How to get a toddler to stay in bed

Why they get up

Almost every toddler who gets out of bed is doing it for one of four reasons, and the fix is different for each one.

• They just learned they can. The week the crib becomes a bed, getting out is a new trick. This one passes fastest and needs the most boring response.
• They want you. Not water, not another book. The getting up is the point, and anything that gets a conversation out of you is a win.
• They aren't tired yet. If they're up for 45 minutes with real energy, bedtime is probably too early for where they are now, especially if a nap just moved or dropped.
• Something in the room is wrong. Too light, too quiet, too warm, a tag, a sound at 8:15 every night. Worth ruling out before you try anything behavioural.

The silent return

The one that works, and the one that's hardest to do. Walk them back to bed without talking, without eye contact, without negotiating. Tuck them in, leave. Repeat.

The first night this can happen twenty times. The second night, fewer. Most families are through it in three to five nights if nobody cracks and starts explaining. The explaining is the reward.

Say one sentence the first time only, at bedtime, before it starts: "If you get out of bed, I'll walk you back, and I won't talk." Then do exactly that.

The bedtime pass

For kids three and up who are stalling rather than testing. Give them one card at bedtime, good for one trip out of the room: one drink, one hug, one more question. Once it's spent, it's spent. Most kids start hoarding it within a week, which is the whole trick.

If they still have the pass in the morning, it's worth something small. A sticker is plenty.

Check-ins, if leaving is the hard part

For a kid who genuinely can't settle alone, staying and then leaving works better than leaving and coming back. Sit in the room, then move a little further out each night: bedside, door, hallway, gone. A week to ten days, one step at a time, and no step backward on a bad night.

What makes it worse

• Negotiating once. One "fine, one more book" teaches that the twentieth try works. It's a slot machine.
• Closing the door as a threat. It makes the room the punishment and the bed the place where bad things happen.
• Moving bedtime earlier because they're fighting it. Usually backfires. An overtired kid fights bedtime, but so does a kid who isn't tired yet, and they look identical at 7pm.
• Starting a new plan on a Wednesday. Start Friday. The first two nights are the worst ones, and you'll want a slow morning after.

Check the time before you change anything

If lights out is 45 minutes before they're actually sleepy, no routine will fix it. Put their age and wake-up time into the bedtime calculator and see whether the window you're aiming at is the right one. A lot of "won't stay in bed" turns out to be a bedtime that's 30 minutes off.

If your child seems to be in pain, snores or gasps in their sleep, or the night waking is new and sudden, talk to their pediatrician rather than working on the routine.