One morning he told his son he needed to stay in bed until wake up time or he would loose his new big kid bed and have to go back to sleeping in the toddler bed. As all good two year olds must do, he had to find out if his dad was serious, so, naturally, he got out of bed. The dad went straight to his son’s room without saying a word and began stripping the bed, removing the mattress, retrieving the toddler bed from the basement along with his tools and began to dismantle the big kid bed. All the while he is calmly carrying this out his son is throwing a fierce tantrum! Finally, his son puts his arm around the dad and asks, “Daddy, do I really have to loose my bed?” The daddy explains that he can keep his new bed if he agrees to stay in bed until wake up time. The son agrees and he is back to sleeping 12 hours per night.

What can you as a parent take from this? Once a child masters the art of putting themselves to sleep and sleeping independently, the sleep battles that arise are purely behavioral issues and need to be dealt with accordingly. The key is find what your child’s incentive is. In other words, what consequence can be given to your child that your child will feel that his/her current behavior is not worth the subsequent consequence? These parents tried taking away different toys, walking their child back to the room, and loss of daytime priveledges, but he did not care about those consequences. Keeping his bed was important enough to him to change his behavior. Just as critical as finding the appropriate consequence is following through. Your child needs to know that when s/he does X then Y happens 100% of the time. This predictability is very comforting for children in the long run and makes a parents job much easier.