Introduction to this brief & simple section of the Possums Toddler Sleep Program

This page is part of a collection of short articles called Brief & simple, which together make up a quick summary of The Possums Sleep Program in plain language. For comprehensive information and support, please go to The essentials section of The Possums Sleep Program, and begin to work your way through the program's online text and videos.

Toddlers are a bundle of activity and delight - but oh, how exhausting it can be to have a toddler in the family! How desperate we can be for some unbroken sleep!

Sleep! How exhausted we can feel when we have a baby to look after! How desperate we can be for some unbroken sleep!

If you're the primary carer, it's normal to find yourself looking at the clock all day, longing for your toddler to go to sleep so that you can rest or get some jobs done.

You'll hear lots of rules about how to teach your toddler to sleep. You might hear that you need to sleep train if you want to feel less exhausted. You might hear that if you don't train your toddler to sleep, your toddler will end up with bad sleep habits or won't learn well as they get older.

None of that is true, actually. It's normal for toddlers to still wake up needing you in the night, and this eventually passes.

But if your toddler is waking excessively at night, this needs to be changed, so that you go back to normal amounts of night waking.

The Possums Sleep Program helps you work out what is a normal amount of night waking, what's too much, and how you can make your life easier and happier when it comes to your toddler's sleep. You can do this without having to try hard, or fight with your toddler, or leave your toddler to cry alone.

I hope that once you experiment with these ideas over a couple of weeks, you'll find toddler sleep happens without you worrying, so that the days and nights with your small child are as enjoyable as possible.

Acknowledgements

I'm grateful to Professor Sophie Havighurst, Ros June, and Caroline Ma at Mindful, The University of Melbourne, for their feedback on the articles in the Brief & simple section of The Possums Sleep Program. They helped me keep the language plain and the concepts as accessible as possible. For comprehensive information and support, please go to The essentials section of The Possums Sleep Program, and begin to work your way through the program's online text and videos.

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