Bedtime battles: Why won’t my child just go to sleep?

If you have a young child, bedtime can be one of the hardest parts of your daily routine.

Kids often have a lot on their mind at night. There’s Roblox, Netflix, and 100 other things competing for their attention as they try to go to sleep. Plus, they have a full day of school ahead. 

But as a parent, you need some time for yourself at night, too. It’s your “me” time to relax, get tasks done, or spend time with a partner. This can create tension between you and your child at bedtime.

On this episode of Parenting Behavior, Dr. Andy Kahn shares tips for how to handle the communication issues that come up at bedtime. Plus, how to create a healthy bedtime routine and more. 

Related resources

• Download: Bedtime checklists for kids

• Child can’t wind down at night? Why some kids struggle to go to sleep

• My child with ADHD can’t fall asleep. But I’m so tired. What can I do?  

Episode transcript

Andy: So, I want to start off telling a little story about something I experienced with my own child some years ago. So, our family and a few other families went away for a weekend, and all of our kids were about the same age. They were toddlers and we had a great time. Everyone was frolicking around this location, and we're playing in the living room, and the kids are running and the adults are carousing and having fun. And then the dreaded hour hit. It was bedtime. 

So, I got my daughter's stuff together, brought her into the room, and got her ready for bed. Came back out and looked at the living room, and it was pretty much empty. I was the only one who was back in the room, and I was listening and realizing everybody else was doing a somewhat different routine. 

There was the third water trip. There was a child going to the bathroom again, the extra long bedtime story. And even after an hour's time, less than half the parents were back in the room. So, I came to the conclusion that I think many of us do, is that bedtime is hard and we all have our own very different approaches to handling it. So, if you've got a young child, bedtime can be one of the hardest parts of your daily routine. 

Keep in mind, your kids have so many things going on in their minds and in their lives, whether it's Roblox or watching Netflix or one of the 100 other things they're interested in. And keep in mind, bedtime is the time they all want to process out, what was the day like? What's going on tomorrow? What things are you afraid of? Bedtime can be tough. 

This is "Parenting Behavior" with doctor Andy Kahn. That's me. I'm your host, and I'm a licensed psychologist and a parent, and I've been working with families for over 20 years, helping them managing challenging behaviors with their kids. 

Today's episode is about bedtime battles. So, let's be honest. Your kids need a lot from you at bedtime, and you need that time too. It's a natural conflict to want to take care of yourselves, but also to get your kids to bed. And it often feels like it's just not going to get any better. So, keep in mind, you know, this is a time of day where you have the least patience, you're most easily frustrated, and you're tired. So, what does this mean?

Well, first and foremost, you're not going to break your kids if you're making everyday parenting errors. Your kids are resilient. The key about navigating bedtime is to understand the communication that's coming through your child's behavior, and to figure out the best ways to create healthy boundaries. 

One of the key tips here is to create bedtime routines that take into account what's already going on in your child's life. You have to think about, "OK, now, my child may be fearful or thinking about something that they didn't like during the day. And it's important to be present and reassuring." But bedtime is not the time to solve the world's problems. We have to just give our child what they need for soothing and save those topics for another time. 

Having an opportunity to talk to your child about some of those details later away from bedtime can be really valuable. You can give them a chance to talk about details. What are the things that can help keep them safe in their day-to-day lives? And importantly, give them the chance to learn some soothing strategies. Squeezing a pillow. Getting a stuffed animal, doing some other things, like deep breathing are great strategies to practice so that when bedtime comes, you can encourage the strategies and not the conversations about details. 

One of the keys is that wind-down time and bedtime may require some very specific pieces. Putting devices away at a set period of time, giving them an opportunity to have some quiet space and a little bit of parent time, if possible, to give them reassurance and to soothe them. So much of this is challenging. But the key is we want to help you settle your child's body for sleep. 

All right. Obviously, we don't want to spend all night getting our child to go to sleep, but for many of us, these hours and hours have been a great struggle and a great source of suffering. One of the most important things we can do for ourselves as parents is healthy and clear boundaries around bedtime. 

So, grown-ups need to take time for themselves, even if that time is only around doing things like cleaning up the mess from the day or making lunches for tomorrow. That time gives us the opportunity to recharge and at the very least, reduce some of the chaos we've been living in. 

So, one cool thing is that a recent study has shown that the ideal bedtime lasts anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes. So, the research really supports the idea that we don't have to do this all night long. We just need to have a good process and ritual to make this work. 

In addition, there's a great piece of research that says it doesn't really matter the method that we use in terms of crying it out or checking in on your child regularly. But that children's mental health is not negatively affected by choosing one of these methods, which gives you the opportunity to pick what works best for you and not have to use the strategy your parents used, or someone else in your neighborhood, or a friend on a community website that you've been looking at. 

We have to think about the other piece of this is that any time you're trying a new parenting approach, you need to be aware that those changes are going to take time. So, if you've been soothing your child to sleep for hours every night, you're going to need to crank that back slowly over time, because that's going to be really jarring for your child. 

Also, keep in mind that having consistent bedtime routines will help train that child's body to be relaxed. So, I'll give you an example here. That wind-down process takes time. So, if you're to turn off devices, let's say at 8:00 and at 8:15 you have bath time, then at 8:45 you have story time, that trains the body on how to bring itself down and be calm. 

And oftentimes as kids get used to their routines, you'll actually find them starting to fall asleep during storytime or whatever the last soothing activity you do before bed. So, there's a lot of good research that supports this. Keep in mind, giving your kids good routines and rituals teaches them what to expect and trains their bodies to best get to sleep each night. 

OK, folks, there's one thing that's really important to understand. And we talked about this in some other episodes, but any time we try to change up how we parent or the routines we're trying to bring into play for our kids, things can get worse before they get better. 

So, think about what you're doing currently. If you're lying down for hours with your child and you're trying to change that pattern. It may take some time because your child is not going to want to give you up. So, having some natural transition time here is going to be really important. 

Also, keep in mind that there's lots of possible sources for guilt. If you're struggling because you're working a lot of hours, or you're out of the home for some other purpose, or you're just not feeling successful with your child, a lot of times the guilt will drive us staying too long or breaking the rules we're setting for ourselves, and that makes it so much harder at bedtime. 

So, be aware that those feelings are really natural and typical. And don't beat yourself up over them, but try to stick with the routines and rituals. It will make a difference. 

Finally, remember, you can pick what individually works for you and your family. You don't have to buy into a singular technique just because someone else says they do it, OK? Other kids are different than your kid. One kid might be different from the other in your household. So, be aware that you can choose what works best for you and make those decisions as you as a parent would make them. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Parenting Behavior" with doctor Andy Kahn. We'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on this show. You can email us at ParentingBehavior@understood.org. I'll put that email in the show notes too, where you can also find more resources and links to anything we mentioned. 

"Parenting Behavior" with doctor Andy Kahn is brought to you by Understood.org. It's produced and edited by Cody Nelson. Editorial guidance by Rae Jacobson. Music and mixing by Justin D. Wright. Briana Berry and Ilana Millner are our production directors, and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. 

Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. Learn more at Understood.org.