Does bottle feeding your toddler to sleep cause bad habits?

Feeding to sleep is normal for small human children

Drifting off to sleep with a feed and a cuddle is normal for small Homo sapiens children. For at least the first two years of life, throughout our long evolutionary history, small children breastfed to sleep. A small child might naturally feel sleepy after a feed, especially when the sleep pressure is high. This is neurohormonal. You might have noticed the same in yourself after a large meal.

Today, in the 21st century, it’s still much easier feeding and cuddling your toddler to sleep, than it is trying to put him down in a cot or on a mattress while he is still awake.

But using the bottle in the second year of life is of course different to breastfeeding, with different things to consider. You can find out more here. There will come a time, perhaps quite soon, when you decide to wean your toddler from a bottle in the night or at sleep-time. That’s when you'll teach him something new about going to sleep or going back to sleep.

Have you been told that bottle feeding to sleep or using the bottle responsively sets up bad habits?

You might have heard that

• Bottle feeding your toddler to sleep sets up bad habits

• Your little one wakes excessively at night because you feed her to sleep.

Neither are true. If your toddler is waking excessively at night, this is typically because his body clock settings are disrupted. You can find out more here.

Toddlers dial up if they find themselves on their own in the night, away from a loving adult's body. Being dialled up makes it harder for the sleep pressure to do its job. The way to teach your toddler to feel safe in the night is to respond and keep her as dialled down as possible.

Most parents adopt a rather relaxed, “I’m here if you really need me” approach to their toddlers' night waking as they grow older. They wait for a little while in the hope he'll drop back to sleep on his or her own! But it is important to respond before your little one starts to cry much, or everyone in the household will be wide awake.

It's possible that your child has learnt that when he wakes during the night, the most lovely way to go back to sleep is in your arms, feeding from the bottle. This is not a bad habit! This is a wonderful gift that you have given your little person! She's developed the habit of expecting your loving response, and this is good for her developing brain. It sets up

• Mental and emotional habits of expecting life and people to be responsive and caring

• Healthy psychological attachment styles, life-long.

However, you might also be wondering how long to keep using the bottle for, and what you'll do once you stop.

• You can find out when it might be time to night wean from a bottle of milk here,

• You can find how you might do toddler sleep without a bottle of milk here.

Recommended resources

Would it help with your toddler's sleep to stop the bottle (if you've been bottle feeding)?

When is it time to wean your toddler from a bottle in the night?