The key to extricating yourself from their bedroom is to make gradual shifts.
When Your Kid Needs You in the Room It’s one of the most common sleep problems parents report: a child who goes down like a dream ... as long as a parent is within arm’s reach. But if you try to leave the room before they’re in a deep slumber, all hell breaks loose: wailing, clutching, and a total reset on the fallingasleep process. Emilie Caro, a certified pediatric sleep consultant and founder of Emilie Caro Sleep in New York City, is a fan of gradually phasing out a parent’s presence with a four-step plan. 1
As counterintuitive as it may sound, start by sleeping in your kid’s room for a few days, but make your presence as boring as possible. “Giving attention to your child, even if it’s negative attention, will encourage them to repeat the behavior,” Caro says. “Don’t engage with your kid when they should be sleeping.” For the first few days, simply
return your little one to bed any time they wake up. Your proximity “gets them in the habit of sleeping through the night in their bed,” she says. 2
Then shift to sitting on a chair near your child’s door for a few days, during bedtime and any middle-ofthe-night wakings. 3
Finally, remove yourself from the room entirely. By Day 10, Caro’s clients typically see a “huge improvement.” 4
Caro recommends prioritizing ten minutes of one-on-one time during the day. “It seems like such a small thing, but it can make a huge difference to have that special time when you listen to your child without distractions,” she says. And it fills their “attention cup” at the time they should be getting attention: during the day.
bottle with water and labeling it “monster repellent” to spritz scary spaces, such as under the bed or in the closet. But beware of letting your kid join you in bed for the rest of the night; it may send a message that there is indeed something to fear in their bedroom. Night terrors are something else entirely. They’re part of a class of sleep disorders called parasomnias and happen during the first few hours of sleep. During a night terror, your child is partially roused from deep slumber but not fully awake, making the whole episode that much scarier for you to witness. Rather than waking your kid (which may be downright impossible), focus on keeping them safe until the episode passes. Night terrors tend to taper off in early childhood, but if your child experiences them regularly, talk to their pediatrician. PROBLEM
Many a parent wakes to find themselves face-to-face with a sweaty, pint-size mouth breather hogging the covers. If these nighttime visits don’t bother you and everyone is sleeping well, you don’t necessarily have to do anything. But if your morning coffee can’t even put a dent in your exhaustion—or you’re just tired of getting kicked in the face—it’s time to take action. S O L U T I O N Try to get to the bottom of why your kid is craving nighttime closeness in the first place. Are they too hot or too cold? Are outside noises or nightmares to blame? For toddlers and preschoolers, the problem might be that they connect falling back to sleep with your presence, says Parents advisor Judith Owens, M.D., director of sleep medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. “All people wake up a bit in the middle of the night, including young children. When the child wakes up, sometimes they seek the parent out because the parent was there when they fell asleep.” In that case, you need to break your
