How to get your toddler to sleep quickly

There’s a secret to get your baby and toddler to sleep that has been passed down in my family for generations.

My mom told me about it when my son was born. She said that my grandmother told my mom about it. And, I’m sure she probably learned it from her mom.

It’s so easy you won’t believe you wasted so much time on other ways to get your toddler to sleep.

I am going to start by saying that we have mainly been a co-sleeping family. We weren’t always, but life has a way of changing your plans, so here we are today.

I didn’t usually use this method with my son as a baby because, well, milk did all the heavy lifting in the sleep department for us. Hopefully, we can change that next time around, but that’s how it went for us for the first year.

But, after the bottle was gone and my son began to grow up some, I needed some new tricks to get my toddler to sleep. And this fun trick to get my toddler to sleep just won’t work every night.

Plus, it’s also an amazing way to calm down a toddler that’s just too excited to go to sleep. I know sometimes even I can’t go to sleep after getting excited about something.

And, there are always those times that kids just need extra help getting to sleep because of environmental situations. Traveling and sleeping in a strange location always made my son take forever to go to sleep. And noisy situations are always tricky, too.

But, the great news is that this trick works and even helped my son go to sleep on the night before our surprise beach vacation. Yes! It’s that awesome of a trick.

Here’s what you do to get your toddler to sleep quickly.

You hold your toddler and pretend to be asleep.

Yep. That’s it. No, not like hold your toddler down and fall asleep. Haha. That’s weird. There are a few extra steps, but that’s basically the gist of it.

Here are the steps to get your toddler to go to sleep. For real.

• Hold your toddler close (or snuggle up close).
• Close your eyes and pretend to start getting sleepy even if he/she is still chatting it up.
• Start breathing softly but deeply.
• Relax your grip or hold on your toddler so they can feel you relax.
• Continue for 5-10 minutes, if it even takes that long for your toddler to fall asleep.

For real. I know. It sounds too good to be true.

There is some science behind this age-old sleep remedy, but since I’m not a doctor, I’ll let you do your own research.

This trick has helped me get my toddler to go to sleep so many times I really couldn’t even guess, and the best news is that it hasn’t failed me yet! If I am willing to give him about 5 minutes, he will fall to sleep without shedding a single tear.

And, if you’re cosleeping and trying to get your toddler in his own bed, you will love this trick method I used to get my toddler to sleep on his own in one day.