From Chaos to Calm
A Counterintuitive Approach to Prevent (and End) Bedtime Battles
One topic that keeps coming up in my work with families is sleep problems. Parents often reach a point during the preschool years where they hit a wall.
At the beginning, they did everything right - they read all the recommended sleep training books, chose a specific method, and followed it to a T. At first, everything seemed fine. But as the child became older, more verbal, and independent, bedtime turned literally into a nightmare:
“My child is dragging out bedtime.”
“My child takes a long time to fall asleep.” - and does so way too late
“My child keeps calling me.”
“My child keeps coming out of their room asking for water, the bathroom, a lovey” - or other inventive requests.
“My child is scared of monsters and the dark.”
“My child has nightmares.”
“My child keeps waking up in the middle of the night (and crawling into my bed).”
“My child is impossible to wake up in the morning.”
“My child is regressing.”
“The transition from crib to bed has been a disaster.”
“WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT?”
Now imagine all this happening at 9:30pm - when you are completely exhausted from a long day. Just hearing these stories makes my toes curl. It sounds absolutely miserable. Yet every time I hear them, I think to myself:
We didn’t go through ANY of that with my daughter.
For a long time, I wasn’t sure whether it was appropriate to share my personal philosophy on bedtime with families. My approach is so far outside the norm that it would completely flip most conventional sleep advice upside down. Until I finally started to share. And while explaining how we approached sleep in our home, it hit me:
Just ONE SIMPLE ROUTINE spared us from all of those draining bedtime battles.
Let’s Start from the Beginning - Sleep Training
I never understood why parents sleep train their infants. Sleep is a natural process - it doesn’t need to be taught or practiced. Like breathing, it comes and goes organically. So why are we expecting a four-month-old to learn when to sleep, to fall asleep independently, and how to regulate overwhelming emotions alone?
Let’s take a brief look at human development. Human babies are born significantly more underdeveloped than many other mammals. They are completely dependent on responsive caregivers to meet their most basic needs: food, sleep, warmth, comfort, safety, and hygiene.
If these needs are being met, babies form secure attachment patterns, which lay the foundation for healthy social-emotional development later in life, such as self-awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, resilience, and the ability to form healthy relationships. When these needs are not met, children are more likely to develop insecure attachment patterns, which can later affect the sense of self, relationships, emotional regulation and overall well-being.
But there is another basic developmental need that deserves far more attention: Co-regulation. Infants are born with an extremely immature nervous system. They experience discomfort, frustration, fear and stress, and can easily let you know if something is bothering them. But they are biologically incapable of managing those emotions independently.
That’s where the caregiver comes in. By holding, rocking, soothing, feeding, and comforting an infant, adults help regulate their nervous system. These experiences in the early years eventually lead to self-regulation. The developmental sequence is actually quite logical: Dependency → attachment → co-regulation → self-regulation. This entire process does not happen in the first few months of life - it takes several years.
This is one of the reasons sleep training has always felt so counterintuitive to me. It expects babies to do something they are biologically unable to do.
You may say: “But sleep training worked for us. My baby learned to self-soothe and to fall asleep independently.” And maybe this worked - for a while. But instead of learning a new skill, such as lifting their head or turning over, babies don’t learn to calm themselves down - they simply adapt to the situation because they don’t have a choice. Instead of regulating their emotions, babies eventually fall asleep from exhaustion - in a distressed state. These experiences in infancy can activate high levels of stress in the body and affect the developing nervous system over time.
To me, it seems that many families turn to sleep training because # 1 - this is what everybody does, and # 2 - they believe it will finally bring peace: a few quiet evening hours, more control and better sleep. But what I often see is this: As children grow older, more self-aware and verbal, the underlying need for connection and co-regulation does not disappear. Now, children have the language and persistence to express it - often in the form of bedtime resistance.
And honestly? I think most of us knew that raising a tiny human would involve sacrifice and interrupted sleep. Even when it is exhausting, human beings are remarkably equipped for it. We are biologically wired with the intuition, emotional responsiveness, and endurance needed to nurture our children through those early years.
The Secret to Better Bedtime
So, what is the one thing that spared our family from sleep problems? It is almost too simple:
STAY UNTIL YOUR CHILD IS ASLEEP.
This means,
nurse or bottle-feed your infant to sleep.
lie beside your toddler until they drift off.
Now… I know some of you are already thinking: “Absolutely not!”
But hear me out: When children are allowed to fall asleep with a trusted adult close by, they experience an incredible sense of safety and emotional security. Their nervous system settles. Their breathing slows. Their body relaxes. Their mind becomes quiet. There is no pressure, no fear, no stress surrounding sleep.
Since you are physically and emotionally present, many of the classic bedtime battles begin to disappear. Children won’t drag out bedtime (because they know you’ll be right there with them) and they won’t repeatedly come out of their room (because you’re right there with them).
And because the child’s body is entering sleep in a calmer, more regulated state, bedtime anxiety, nightmares, night wakings and sleep regressions may also become less intense and less frequent over time. In many families, mornings become easier too.
Something else interesting tends to happen: Your child begins to anticipate bedtime positively. Instead of resisting it, they often look forward to connecting with their grown up. Emotionally secure children are often far more cooperative about going to bed at the time YOU decide - which might as well be 7pm! In our home, bedtime has consistently been 7pm throughout the years - even at seven years old. Yes, I am not kidding - because I decide when we turn off the light.
And since bedtime stops being a battle, evenings actually become calmer and more predictable for everyone. Even if it sometimes takes a little while for your child to fall asleep, your evening will be much more peaceful than emotionally charged.
Imagine this: Your child is asleep and you leave their room at 8pm… ;) It’s a win-win for the entire family.
And while no bedtime approach can prevent every bad dream, night waking, or difficult phase, this kind of consistent presence can dramatically reduce distress and help children move through sleep disruptions with far greater ease.
Your Biggest Fear: Dependency
Now let’s address what is probably the biggest fear surrounding this approach: Dependency.
It is a fact that your child completely depends on you in those early years. That is not a flaw in development; it is development. Giving children the closeness, responsiveness, and emotional security they need early on does not mean they will never become independent individuals. It simply means their needs are being met at the right time in their development.
And interestingly enough, once children reach their toddler and preschool years, independence suddenly takes over big time! They want to pour their own water, choose their own clothes, and put on their own shoes. And you won’t have any say whatsoever, if you can see a mess unfold right in front of your eyes, pants are backwards, and shoes consist of two different pairs. Eventually, your child won’t even say goodbye to you anymore when you drop them off at school. Preschoolers naturally push toward independence every single day. And slowly, the intense dependency of the early years begins to fade. Including at bedtime!
Children reach a point where they are genuinely ready to fall asleep independently because they no longer need the same level of support. One day, my six-year-old suddenly exclaimed: “I can sleep by myself now!”. This completely caught us off guard. After all, bedtime had become more than just sleep. It was a moment of connection after a long day - a chance to cuddle, talk, slow down, and simply be together. So saying goodnight, walking out of the room, and closing the door actually felt really strange for a while. But then, I started to enjoy my unexpected free time at 7pm quite a bit. ;)
Give It Some Thought
Many bedtime battles are not acts of defiance at all. Often, they are a child’s way of asking for closeness, reassurance, connection, and help regulating anxiety or distress. So whether you have a newborn on the way or are currently struggling through exhausting nights with your four-year-old, I encourage you to consider a different question. What if, instead of asking: “How do I get my child to fall asleep independently?”, we asked: “What happens when I stop expecting them to do it alone?” You may discover that staying present at bedtime is actually far less exhausting than dragging out bedtime and battling big emotions night after night.
In the end, emotional security may be one of the most powerful sleep aids we overlook, and the real secret to better sleep may not be independence - but connection.
