he woke up in the morning. We used the app to communicate, and Diana was always quick to answer our questions/ concerns. We continued doing this for 10 days, seeing improvements as we went along. There were nights where Evan didn’t care about earning his rewards, but overall he got the hang of things quickly. I also think he felt the difference from having a full night of sleep.

By the end of the 10 days, Evan’s bedtime routine went from 2+ hours to less than 45 minutes (including bath, brushing teeth, pajamas, books), and Nitin & I had our evenings back. We were worried that he wouldn’t want to go to bed (and stay in bed) without being incentivized by toys or candy, but we created a chart so a reward system is still in place.

Nitin & I noticed that Evan was more tired than usual, despite getting a solid 11-12 hours of sleep, which Diana reassured us is normal as his body was still catching up on sleep. Evan still gets up once in a while to come to our room in the middle of the night, but our main concern was addressing the long, drawn out bedtime routine, which has been such a game changer. If we have to deal with bringing him back to his room or having him hop into our bed once in a while, I am 100% fine with that. After our mission was complete with Diana, she did let us know that if we ever have any troubles or concerns we could reach out to her. It’s reassuring knowing that we still have her support if we need it.

We had a couple trips booked, the first being a week after we finished sleep training, and we were concerned with how this would affect our great sleep training results. We knew Evan would be sleeping in our bed at the cottage and we wondered if this arrangement would affect our new routine once we got home. After this trip, as well as our Muskoka trip, thankfully nothing changed in terms of being able to get Evan to bed without all the shenanigans. The first few days after we got home he would come to our room a couple times at night for comfort, but this didn’t last long. Even now, he’ll still come to our room during the night once in a while, but we’ve established a solid routine for getting to bed at a reasonable time, and it’s a night and day difference from what we were used to. Since Evan started JK, his bedtime is around 7:15, which sounds pretty early but his body needs it.

Thank you so much Diana for helping us get back into the bedtime groove. You can click here to reach out to Diana for sleep training services and book a discovery call.

Sweet dreams lovies!

xo,

Kiki