Toddler Sleep
When the baby plan stops working.
Toddler sleep is a different problem. Pediatric-backed guides for the moment your child outgrew schedules and started negotiating.
Toddler sleep is a behavior problem more than a schedule problem.
Infant sleep is mostly an environmental and schedule problem. You engineer the right wake windows, the right room conditions, the right wind-down, and most issues resolve. Toddler sleep does not work that way. Around 18 months, your child develops three new abilities at once: the cognitive recognition that bedtime is coming, the language to argue against it, and the autonomy to assert preferences.
That is good news developmentally. It is harder news at 8pm. The techniques that worked at 6 months stop working. New techniques are needed: contained choices, calm boundaries, predictable routines, exact scripts repeated identically, and the consistency to hold a pattern for 7-14 nights.
This section covers the issues, transitions, and behaviors that show up between roughly 18 months and 5 years. Every guide is short enough to read between stories.
Browse by issue
Pick the situation you are in. Each guide opens with a quick answer, then walks the playbook and the exact parent scripts.
Not sure which one? Find your guide →Guide
Bedtime Resistance
Stalling, negotiating, protesting, escaping. The four shapes, the five-step fix, and the exact parent scripts.
Open the guide →
Guide
Crib-to-Bed Transition
When, how, and what to expect. The signals that say it is time, and the routine that keeps the new bed working.
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Guide
Nightmares vs. Night Terrors
Two different things that need two different responses. How to tell the difference at 2am, and what to do for each.
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Guide
Dropping the Nap
The readiness signals, the evening adjustments, and the bridge weeks where some days still need a nap.
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Guide
Early Waking
The 5am wake-up problem. Why it is rarely about going to bed earlier, and what actually shifts the wake time.
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Guide
Bedtime Fears
Dark, monsters, separation. Treating the fear seriously without escalating the response into a new stall.
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The pattern behind every guide here
Every issue in this section is solved with some combination of the same four principles. The guides apply them to specific situations.
01
Predictable routines
A toddler whose bedtime sequence is the same length and order every night settles faster. Predictability is the antidote to a developmental moment defined by uncertainty.
02
Contained choices
Toddlers need autonomy. They do not need open-ended bargaining. Two pre-chosen options inside the same routine give the autonomy without losing the boundary.
03
Calm scripts, repeated identically
The words matter less than the consistency. Pick a phrasing per scenario, write it down, and use the same version every night. Variation is what the testing is looking for.
04
Hold for 7-14 nights
The first 3-5 nights are usually the worst. Inconsistency resets the clock. One “just tonight” exception undoes a week of work.
Looking for age-based regressions?
Sleep Regressions by Age
If what you are looking for is the developmental milestones that disrupt sleep at predictable ages (the 4-month regression, the 8-month regression, the 2-year regression), those live in their own age-organized section.
Open the Sleep Regressions hub →Tonight is hard. Tomorrow night is the test.
Kiri tracks your toddler's bedtime patterns night after night so you can see whether a new routine is actually working. For the questions that don't fit a guide, the in-app AI Sleep Specialist answers based on your child's actual data and clinical guidelines.