Best Time for Your Baby to Sleep

Have you tried sleep coaching or sleep training and it just didn’t work?  

I talk with parents regularly who say this has happened to them.

I always ask if they were catching their child’s “sleep window” during the sleep training.

9 times out of 10 after we talk about it, they say no, they weren’t catching the sleep window. 

Sometimes the reason for sleep training not working is that the sleep training method a parent is using does not work for their child. 

However, it also can be that the sleep window is missed. 

When your baby or child misses their sleep window, it is really hard to gain success in sleep coaching. 

Why is it so important? 

The sleep window is the time when the body is naturally ready to go to sleep. 

You know your child is entering their sleep window because they start showing sleepy signs. 

You’ll see sleepy cues, like rubbing the eyes, pulling on an ear, zoning out for a moment or two, or getting a little fussy. When that’s happening, your child is entering their sleep window.

The sleep window can last different lengths of time, depending on your child’s age, how tired they are or their personality. 

Typically, the window lasts anywhere from five to 30 minutes. 

The ideal is to put your child in their bed right when their sleeping cues are showing up. 

So, you want to make sure that when their sleepy cues are showing up, you’re not just starting the routine to get them in bed, because if you do that, by the time you get them in bed you’re probably going to miss the sleep window.

Instead, start the bedtime routine before their sleepy cues show up so that right as you’re finishing the routine or right after they get in bed. 

Then it needs to take five to 10 minutes to fall asleep. 

How do you know if you are catching the sleep window? 

• It takes them 5 – 10 minutes after laying down in bed to fall asleep. If they fall asleep immediately, that’s an indicator that they were overtired and they missed their sleep window.
• Your child is happy and calm at bedtime vs. irritated, silly, fearful or upset. 

How do you know if you missed the sleep window? 

If your child misses their sleep window, then the body says, “Okay, let’s release a little cortisol (stress hormone) to keep us going.” 

At this point, the cortisol makes your child wired, but tired. 

It makes it difficult for them to fall asleep, so you may see craziness, silliness, demands from toddlers, crying, might seem a little crazy, behavior, and that’s all a sign that cortisol is in the body and that you missed the sleep window.

So our goal is to avoid that, because then it makes it hard for them to go to sleep at the time their body’s ready to go to sleep. If you notice that that happens, pay attention the next day and try to get them in bed earlier. 

This isn’t something that you’re going to get all the time or that needs to be 100% perfect. 

But if you can, for the most part, catch your child’s sleep window, you’re going to have a lot more success with them sleeping better and with any sleep coaching! 

You will see that the bedtime resistance, fighting at bedtime or crying for a long period of time goes away. Also, your child will have less nighttime wake-ups, and possibly sleep later in the morning. 

The more you do this, the better results you’ll have.

If you are having a hard time noticing their sleepy cues, I have a couple tips for you.

Some kids are difficult to read. If this happens, go look at my sleep schedules, and see when your child’s waking up in the morning and then notice how long they should be sleeping at night. 

Then count back, and that’s when you should put them into their bed. 

If needed, experiment over the course of a week at that time and see if that works. It might be 15 minutes later or earlier, but somewhere around that time is most likely going to be when they need to go to sleep for bedtime.

You can do the same thing for naps. Just look at what the schedules say for the best nap time and try that. If that time isn’t working, you can move it earlier or a little bit later.

Try this and see what a difference it makes!

Make sure if you haven’t yet, grab my sleep schedules and join my Free Online Community for support!

Warmly,

Anna