The Sleepless Toddler Traveler

I have a toddler sleep advice question– I know you have covered a wide variety of these but this is a slightly different problem and I would love your insight (and maybe some of your readers have dealt with this?)

But first I have to do the fan girl thing and tell you how much I appreciate your blog and advice, and how reading about your exploits has helped me maintain my fragile grip on sanity. (I hear you about the stress thing-we are going through our own challenges right now and I wish I could get a better grip on myself. I am going to check out the app you recommended). And if your tales of 3 year olds are true I had better invest in a wine cellar now because my 2.5 year old is already driving me crazy. I admire your parenting skills immensely.

I have a lovely little girl who has never excelled at sleeping. We have things under control at home right now through a fairly strict bedtime ritual and scheduled nap that pretty much always happens when we are at home. My husband and I share duties but either one of us alone suffices when the other is out of town, so no real problems the vast majority of the time (other than that I should have sleep trained earlier. Oh well).

But when we leave the house and try to get her to sleep out of town, it is virtually impossible. She wasn’t a great sleeper as a baby so travel then didn’t seem that much worse. It wasn’t until we stopped nursing at night that the difference became apparent. We mostly just travel to see either my parents or my husband’s parents. She did ok at my parents house (borrowed pack and play in my sisters old bedroom decorated in white and blue and teddy bears, very peaceful) and horrible at my in laws (our own pack and play in guest room in basement, cold, dark, and lots of red and green colors). We got through a couple visits by just giving up and nursing back to sleep. Then, just before her second birthday we tried to visit my sister on the west coast. Note to readers-cry it out is not a good idea in hotel rooms. Fellow guests were knocking on our door asking if she was ok. My husband finally drove her around the parking lot for a couple of hours one night, and the following night she slept in borrowed pack and play at my sister’s house while my poor husband tried to sleep on their couch. One subsequent trip to his parents house also did not go well, and so she has been under house arrest ever since. We tried having her pick out special sheets, moving to big girl bed for the trip (mattress on floor with princess sheets) and special blanket, of course her lovey from home, pajamas from home, doing home bedtime ritual as closely as possible, lavender lotion after bath, pillow from home, everything I could think of and still no sleep. But then we return home and she will happily go back in her crib.

I would love to plan a summer trip. What am I doing wrong? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, because otherwise it is no travel or my planning to drive home the first morning with toddler crashed in car seat after another sleepless night.

Thank you in advance and my apologies if I missed a similar question!

Sincerely,
Sleepless in Seattle or any other place we try to visit

Hmm.

(taps face, stares into space for awhile)

Okay, I think I can possibly offer a couple troubleshooting tips here before punting it to your fellow readers/commenters. I’ve traveled quite a bit with my kids and yeah, we definitely had some issues with trying to get them to sleep/settle down in a new place, but nothing to the level you’re describing.

(Our personal travel/vacation sleep solution was usually 1) suck it up for the first night, 2) get them good and tired out the next day, then either 3) let them fall asleep wherever/whenever, like on the couch in front of the TV or in our arms and then attempt a transfer, or 4) LET GRANDMA DEAL WITH IT GRANDMA LOVES BEDTIME.)

You’ve offered an AWFUL lot of details about the logistics of where she sleeps and her bedtime routine. But I’m actually more curious to hear about her day while on these trips. Did she/does she nap? Or is it more of a “oh why bother she’ll never go down” or “day is packed full of activities maybe she’ll catch some Zs in the car” type of thing? Because if she’s not sticking to her daytime nap schedule, that’s WAY more likely to be the problem then your inability to recreate her bedroom and bedtime routine 100% perfectly. Much like another recent column about an unhappy early riser, your daughter might just be so overstimulated and overtired during these trips that she just can’t put herself to sleep, no matter what the color scheme is on the pack-n-play. Introducing her sleeping arrangement during the day as a nap/quiet time (with books, lovey, or soft music) might also help ease any anxiety she has about being somewhere unfamiliar at night, when it’s dark.

Alternatively, you could try changing course completely and stop even TRYING to replicate her routine at home. For some kids, yes, that’s exactly what they need when sleeping somewhere new…it seems kinda clear that your daughter isn’t one of those kids because all your attempts have failed fairly spectacularly. My boys definitely needed a similar routine when traveling when they were babies — good lord the places we lugged that heavy musical crib aquarium and a pack of extra D batteries to — but once they were toddlers and preschoolers that wasn’t quite as effective. They KNEW they were somewhere different, and it was better/easier to treat it as such. Bedtime when we travel is pretty flexible. They can stay up late. Have some junk food. Maybe watch a movie instead of a show, have relatives read them a bajillion bedtime stories instead of one.

Maybe…JUST maybe…by letting go of YOUR focus on bedtime bedtime bedtime routine routine routine, she might relax a little more as well. She wants to fight sleep? Fine. Don’t sleep! Mama doesn’t care. (LIES, but just fake it.) Tell her she doesn’t have to sleep. You can’t MAKE her sleep, obviously, but you can at least impose some restrictions or rules. She can stay awake, but she also has to stay in bed with her books and a flashlight. Or she can sleep with you, but she has to be quiet because it’s not playtime, otherwise she’ll have to go in her own bed. She can fall asleep with the TV on, or music playing. Just do whatever it takes to keep her somewhat calm and content at night, then make sure she gets an opportunity to nap the next day (or at least have some quiet downtime, even if it’s just watching TV in bed with you or reading stories while she’s tucked in.

Of course, the downside to the We’re On Vacation Anything Goes approach is the back-to-normal transition once you’re home can sometimes be a little bumpy. But if the alternative is to never go anywhere ever again, I’ll take a couple nights of re-training in the comfort of my own home over a hotel calling CPS on me because my kid won’t stop screaming bloody murder over bedtime.

One last word of encouragement before I hand things over to the peanut gallery: There’s a WORLD of difference between almost 2 and 2.5. And then another world between 2.5 and almost 3, and so on and so forth. She won’t be like this forever, I promise. She might never be a super-great champion sleeper when you travel but her maturity level will make that fact less stressful.