What's the difference between normal and excessive night waking in toddlers?

It's normal for toddlers to wake every couple of hours during the night, right into toddlerhood. You can find out about normal night waking here.

It’s also normal to have a bad night every now and then, or even a few bad nights in a row. Often it can be difficult to know what causes a bad night or two. The most important thing is that it passes! Sometimes your child might have a low-grade viral infection.

But normal, occasional bad nights are quite different to a pattern of excessive night waking. The sleep deprivation which parents experience as a result of fragmented toddler sleep patterns can be awful, and quite unsustainable.

Excessive night waking occurs when your toddler

• Wakes very frequently as a pattern through most or part of the night, perhaps every hour or more

• Wakes and wants to interact and play for a period of time in the night

• Wakes every hour, or even more often, from one or two o'clock in the morning

• Is restless or seems to want to breastfeed for long periods in the night, keeping you awake

• Wakes frequently between when you put her down in the evening and when you go to bed

• Only sleeps when in contact with your body

• Wakes and is unable to settle back to sleep for a long period during the night, either

  • Waking and crying whenever you try to put her down in the cot

  • Breastfeeding continuously.

Not uncommonly, a breastfeeding mother might report to me that she's been waking every 30 or 40 minutes throughout the night. Often she has tolerated this pattern of extremely disrupted sleep for a very long time because she is deeply committed to responding to her little one's cries and communications. She may have been led to believe that the only alternative to excessive night waking is weaning, or letting her little one cry.

But The Possums Sleep Program helps with excessive night waking without leaving toddlers to fuss or cry, supporting you as you respond to your little one's communications and needs.

It usually takes one or two weeks to change a pattern of excessive night waking. But since 2011, parents of toddlers have repeated reported back to me and my colleagues delivering the Possums programs that when they put these steps in place, their life is turned around.