Sleeping through the night.
Ah. (buzzer)
It's like the Holy Grail of parenthood, right?
But for some families,
it is something that is actually quite hard to achieve.
(swooshing)
Today I'm answering your sleep question,
"My 13 month old has never slept through the night, ever.
"Please help."
In this video,
I'm going to talk you through
why a 13 month old baby
might not be sleeping through the night,
and some steps you can take to assist your child
to get that excellent nighttime sleep
they need for their growth and development.
So stay tuned.
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If you're new to our YouTube channel,
let me introduce myself.
My name is Nicky, (swooshing)
I am a pediatric sleep expert,
and a mother to three delightful,
mostly delightful, children.
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I'm one of the owners of a company called Little Ones
and we specialize in helping families around the world
improve their baby's sleep,
their toddler's sleep,
and therefore the sleep of their entire family.
We have developed an app
through which you gain access
to our comprehensive sleep programs,
which guide you day to day,
step by step
through every sleep milestone, regression, transition,
from birth to three years old.
we would love to help your family toward better sleep,
so check us out,
www.littleones.co. (typewriter clacking)
(swooshing)
So let's talk about your 13 month old.
The first thing I'm going to say
is that if your toddler
hasn't slipped a decent night's sleep
their whole life so far,
(laughing)
you must be pretty exhausted,
and your toddler will be pretty exhausted too.
Children are growing and developing
at such a rapid, rapid rate,
that it is really important
that they are getting decent sleep
to assist in all that growth and development.
I'm gonna talk a bit about what your toddler's day
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and their nap should look like at this age,
and then we'll talk a bit about some strategies
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for helping them to sleep better overnight.
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So one of the most important things
that affects your toddler's nighttime sleep
or your baby's nighttime sleep,
is their daytime nap.
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And at 13 months your little one is in a tricky transition
between going from two naps down to just one nap a day.
This transition happens
from about 13 months to about 15 months.
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And it can be really hard.
Some days,
depending on what time they wake in the morning,
they might need the extra nap thrown in,
and some days they might not.
It's one of those things
that you just have to arm yourself with the knowledge
about what to expect during this transition,
and then help your little one through it
on a day to day basis,
knowing that there is an end in sight.
We've got a really good article
about this transition on our website,
which I will link below for you.
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So what your naps would be looking like at this age
is a very, very short morning nap of 20 to 30 minutes.
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And I know that seems ridiculously short,
(laughing)
but the point is this is just a teeny nap
to revive them enough to get them through
to a longer midday sleep.
And this nap is also the one that
during this nap transition,
we slowly whittle away until it's gone.
So the easiest way to do that
is to just reduce it in length, bit by bit,
and you're leaving that nice solid lunchtime sleep in place.
So a tiny, tiny morning nap,
followed by a decent lunchtime sleep
of at least two hours, if you can,
say 12:30-ish, waking 2:30-ish, no later,
and then no additional sleep in the afternoon.
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This nap structure is what we would call
the ideal nap structure for a child this age.
It's the right amount of naps during the day, cumulatively,
and then it gives your little one
the right amount of awake periods between their naps,
so that they can be active
and get themselves tired enough to sleep well at night.
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Something that can definitely interfere
with a good night's sleep is a ton of daytime sleep.
If your little one is 13 months old
and is still having two big naps a day,
like three, three and a half hours worth of naps a day,
or if one of those naps is happening a bit later in the day,
say 2:00 PM til 3:30, 4:00 PM,
that is way too much daytime sleep,
way too late in the day,
and they are simply not tired enough to sleep well at night.
Their night waking,
and refusing to go to sleep,
and settle to sleep is because of their nap structure.
So we wouldn't want to see any sleep beyond 3:00 PM
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at the latest for child this age,
to then be looking at about a 7:00 PM bedtime.
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Any sleep after 3:00 PM
is going to definitely affect their nighttime sleep.
So rein in that daytime sleep.
Make sure their naps are perfect.
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From there,
let's have a look at what else can contribute
to a child not ever sleeping through the night.
The biggest factor to look at,
particularly at this age,
is your little one's sleep associations
and their settling dependency.
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If they are relying on you,
and if they have relied on you for their whole life to date,
to actively settle them to sleep,
by doing something to make them go to sleep,
that might be feeding, rocking, laying down with them,
patting their backs, sitting with I'm on their bed,
if you have to do something like that,
in order for them to fall asleep,
that is now their sleep habit,
that is the only way that they know how to go to sleep,
which means
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that when they are naturally rousing
between sleep cycles all night long,
like we all do,
every couple hours all night long,
they're coming out of one sleep cycle,
before they are able to go into another sleep cycle,
they need you back to put them back to sleep again.
They need you because they don't know
how to go to sleep on their own.
This is called self-settling.
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And from around four months old
babies will start this big differentiation
in their nighttime sleep cycles,
and they can start learning to fall asleep independently.
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So if your little one has been relying on you since then,
this will be why they are not sleeping through the night.
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What you will need to look at in this situation
is some strategies
to gently remove yourself from the situation,
to slowly take yourself out of the sleep equation,
so that they are able,
they've got the skills to then go into their bed,
fall asleep independently,
and when they rouse
between those sleep cycles in the night,
their mentality is "Yep, it's just sleep.
"I know how to fall asleep,
"I'm just gonna roll over,
"cuddle my teddy and go back to sleep."
They don't need you to come in and do something for them.
(swooshing)
This in itself is the biggest reason
that babies, toddlers, children
don't sleep through the night,
after they come through that four month sleep regression.
They don't have the ability to self-settle
because they've never been guided toward that skill.
I like to think of helping our little ones to self-settle
in the same way that we would help our older children
to learn to read.
So once your child is at school,
suddenly you don't just give them
(laughing)
"War and Peace"
(pinging)
and say, "Read this."
They need to learn how to do that,
we've got to take baby steps,
we've got to teach them,
we've got to help them learn that skill.
It doesn't happen overnight,
and it can be a bit frustrating,
and they might get frustrated,
you might get frustrated,
(laughing)
but eventually with some coaching and some guiding,
they will learn to read,
maybe not "War and Peace" at age five,
(laughing)
but they are going to learn to read.
It is our job as their parents,
as their first tutors,
to teach them,
to help them through this crucial skill.
The same as self-settling.
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If you can see that this is the scenario that you are in
with your 13 month old,
definitely check out our sleep program on our website,
because in our toddler program,
we have really specific step by step methods
that are designed for this age group,
(swooshing)
and we have some really nice gentle gradual methods
in there as well,
which talk you through everything to do with
getting your toddler to fall asleep independently
and gently removing yourself from the equation.
Because of course,
the other thing is,
you know,
what do you do when they can self-settle,
which will come,
but they continue to wake up in the night
because they've got a habit wake?
They're waking because their body
is used to that particular wake,
and they've formed a habit?
What about when they eventually move into a big kid bed
and they start popping out,
(laughing)
appearing in your room,
because they can.
There are a lot of struggles to come,
I'm gonna be perfectly honest,
and we can help you through it all, honestly,
with our sleep program and our toddler sleep program.
So make sure you check that out,
www.littleones.co.
(swooshing)
So at this age,
the massive things
(laughing)
that you need to be looking at,
is their net structure and their settling ability.
If you hit those two nails on the head,
then I think you will find that before long,
your little one will start sleeping through the night.
You will start sleeping through the night
and everyone will be a lot happier.
(swooshing)
I hope that's helped you
understand a bit about your toddler's sleep
and how you can help them to sleep better.
Don't forget to subscribe
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to our YouTube channel
so you get notified of lots more videos like this one
and I'll talk to you soon.
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