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What it Means to Power Down to Sleep

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I’ve written at length (here and here) about how essential it is to fall asleep independently. There are various approaches to achieving independent sleep (the book outlines at least 7) and it’s safe to say most parents approach this whole “independent sleep” thing with a fair amount of trepidation, so much so that rarely does anybody consider what bedtime will look like after independent sleep has been firmly established.

I think there is a vague sense that once you get over the independent sleep hump, your child will happily go into their crib, roll around a bit, chew their fists, and quietly fall asleep.

And sure, there are some kids who will do exactly that. There are kids who will actually *gasp* reach for the bed. It’s true! There exists in the world kids who are actually pretty chuffed about going to sleep!

However it’s also entirely possible that your child will master the art of falling asleep independently yet remain resolutely pissed off about the whole thing. Who will fight the bedtime routine like it’s their job.

Because you’re going to put them…in there.

crib at bedtime

Because you are a monster. Apparently.

Protesting Bedtime

Falling asleep independently is about helping your child develop the skill of falling asleep without any unsustainable sleep associations. Having the skill to do a thing, and being excited about doing a thing are two different things.

Parents are often concerned because their kiddo will start complaining during the bedtime routine even though the activities of the routine are theoretically things they enjoy. And I’m quite sure they do enjoy them, they’re complaining because they are wise enough to know that the bedtime routine leads to going to bed, something that most kids are not excited to do.

Or parents feel something is wrong because their kids didn’t used to protest going to bed. But here’s the rub, prior to independent sleep your child didn’t protest going to bed because they were unconscious when they went to bed. You would rock, bounce, nurse, feed to sleep and put your child in their bed after they were deeply asleep. You can’t protest something if you’re unaware of it happening.

Now they’re aware and unenthused about your whole “healthy sleep” plan and they yell at you about it. Which is their choice. Just as it is their choice to express their displeasure about a whole slew of things you do because it’s essential to their health and well-being – put on winter coats, strap into car seats, get vaccinated, etc.

Protesting bedtime is just that, protesting bedtime. Some parents call this “endless sleep training” but it’s not. Your child is telling you that they don’t want to go to sleep.

Power Down to Sleep

I call this powering down to sleep. They’re yelling at you because “ugh bedtime sucks.” Or they’re blowing off some steam. Some children seem to just need to let it all out before falling asleep. Everything they’ve held inside all day comes out with great gusto the minute they hit the bed.

Powering down can run the gamut from mild grumbles to SCREAMING TO WAKE THE DEAD. The key to healthy, normal powering down to sleep is not the volume or intensity, it’s the duration. If your child successfully falls asleep in under 15 minutes at bedtime, they’re doing great!

power down to sleep

What a Successful Bedtime Looks Like

It is your job to have a lovely, consistent bedtime routine. It is your job to have a safe sleep space for your child. It is your job to help them develop the skills to fall asleep independent of unsustainable sleep associations. It is your child’s job to fall asleep. It is not their job to do so quietly.

A successful bedtime is one where:

  1. Your child falls asleep independently.
  2. Your child sleeps in a safe space.
  3. Your child falls asleep in less than ~15 minutes.

All human beings take a few minutes to fall asleep at night. What happens during that time is highly individual. But a child who blows off some steam, complains, tosses bunny out of the crib, etc. for a while at bedtime is doing what many normal, healthy little kids do. You can twist yourself in knots about it or accept that that is how your child chooses to use the time before falling asleep.

What if your kiddo routinely takes longer than 15 minutes to fall asleep at bedtime? There might be something gumming up the works. The book is a solid resource for troubleshooting bedtime struggles. But if your child falls asleep successfully and quickly (but not silently), they’re doing awesome!

Have any experience, comments, or questions about powering down to sleep? Drop them in the comments below!

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Comments

  1. My 6.5 month old son falls asleep independently with some ruckus (sometimes angry, sometimes happily squawking) but it only lasts about 5, maybe 10 minutes. Yay!! He’ll even fall asleep independently for some naps! Double yay!! We SLIPed at 5 months and again at 6 after teething.

    BUT, he’s recently been waking up an hour (maybe 2 or 3) after falling asleep at night SCREAMING TO WAKE THE DEAD/HYSTERICALLY SOBBING. Like, heaving “I can’t catch my breath sobs. He’s so distracted by the world and his tummy won’t hold more than 4-5oz at a time, so he doesn’t eat enough during the day and wakes to eat at night still. Tried feeding 1/2 oz less last night and he legit FREAKED OUT. Is he overtired? How do I deal with the food issue? Hearing him cry like that and thinking/knowing he’s hungry kills me and I cave and feed him. HELP ME!!

    Reply

    • I am in the SAME exact boat. My LO is almost 6 months and has been doing this for the last month… I’m going crazy! Would LOVE to know what this is all about…

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      • We’ve seemed to have more luck with shorter wake times (I was trying to push towards 3/3/4) for our new two nap schedule (he was doing chunkier naps and fighting the third nap a lot). For my son I think he was overtired. I’ve extended WTs a bit every few days following this schedule (which was suggested on another sleep page):

        2.25/2.75/3 x 2-3 days
        2.5/3/3 x 2-3 days
        2.5/3/3.25 x 2-3 days
        2.5/3/3.5 thereafter

        Total nap hours goal is 3-3.5 hrs (he usually does closer to 3) and capping naps at 2 hours for the first nap. Some days his second nap isn’t very long and I just put him to bed a little early. I know that’s not the PLS way, but cat naps weren’t really working and were happening too late in the day, so it was messing with going to sleep at night. If we get it close to right then he falls asleep within 10 minutes of being put in bed and with minimal fuss and doesn’t scream the house down an hour later. If we get it wrong he will wake up and scream if he’s overtired or cry at bedtime if he’s undertired. I don’t think he’s ready for 3/3/4 quite yet, but we will be closer to that for when he seems ready.

        Reply

  2. My 6mo old is doing pretty well with falling asleep independently, it’s staying asleep that’s the problem. Basically as soon as I started getting him to fall asleep on his own he went from generally waking 1x/night to waking – on the worst night – up to once every hour or two. ALLLL NIGHT LONG. He hasn’t done that since he was like three days old…

    My biggest question, and I have read the book (mostly), is: what do I do when, after falling asleep on his own, he wakes up 2hrs later? If I give him 5-10min and he’s screaming do I go in and try to soothe him? I am breaking a nursing-to-sleep habit and his ped agrees that while he may need to eat once overnight I should stick to the time he has, for months, been eating at night and not nurse the other times he wakes up. Ok, cool. But when I was just looking at the book you talk about changing how you handle the first wake up 2-3hrs after bedtime but IT DOESN’T SAY WHAT TO DOOO.

    Please, help me. My baby used to sleep so well at night, I am so tired pleeease.

    Reply

    • Technically the book does answer this question but it’s a big book and you’re sleep deprived so no worries if the answer didn’t jump out at you 😉

      General troubleshooting for mysterious night waking
      1) make sure he’s not undertired at bedtime (or consider too much sleep issues in general)
      2) make sure he’s entirely falling asleep independently (many a well-intended parent has been thrown by “too drowsy” at bedtime)
      3) make sure there is no lingering sleep association
      4) If you’ve resolved ALL of those potential tripups and he’s still waking early in the night then handle the mystery early waking the same way you handled bedtime (which I gather is SLIP yes?)

      Reply

      • Yes, we ended up going with SLIP. After his last ped appointment we decided to let him cry it out (oh, the things you swore you’d never do…) and after a couple of unpleasant nights we seem to have figured things out. Except now he’s teething, so that’s cool… (It’s not, it’s not cool at all…)

        I do think we have some issues with overtiredness because getting this child to nap has been the challenge of my lifetime. And I have tried ALL THE THINGS. Going by his sleepy signs, by the clock, by time awake; putting him down sooner, waiting longer; putting him all the way to sleep, putting him down not asleep; etc etc etc. Things were under control before i went back to work (kind of) but have been a mess ever since. Last weekend I laid him down and let him cry, was gonna give him 30min but he fell asleep in 15 then stayed asleep for 1.5ish hr, which was a literal and actual miracle. I KNOW he is tired during the day on weekends, and I promise I am trying SO SO hard to not let him get overtired, but naps are our nemesis. And I don’t really know what to do, particularly because I work full time so we only have 2 days/week to try things out. It sucks. For everyone.

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        • I have no advice but I am literally in the same situation with my sixth month old. We are switching daycares, for a few reasons, but I’m hoping post holidays when i spend more time with him and the new center being a better sleep environment we may have some relief. I’m so tired. He fights naps but we just had a glorious Sunday of 1.5 hour nap and 2 hour nap but still a night where he woke up every 2 hours. I tried putting him down a little earlier than needed and that seemed to work. He’s also probably just tired. He used to only wake once or twice, and last week (just to toy with us I suspect) he slept from 8 PM to 5 AM. But the past week beyond that good night its been every 1/2-3 hours. I suspect teething may be part of it but I think we have some other issues going on.

          We’ve done a little cry it out here and there with naps and he’s responded well (he’s always been able to put himself to sleep at bedtime with no complaints) i’m just so at a loss with how to handle these night wakings because i just feel like he’s in pain from teething and its not a sleep issue, but who knows… I certainly don’t!

          Reply

          • we went through a period of excessive night waking and after a couple of rough nights of crying he is back to mostly only waking once a night. mine is also teething and lately has fussed a few times at night, usually only for a few minutes then he falls back asleep. a couple times we have gotten up and given him tylenol – didn’t even pick him up, just gave him tylenol and his pacifier (he is able to find it and get it in by himself) – but i’m not sure how much it helped. teething is definitely throwing a wrench in things…

            Reply

            • Tylenol is helping us too. I need to stop feeding on some of the wake ups and let him cry a bit. We usually give it 5-10 minutes and sometimes he manages to go back down. Let’s just hope its teething 🙂

  3. Help! I am trying so hard to pay attention to sleep cues and put her down at the first sign of drowsiness because it worked great for my first child. However, this being my second child, I also have a toddler to attend to, so I don’t always catch the first yawn/eye rub/etc. Even when I do, I can’t always do something about it. Like, today, I was in line at the grocery store. I tried to get out of their ASAP, covered her carseat, turned up the static, she cried for 15 minutes on the way home, fed for half an hour at home, then I had to leave to pick up my older daughter from daycare. She cried the whole way there and the whole way back and is still crying. Bottom line, she’s been awake since 10:30am, and it’s now 2:50pm, and she’s still awake and obviously massively overtired and I cannot for the life of me get her to sleep. Something similar happened yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, all for different reasons but with the same result. I try my best to keep a predictable routine, but life cannot 100% revolve around her napping whims. What do I do? She’s 3.5 months, by the way.

    Reply

    • There is no easy answer for how to meet the needs of 2 kids. Newborns (she’s barely out of the newborn phase) can’t stay awake long and will cry if overtired. I don’t consider her need to nap a whim and would encourage you to think creatively about how you can help her get at least SOME nap sleep while also balancing other household/kid needs. Can you carpool with a friend for daycare dropoff/pickup? Will your baby take a car nap if you drive a bit out of your way on the way home from daycare? Can you race to the grocery the second she wakes up from a nap to take advantage of her time awake to run errands? The upside as you know from previous experience is that a well rested kiddo cries less and is generally more pleasant to be around AND as she gets older the wake times will expand making getting out vastly easier. Good luck!

      Reply

  4. My previously sleep trained almost two year old has recently started procrastinating at bedtime and protesting once put down. This article is very reassuring!!

    Reply

  5. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this! My three yo daughter has fought sleep since she was a baby. She’s been able to fall asleep on her own since she was about 6 minutes months old but as a baby she would always cry to fall asleep. And even now as a 3.5 yo she fights and stalls big time when it’s tome to go to bed. My 22 month old son has gone to bed so easy since we sleep trained him at 8 months old and he asks to go to bed some days. I always felt we messed up somewhere with my daughter but I feel better after reading your article. Things have also drastically improved after we stopped her naps a week ago. She’s now falling asleep around 8;00 instead of 9:30. Thank you for your advice!

    Reply

  6. Well I must be doing something wrong then. Anything I try that’s not a boob just results in a full on melt down for longer than 15 minutes and has done since he was about 8 weeks old. He’s now 11 months and I’m just going to have to face the fact that I will have a giant 4 year old hanging off me every night. My baby is broken.

    Reply

    • That sounds like he has a feed to sleep association (my son was exactly the same despite my good intentions of better sleep habits with a second!) Sort out the feeding to sleep and then deal with night wakings. Easier said then done. I feel into the trap, dealt with it to my best ability aged 6 months, slipped and finally did it properly for good at 10 months. It was….. painful. But worth it. We ended up down the cry it out route and he took maybe a week to give up hope that I’d boob him to sleep. The crying was loud, long and painful, but he actually crys less for it overall in life now. If night wakings are a problem (they were for us, every hour from midnight at 10 months) then once he’s going to sleep at bedtime independently and quickly tackle those. No gentle night weaning worked for us so we went to my parents for 3 nights and grandad went in all night rather than me smelling of milk. He did so well with minimal wakes and crying for grandad and started sleeping till 4am. We have it 3 more months and cut that feed too and now he sleeps all night till 5-6am at 13 months. Often a wake at about 4 but a short non-feed one. Never thought that would be possible at 10 months. And he goes to sleep in 2 minutes no crying (usually) Read Alexis book, gives you lots of techniques and don’t despair. I was there and now I’m not. You will be too .

      Reply

  7. This doesn’t end! My kiddo cried for a few minutes every night before going to sleep as a baby. As long as it was one particular kind of cry, we knew she was ok and we let her work it out. It never lasted more than a few minutes and eventually (age 2?) she stopped. Now that she’s in elementary school, it’s like she’s doing the same thing – not overtired but finding some nonsense reason to cry at bedtime and we decided that it’s probably a version of the same need for a release before falling asleep.

    Reply

  8. I’ve recently (a week ago) taken away my daughters pacifier/sleep trained her.. She’s 22 months old. She has stopped waking up two to four times a night and now sleeps all night. She goes to bed fine and is asleep under ten minutes. Now when she wakes up during the night, she can go back to sleep on her own within ten to fifteen minutes. BUT she cannot do her naps anymore. She only has one nap a day but she cries for an hour and a half to two hours before she falls asleep. What can I do?? There’s no way she needs to power down for that long. Right?? What’s going on here?

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  9. Thanks for this article! I purchased your book and it’s been so helpful for us. I am struggling a bit with our 4 month old. She’s actually always been a pretty good night sleeper…naps have been more challenging. I think when she was younger I was maybe expecting her to take long naps, and when she wouldn’t I felt like something was wrong. I’m realizing it could have been that she just wasn’t ready to take long chunky naps! But here’s my current issue…she falls asleep on her own so well for naps and bedtime. She will happily watch us walk out of the room and go to sleep fairly quickly. During daytime sleep, she often has trouble transitioning sleep cycles. I never know if I should just accept that she will just nap for 45 minutes ir if I can help her sleep longer. When I read your book, I started using a rock n play for naps to see if I could help her with the sleep cycle transition. It worked wonders! First nap of the day is very long, I usually cap it at 2.5 hours max. The next nap is iffy, sometimes only 45mins, other times 1.5hrs. 3rd nap is always 45mins which I know is common for the last nap of the day. Recently, after napping in the rock n play for approx 5 weeks and having huge success, I decided to start weaning. I stopped turning it on, did great with that for 2 days. Then transitioned to the crib. First nap of the day is no problem, she will sleep forever if I don’t wake her up! So typically 2-2.5hrs in crib for first nap…but now the second and third naps are back to just one sleep cycle. Should I keep using the rock n play for naps since it was helping that transition? My concern is that she’s 4.5months now and it’s not going to be sustainable for much longer probably just with how old she’s getting. When she wakes at night she can usually put herself back to sleep after just babbling to herself. There have been a few times over night recently where we have had to help rock her/occasionally feed her and put back down. But historically she’s great at putting herself to sleep, it’s the sleep cycle transition that she can’t get through sometimes. How can I help her with the naps?! Shorten the first nap? Continue Rock n play? The second two naps of the day I just feel aren’t long enough and she’s just too tired by the end of the day…but if we try and do a 4th short nap in the evening she won’t go to sleep until like 11pm. Thanks for all of the information you share, your approach has really helped us with our little one! She’s overall doing so well!

    Reply

  10. My 9month old just recently started doing this! He’s been falling asleep independently since 3 months, and bedtime has always been an enjoyable end of the day. But once he hit 9 months, he’s hit a sleep regression it seems like. We had a week of night wakings which have thankfully resolved, BUT- bedtime is now a miserable affair. He cries and fights us as soon we go to his room to start the routine (lotion, pjs, books, song, into crib awake). He will scream/cry for 5-10 min after we leave the room, and then sleeps till about 4/5am for his snooze feed.
    Could this just be a phase, maybe due to separation anxiety? We are just so surprised to see this and sad too bc he previously was SOO happy during our bedtime routine, he would laugh and play through it, he would even smile at us as we said good night and walked out of the room. Now it’s just miserable and stressful for all of us. I’m really hoping it’s just a phase and as long as we stay consistent, he will go back to enjoying bedtime again.
    Thankfully, our 3 yr old happily goes to bed, so we can enjoy that time with him!

    Reply

    • This is me exactly! Have things improved for you yet? I also thought it was related to separation anxiety as I’ve noticed he’s a lot clingier during the day as well.

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      • Yes, it’s improved! We stayed consistent, and just let him be and even though he’s not as happy as he used to be during the bedtime routine, he doesn’t get as upset as before and some nights doesn’t even cry when we leave the room.
        Naps, are hit or miss, sometimes he will go to sleep happily and other times he cries for 5-10 min and then falls asleep. Good luck!

        Reply

  11. My 7mo girl has always been tricky to get napping but we’ve finally had it managed pretty well lately. She can fall asleep independently and uses a pacifier but she pops it in and out herself. She had been taking about 15 mins to fall asleep but this week it’s now taking her 40 to 60 mins! She also recently started sleeping in later, going from 7am wake up to anywhere between 8-10am after an 8pm bedtime. So with the late wake ups she’s only getting in two naps, typically 1.75-2 hrs of wake time. Naps last usually 1-1.5 hrs, sometimes 2. I just don’t know why it’s suddenly taking her SO LONG to fall asleep. She may whine a bit but mostly just rolls around her crib quietly. I watch for cues or go by the clock if I don’t notice any and as soon as I walk into her room she starts them. Any suggestions to get her falling asleep faster again?

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  12. My 5mo who was previously sleeping through the night stopped about 4 weeks ago. She’s now waking 2-4 times per night, usually wanting to roll around and play, but this always turns to crying. She doesn’t nap well during the day either. She cries for 30+ minutes sometimes and never actually goes to sleep. Other times, she’ll go down fine but wake after 30 minutes. She’s never slept longer than 1.5 hours during the day (and that’s a rare thing) and I know she’s tired. So am I! How can I help her?

    Reply

  13. Hi! My almost 6 month old is having a really hard
    time staying asleep at night. Only sleeping 1-2 hours then won’t go back in his crib for anything. Seems asleep in my arms then wakes as soon as put into the crib. I know I need to get to fall asleep independently but he is not rolling yet so he is still swaddled. I’ve tried To put him down unswaddle but it’s worse and he wakes right up. Tried CIO with nonswaddle but he can’t soothe him self. On his back. Do I have to wait until he can roll and sleep on his tummy to go to sleep independently? Can I break this swaddle while he is still on his back? I’m so stuck!

    Reply

  14. Would you say “blowing off steam” is normal for naps too? Our almost 5 month old does this for sleep and naps. Usually the INTENSE screaming is at night, but typically only lasts 10 minutes outside of really over-tired times. But as the day progresses naps become the same way (Generally only lasting about 5 minutes of crying, not super intense) before sleeping.

    Once he’s asleep he’s great at night

    Reply

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