Why Does My Child Fight Sleep?

Frequent things I hear from parents; my child won’t nap more than 30 minutes, my child will take forever to go down for the night, my child keeps waking up during the night every hour, my child will sleep easily at bedtime but will start the day at 4 am … this list can go on and on. 

Before we jump into the different reasons, I would like to highlight that this blog post will mainly focus on children aged 4+ months of adjusted age (adjusted age is the age based on due to date, not delivery date), not newborn. 

You can expect that infants and babies will wake up at night to connect between sleep cycles. Some babies will still need their night feeds for their growth, and that's normal, but those wake-ups should be short and brief if they happen. Children and babies need sleep for development and growth. Offering quality sleep to children is as important as providing quality nutrition and food. According to many studies and research, lack of sleep is associated with different disorders and health problems. So offering quality sleep for your child is to help him/her grow and thrive.

Let me explain why does your child “fight” sleep? It’s a natural biological mechanism to restore the lack of sleep. It is a mechanism our body uses in regulating different aspects and needs. For example, when we feel hot, our bodies sweat. When we are cold, we shiver. The same applies to sleep when we are sleep deprived and exhausted. Our bodies, try to restore this lack of sleep by releasing hormones to keep us awake. The excess of those hormones will end up making us more energetic and unable to sleep or what we are calling here “fighting sleep.”

Fighting sleep indicates a need for sleep, so how can we help our children get the sleep they need. Here are the different components we need to make sure they are in place to help our children get the sleep they need:

1- Healthy sleep environment: 

Sleep environment is one of the critical components of healthy sleep, it’s few small things we need to change, but they make all the difference. Ensure that your child is sleeping in a super dark room. Another component of a healthy sleep environment is cool temperature. When we sleep our temperature goes down, so having a cool sleep environment is vital to help your child sleep. The last thing is either having a quiet sleep environment or a relaxing white noise (shower/fan).

2- Offer your child an early bedtime: 

Early bedtime is a magic tool to help your child be rested. The quality of sleep happening before midnight helps children get rid of overtiredness, which promotes good sleep for the rest of the night when it’s happening consistently every day. How early is early and how late is late? Well, this varies based on your child’s biological needs and age.  The bedtime range is 5-8 pm, younger children/infants will be towards the earlier side, older toddlers will be towards the later side.

3- Avoid junk sleep: 

Many of us can relate to junk food expression, so I like to use it to explain what I need to explain here.  Many of us like junk food, it makes us full, making us not hungry. But we don’t get any benefits from it. Guess what? There is also junk sleep. Junk sleep is the type of sleep the body does not gain an advantage from. When children get a lot of junk sleep, at a certain point, they may start to fight sleep because they are not getting high-quality restorative sleep. 

Restorative timings will vary depending on the age of the child and his/her biological needs. The best quality of sleep happens when it needs to happen, I always encourage the parent to watch their child’s sleepy cues. In order to protect restorative timings for the day, always start the day at 7 am maximum and offer your child early bedtime as mentioned in the previous point.

4- Get rid of sleep associations: 

If your child sleeps with a bottle only, he/she will look for this bottle when he/she wakes up after 1 hr to connect to the next sleep cycle. The same applies to music, pacifiers, sleep spaces, rocking. They look for the same setup they last saw when they were falling asleep. If you notice that you are into this vicious cycle and exhausted, exploring sleep training methods might be a good fit for you. 

If you are struggling with your child’s sleep. I can help you through 1:1 consultation, a personalized sleep plan, and daily support! Here