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Your Toddler’s Sleep Didn’t Break. She’s Just Missing You.

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This week’s episode is an Ask Me Anything from a mom named Emily, and it’s one so many of you are living right now:

Hi, Phil. My name is Emily, and our daughter Remy turns three in about three weeks, and recently has really regressed with her sleeping over the last two weeks. Particularly at nighttime, she lays in her bed until we leave, and then immediately goes to the door and screams for about an hour, bangs on the door crying, hits her toys against the door, and it just really goes on from there.

It’s also happening at nap time at home, even though she’s napping great at daycare. I think it’s some sort of separation anxiety. Not entirely sure what triggered it. We did start swim lessons a couple weeks ago that she had a lot of separation anxiety with, but she’s gotten a lot better. Her daycare class has also been a lot more chaotic than usual, and we notice that when things are a little up and down at school, she tends to regress.

So just curious if this is a phase. We’ve been letting her cry it out. We did try laying in there till she fell asleep. Within the minute she woke up and realized we weren’t there, pattern starts all over again. Tried leaving the door open with a barrier to say, “Hey, stay in there.” But that didn’t work. She kept coming out and then wanted us to sleep in there with her. So right now we’re just kinda letting her scream. And we have an infant at home that can wake up when she does scream. So anyway, just curious what you think. It’s happening at night and at nap time when we’re at home. And really don’t wanna get into a co-sleeping situation, ‘cause the last time we brought her into our big bed when she regressed, it was really hard to break her of that.

She usually loves her bed and sleeps really great. So curious what you think. Thanks.

My response:

First, the co-sleeping trap is real, and you can avoid it

This is one of the most common issues parents bring to me, and it very often leads to co-sleeping, because we’re all exhausted, there’s a new baby at home, and it’s so easy to fall into “just get in bed with me,” or to not even realize they climbed in because you were too tired to notice.

Avoiding co-sleeping is possible. It just takes some intentionality. We have six kids and never fell into it Emily clearly wants a peaceful bedtime and an end to the nightly door battle, and we can get her both.

This is not a melatonin problem

Before we go further: a lot of well-meaning friends will hear this and say, “Oh, just give her some melatonin.” Please don’t.

This is not a melatonin deficiency. This is a habit, separation anxiety, and busyness-of-life situation that we fix with new practices, not with something that chemically knocks a kid out. Melatonin might work temporarily, but it won’t fix the real issue. And I don’t love putting young kids on it for any stretch of time. Remember, melatonin is a hormone, not a vitamin. It has effects all over the body, and when it isn’t indicated, I’d much rather skip it.

The big picture: this is separation anxiety, not broken sleep

I honestly don’t even think of this as a “sleep regression.” People talk about regressions like a child hits a magic age and their sleep just detonates. There are windows where it’s more common, sure. You’ve heard about the four-month one, the eight-month, the nine-month. It’s tough to keep them straight because you can find a blog post about the 6.4-month regression if you look hard enough. It just happens across babyhood and toddlerhood.

Here’s what tells me this is typical separation anxiety specifically: