How to Wear Out Your Toddler When It's Raining

Well, you probably would agree that we are experiencing unusual weather and in Australia it has been raining a lot this year. Many parents may not whine, because it is lovely sleeping weather for toddlers and wrapped babies! But many parents are pulling their hair out with energetic house-bound toddlers! According to the weather man, we are going to experience alternating months this year of wet and dry weather. Since I am always encouraging 'wearing out' your toddler in the preparation for sleep, I have had a lot of phone calls and emails asking for ideas on how to achieve this when it's raining.

So here are some of the ideas I have been suggesting:

No TV! just music for dancing (the wiggles/playschool music CD etc) or at home kindy gym type activity. There are a specific cd's aimed at home dancing/exercise for toddlers and young children.
In an appropriate room play games with balloons/soft balls, chasing, kicking, hide and go seek, trying to see who can keep the balloon in the air the longest.
create cubby houses from the dining room table and blankets/sheets, encourages crawling.
Use a spring out tunnel in the lounge room and encourage the toddler to crawl through it to play with different activities at either end. You could have farm animals at one end and jungle animals or people figures at the other end and suggest a game where the toddler encourages the different toys to visit each other.
Use large boxes to create cars, planes, ships, cubby houses, shops, a city, police cars, fire engines. Add some dress ups and encourage journeys around the house to complete missions.
Create a letter box from a nappy box (paint it red or cover it in red paper) and give your toddler your old junk mail in old envelopes. Address the envelopes to your toddlers toys and have the toddler dress up and be a postman. When addressing the envelope use a different colour for the first letter in the name of the toy to encourage learning the sounds of the letters (phonetics) to help with reading. Get creative and encourage deliveries all over the house. After delivering the mail, the toddler could dress up and help the toys open their mail.
Bubble blowing and chasing the bubbles around.
Indoor play centres, where parents can have a coffee and the toddler can get tired.
Wait for a break in the rain and dress the toddler in puddle wear and gum boots. Then let them run and jump in puddles.
If it's hot you can still go swimming even if it's raining, after all you are going to get wet anyway.

Knowing that the preparation for sleep influences the quality of sleep your toddler experiences will help you to be realistic about how long your toddler will sleep. If they are not interested in a day sleep and starting to look like they will cope with not having a day sleep at all, maybe a rest with stories on the lounge or in bed will suffice.

You are the expert on your toddler and will know how much sleep your toddler requires during the day to enhance their night sleep. Remember to lower your expectations of the day sleep when we are traveling, visiting, shopping or are not in a position to ensure the active play and rainy days can be treated as similar days. Also plan carefully what your toddler eats to avoid unnecessary sugar, colours and preservatives that excite and energise them!

Tip: The one activity that does help the toddler to wind down and recognise that they are tired before bed is sitting still for some stories. Aim for 2-3 books over 8-10 minutes. Lie the toddler back on your chest and hold the book up so they keep lying down and can still see the book! Encourage this position for all three stories and if the toddler becomes fidgety and wants to wriggle away try to distract them with the story. It is the total length of time sitting still for the stories that makes the difference to how tired they 'feel', don't think that 3 books with a jumping, active toddler on the lounge will do the same thing!!

RN, Child and Family Health Nurse. Mother of three.
I want to give you your life back! Would you appreciate being empowered with an understanding of your baby's needs and a gentle strategy that you apply to your baby/toddler's personality? Do you feel like you've read everything and nothing is working?

Visit http://www.sleepandsettle.com.au for my free report “Sleeping Baby Secrets”

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There are many reasons for your baby 9 months or older waking early in the morning around 5-6am and not wanting to go back to sleep. If the early waking is not working for your family and you would like to try and extend the morning wake time, we need to identify the possible causes of the early waking and deal with each issue.

Common issues to address are:

Too much light coming in the bedroom in the morning
Household/environmental noises
Baby not dressed warmly enough for the early morning temperatures
The reward of an early breakfast
Waking for a milk feed
Habits and routine already established as a younger baby, of an early start to the day
The timing of the first day sleep
Your baby's bedtime in the evening
Genetics! Your baby is made up of two parents

So once you decide what the possible causes are you can begin to play with some solutions.

Always give each try at least a week to have an effect on your baby's body clock and be patient.

It is easy to adjust the amount of light coming into the bedroom with appropriate window coverings of any sought. Whatever is handy will work, it doesn't have to be professional or expensive to be effective, just block out the light. Think an old quilt cover, dark sheet, large towels, a picnic blanket, coated block out fabric.

Sometimes we can train the family to be quiet around the house early in the morning, but sometimes outside factors affect your baby's waking. Try playing soft sleep time music such as 'Music for Dreaming' on repeat all night to cover some of the noises and wean baby off the music in a few months

Over 9 months Babies are very mobile in the cot and should be dressed for the night assuming they are rolling around in the cot and will not be under the warm covers all night. Think how you would feel, sleeping in what you have dressed your baby in, if you were sleeping on top of your blankets without a partner. Excess blankets become a SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) risk if your baby is mobile and crawling or rolling around the cot.

If your baby over 9 months of age is currently enjoying early morning milk feeds or gets breakfast as soon as they wake, this is a nice reward for waking. If you are happy to offer these feeds, early mornings are a consequence unless you resettle back to sleep after the feed. If you don't think baby needs these feeds for nutrition and they are simply waking for them as a habit, you can drop them if baby is over 9 months and eating solids well during the day. This is a personal decision.

Sometimes mum and dad need baby to get up early for the working schedule during the week but want to encourage a sleep in on the weekends. Unfortunately baby doesn't understand the difference between a workday and a weekend, so I recommend that you treat every day like a Sunday and encourage a sleep in until the last minute and arrange breakfast for baby at the place of babysitting or childcare.

If you reward your baby waking early in the morning with a sleep shortly after breakfast, you are encouraging early waking.

If you put your baby to bed too early in the evening, they will meet their sleep quota earlier in the night and not be able to sleep in to your reasonable wake time in the morning.

The last and obvious reason is that if you or your partner is an early riser, it is possible that the baby takes after the early riser and will always grace you with their presence when they wake! After all the baby is genetically related!

Tip: If your baby's routine is working for your baby and your family, don't change anything! If the routine needs fine tuning, first look for the possible contributing factors, then put a consistent plan in place confidently and monitor your results to see what works.

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