Toddler & young child · 18+ months
Toddler sleep consultant —for bedtime, night wakingand early mornings.
You say goodnight. You get as far as the door. And then: one more book. One more drink. One more hug. Forty-five minutes later you're still in there — and you're not entirely sure when bedtime became a negotiation you keep losing.
Or they fall asleep beautifully, but at 1 a.m. there are footsteps in the hallway. Or 5:12 has somehow become “morning.” Or the routine that used to work just… stopped.
Okay. Let's talk about that.
What's usually underneath it
Toddlers are not bad sleepers. A toddler asking for one more book is doing exactly what a toddler's brain is built to do — the day was interesting, you're in it, and sleep means leaving all of that. Bedtime resistance is usually some mix of timing, habit, and a very reasonable desire not to miss anything.
Which is why the answer is rarely “be stricter.” It's figuring out which part is driving yours — the schedule, the pattern of how bedtime ends, the big change that happened last month — and working on that.
What I'd want to know
A baby who wakes during every crib transfer and a toddler who keeps appearing in the hallway can both get called “a bedtime problem.” They usually don't need the same answer. That's the part worth figuring out first.
What happens after you say goodnight — step by step?
How long has bedtime been stretching, and when did it start?
When they come out of their room, what happens next?
Did anything change around the time this started — a new sibling, the crib-to-bed move, a trip, a new school?
What does the hour before bedtime look like?
How I work with toddler sleep
Your child is old enough to be part of this now — and that changes everything. We build something your toddler can understand and you can hold warmly and consistently: clear edges, a bedtime that means something, and a plan for the footsteps at 1 a.m. that doesn't unravel by Thursday.
The plan fits your child's temperament and your family's real evenings — not an idealized version of them. And we adjust it together as it meets actual reality.
What evenings can look like
“Goodnight” actually ends the day.
You walk out of the room without holding your breath.
You and your partner actually finish dinner.
And when it wobbles — a trip, a tooth, a weird week — you know what you're looking at, and what to do.
A few things parents ask me
Did we wait too long to change this?
No. Toddler and young-child sleep is changeable at any age — the approach just has to fit a child who talks, negotiates, and remembers. That's exactly what it's designed for.
Will this mean just shutting the door?
No. What I suggest depends on your child's temperament and what you're comfortable holding consistently. You'll know your options — and nothing gets suggested that you can't actually live with.
We moved them to a bed and everything fell apart.
That's one of the most common stories I hear. The move itself is rarely the whole problem — it's usually timing plus what bedtime had quietly become beforehand. Both are fixable.
Tell me what happened last night.
You don’t need to have any of this figured out before we talk. I’ll ask some questions, we’ll look at what you’ve already tried, and I’ll tell you what I notice. Then you decide.