A Step-By-Step Action Plan For Sleep Deprived Parents Of High Needs Babies Or Toddlers

So you’ve done your research and talked to some of your friends who have sleep trained their babies.

Seems promising to hear their results and you can’t help but be inspired by their enthusiasm and raving reviews.

Still, you’re not feeling confident about the methods and the information you’ve received from mainstream sleep experts.

It somehow doesn’t align with your instincts or your child’s temperament and doesn’t feel right overall.

Thankfully, there’s an option that supports your attachment-style parenting and one that does not require you to do strictly behavioral sleep training.

This blog post will give you a clearer picture of how I support families with sustainable sleep solutions based on attachment, emotional safety, connection, managing the underlying causes of sleep challenges, and what a family-centred approach might look like for you and your child.

Before we go into the ‘how’, there are a few foundational pieces you want to have in place first. With them in place, you may find your child doesn’t actually need sleep training!

1. The right sleep environment.

If your child is super sensitive to bright light, it might be a good idea to put them in a cave dark room using blackout curtains or blinds for their sleep.

If you’re thinking, but what about the advice of putting them to sleep in a bright place during the day? That advice is for newborns who have yet to develop their circadian rhythm and are still going through the day-night confusion.

And if you’re wondering, but won’t they be reliant on the dark environment to take naps, that means we can’t bring them out to nap in the carrier or stroller? Your child will still be able to take naps outside, it just won’t be as restorative as naps at home and that’s ok!

If your child is sensitive to sounds, I recommend using white noise to buffer daytime noise so they won’t startle easily in their sleep.

Those who are sensitive to clothing textures, choose natural clothing material as their pajamas without tags, labels, or rough seams on the inside.

2. An appropriate nap and bedtime schedule.

There are plenty of resources for schedule samples for each age group but it can be tricky when you have a highly sensitive or persistent child who has unpredictable wake up times and nap durations.

In addition, your child’s sleep needs are unique and may not even meet the general standards of what’s recommended. This often makes parents feel like their child is not sleeping enough and that’s simply not true!

My recommendation is to use a sleep log or sleep diary to track for one week,

• The time your child naturally wakes up in the morning

• Their naps and duration

• Their wake time in between naps

• Their sleepy/tired signs and their energy level and mood

• When they fight sleep - is all sleep? Or just with naps?

With some data, you’ll be able to determine your child’s sleep needs (it can be on the lower end or higher end of the sleep needs range). Troubleshooting short naps would be easier too.

Your highly sensitive child actually needs consistency and structure to their day a lot more than the average temperament babies. Not a rigid schedule, but a rhythm and pattern that they can detect to feel secure when they know what’s coming next.

3. The right “time for sleep” routine.

Bedtime routines are the cornerstone of good sleep. Doing calming and repetitive, predictable steps before sleep comes around gives your highly sensitive child the time to transition from an active, exploring state to rest and relaxing state.

Your child might need a more elaborate and longer bedtime routine. It might look something like

1. A bath or a wipe down

2. Put on diaper

3. Put on pajamas

4. Milk feed

5. Bedtime child-led play to increase connection

6. Read, sing songs or listen to meditation audio for older kids

7. Put on sleep sack (wearable blanket)

8. Place them in their cot or bed with their lovey (a stuffed animal or blankie)

For those who are fed to sleep or rocked to sleep, and you don’t want to continue doing this for whatever reason, you may want to consider introducing a new way to fall asleep using the method of your choice to help your child fall asleep independently.

4. Is your child awake (or a little drowsy) when being put down in the cot?

One of the key elements to encouraging independent sleep is for your child to learn that their cot is their safest and most secure place to go to sleep in.

That means if you’ve been putting your child down in the cot when they’re fully asleep, they will cry from the confusion, waking up from a sleep cycle, of not being in your arms or in your bed.

The best way to do this is for your child to be in a calm and awake state, after the bedtime routine is complete as they’re being placed in their cot.

I know it’s not easy if you have a child who goes from calm to screaming when they are being put down.

This is when methods like habit stacking or gradual parent wean may be useful and suitable for your child to happily accept being put down for sleep.

5. Consider developmental norms for child sleep.

This is especially true for highly sensitive or persistent babies who need more nighttime reassurance when they wake up in the middle of the night.

They might not necessarily need to be fed at every waking but many healthy babies continue to need 1-2 night feedings, particularly if they’re breastfeeding.

For toddlers, being nursed is not just for food but it’s a deep source of comfort for them. However, if your child feeds at every waking, it’s hard to tell if they’re truly hungry or if it’s a way of being comforted.

I recommend weaning off night feeds firmly but kindly by offering other ways to comfort your child in the first few nights such as back rubs, pats on the bum, hair strokes, hand holding etc.

Short 30-45 minutes naps: if your child is under 6 months old, this is developmentally normal as they have not yet developed the capability to connect two sleep cycles to make a complete 1 hour nap or more.

I recommend using the assisted nap strategy to help your child extend their naps to 1-1.5 hours for the 3-5 months age group for average easy going temperament and longer if you have a highly sensitive or persistent child.

Here’s how it looks like:

Go to your child 2 minutes before she fully awakes. As soon as she begins to stir, you put your hand on her to pat. As each day/week passes, reduce the amount of patting. This will take several weeks for you to see any results. But it's a gradual, less tears approach.

These are the foundational pieces that I recommend you focus on before jumping into sleep coaching.

If you have been diligently doing this but you’d like to teach your child to sleep through independently and take longer naps, then you can move on to the next stage of the action plan.

Choose a method you can commit to and be consistent with 100%.

I believe the number one reason why overcoming sleep challenges fails is a lack of plan and consistency.

Your highly sensitive child tends to be more intuitive and more perceptive than other babies, so they can pick up patterns very easily!

When we start with one method, and then give up quickly because it’s ‘not working’, our little ones just get confused and they cling on harder to their sleep association.

My best advice would be to choose one method that you can really stick to that feels aligned with your child’s temperament and parenting style. It has to be something that you know you can carry through to completion.

If you're doubtful about a particular method in the first place, you’ll likely doubt yourself in the process and give up when it gets a little rough in the beginning.

Curious about my approach? Here’s what I do and don’t do:

• I put emotional safety and responsive strategies as a priority while solving any sleep challenges

• I’m a fan of safe bed-sharing

• I won’t recommend check and leave, cry it out, or any non-responsive techniques

• I don’t use sticker reward charts, naughty corner, time-out, stair gates at the door for toddlers and pre-schoolers

• I never guarantee no tears as some crying is expected when you’re changing something that your child has grown deeply attached to to fall asleep

• Nothing is ever a quick fix as much as I’d like it to be but sometimes strategies take a bit of time, and with toddlers - creativity

• I trust that parents are the experts on their children and I empower them to trust their instincts to decide what’s best for them

Decide whether you want to hire a sleep coach or DIY.

Can you DIY teaching your baby to sleep in a new way? Sure you can. I did it without hiring a sleep consultant and followed a child sleep course with my mama intuition mixed in.

My recommendation if you want to take the DIY route is to ensure that you know exactly what your chosen method involves, including the steps and how long it should take to see progress.

I would encourage you to invest in a sleep course or buy a book so that you get a full picture with instructions, and not just some sleep tips from social media.

The reason you may want to hire a sleep coach is to have an outside perspective because you’re too close to your sleep problems to solve them on your own, and you like having constant support, guidance and reassurance to keep you on track.

If you decide to go this way, I highly suggest that the sleep coach you hire is fully supportive of your chosen method and not rigid with their ideas of sleep training.

At the end of the day, YOU are the expert on your baby. Nobody else knows your baby more than you.

A great sleep coach is there to support and guide but ultimately, use your critical thinking and parental instinct to decide what feels right for you and your baby.