How Peaceful Parents Put Their Kids to Sleep Stress-Free

How many of you have had this experience?

It is 8 pm and time for your toddler to go to sleep. You have fed him, bathed him, and pampered him. Then you announce that it is time to go to bed. All of a sudden the gates of hell are unleashed. Crying, screaming, throwing toys, begging you not to send him to the awful place called bed to be tortured by sleep. As you finally get him in bed, turn off the lights and close the door he either get out of bed or scream for what sounds like an eternity.

Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration of what happens in your home, but I think most of us parents have felt this at one point or another. What if I told you there was another way, a way that would leave you and your child sleeping stress-free?

First, I would like to explain peaceful parenting. It is a philosophy that promotes peaceful interactions between parents and children. When approaching our kids, we treat them like we would like to be treated. One of the most commonly held features of peaceful parenting is that we do not hit our children. No smacking, no spanking, and no forceful grabbing. We believe that as adults, we have the capability to interact with children without hurting them.

Second, I would like to disclose that both my wife and I are educators. She teaches pre-k to 3rd grade, and I have taught middle school, high school, and college. Neither of us has worked in or for an institution that allows us to hit children. All problems within our 8-hour day have to be resolved peacefully.

This philosophy has leaked into our parenting. I would like to share with you that we never have a problem with putting our children to sleep. No crying. No screaming. No tantrums. Here is our secret: Our toddler determines his bedtime.

If your jaw is hanging open, you can close it now. Let me explain what bed time looks like in our house. We first will put our daughter, who is 19 months, to sleep when she starts rubbing her eyes. She loves to sleep and has never fought us. It is not fair for me to use her as an example because she is too young.

Now our 3 & 1/2-year-old is a different story. We used to fight with him. He would do what we described in the story above. It was horrible, and it stressed everyone out. Now around 8 pm I ask him when he is planning on going to bed. When we first started implementing this style of parenting, he tested us to 11pm then crashed on the couch. But now he usually goes to bed sometime between 9pm – 10pm on his own.

When he decides to stay up later, he has to deal with the natural consequences. The next day he is tired and being tired is no fun.

My son has learned to take care of his sleep schedule at the young age of 3-years-old. Most people don’t get to take on this responsibility until they are in college.

Before anyone says that we have abnormal children and that this would never work with your kids, my son still picks his nose and eats it. He takes toys from his sister. He sometimes has accidents in his pants. He is a normal 3-year-old. The only difference is that he has been given freedom and peaceful parents who nurture him.

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Written By

Michael Esch

I am President of UC YAL, a teacher and a learner. In the morning I go to school to be a secondary education major with hopes of creating my own school. In the afternoon I work at a private school tutoring and providing extra curricular materials.

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11 Comments

Roger Browne May 22, 2015 , 2:25 pm Vote0

We never had trouble with this. Our technique was to establish the idea of a normal bedtime. For example “Normal bedtime is 8:30”. However, this was never a rule, never anything other than a suggestion.

If the children were still awake after “normal bedtime”, we would “be available, but be boring”. Therefore, the children never felt that they were missing out on exciting things by going to bed when they were tired, so they went to bed when they were tired.

If they were occasionally up late because something was holding their interest, that was cool.
Blue Square May 22, 2015 , 2:37 pm Vote0

This is just amazing.
Generally, our daughter is now pretty amenable to bedtime, but once in a while, when it’s been an exciting day, or especially when Daddy has to work in the evening, Lizzy loses her bananas entirely.
The banana-losing used to be much more common, but I think we’ve gotten more persuasive lately.
Blue Square May 22, 2015 , 2:42 pm Vote0

@skylerjcollins are you doing it this way too?
Skyler J. Collins May 22, 2015 , 3:02 pm

@mikereid sort of. we have a family bedroom and we all (mom, dad, 9.5, 5.5, .5) go to bed together. as radical unschoolers, the only person on a schedule is me. we don’t get any protest at this point, other than if someone needs a minute or two to finish up whatever they’re doing.

what lead to this state of affairs in my house is discovering the following:

peter gray on why children protest bedtime: http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/peter_gray3.html

sandra dodd on sleep: http://sandradodd.com/sleep/

dayna martin on the family bed: http://daynamartin.com/unschooling-blog/the-sacred-flow-of-the-family-bed/
Objectivist Dad May 22, 2015 , 7:04 pm Vote1

I like how you assume that anyone who disagrees with you thinks the only way to deal with children is to beat them into submission. Is that arrogance or demonizing your “opponents”?
Blue Square May 23, 2015 , 12:47 pm

@skylerjcollins That’s awesome!
@luckypyrate are you doing anything like this with your boys? I’m always seeing those cute pictures of them asleep, but I have no idea how you get them to pass out so nicely.
Kathy Grable May 23, 2015 , 4:49 pm Vote1

I’ve never heard anyone advocate spanking as a means of getting children to go to bed. It’s not rocket science: you establish a bedtime routine, or rituals (a story, or a piggyback ride to bed from dad), and a regular bedtime. Most kids need a lot of sleep or they get crabby. The best recipe for crabby kids is a nice warm bath, snack, and early bedtime. My kids liked the routine. I agree with Libertarian Dad on the tone of this article.
Cathy Cuthbert May 24, 2015 , 4:07 am Vote0

@skylerjcollins, We did the same–family bed, and I would read aloud in bed for about an hour, sometimes more, before we turned the lights off.

When both parents work and the children go to school, we lead parallel lives. In our culture, children do everything separate from their parents. Our family lead one life, completely different from other families, but I think similar to generations past. Things like outgrowing diapers, brushing teeth, eating veggies, bed time and getting up in the morning were without stress and conflict.

Now, many parents are excellent at maintaining the love and respect of their children and can also manage these things with little to no conflict while leading parallel lives. Our parents’ generation did. My mother never hit us and we did what we were told, not the least of which because we adored her. But for some reason, the baby boom generation didn’t “get it,” and seemed to have quite a bit of trouble with their children.

I have heard recently that something like 90% of parents spank/hit their children. Maybe Michael has heard this stat, too, and is assuming it as the starting point in this essay. Frankly, I don’t know one family that spanked the children. Not one. So either I am an incredible outlier, or this stat is nonsense. I just can’t believe it’s true.
Beth Cody May 24, 2015 , 1:27 pm Vote2

Because we homeschool, we have a flexible schedule and haven’t worried about the bedtime thing at any point. Our kids, now 9 & 11, have been required to go upstairs by around 8:30 (so that my husband and I can can watch TV together), but they are allowed to stay up until 11pm or so, when my husband goes to bed. This has worked since they were preschool age, and they have often decided individually to go to sleep earlier if they were tired. We sometimes suggest that they go to bed a little earlier if we have to get up early to leave on a vacation or something, but they generally have self-regulated their bedtimes well enough.
Objectivist Dad May 24, 2015 , 11:08 pm

@kathygrable Exactly. My son knows that spanking is technically on the table, but he also knows that unless he refuses to discuss it in a rational manner, it isn’t going to happen. He knows it’s the same as any other form of violence, a last resort after all else fails. That isn’t to say it has never happened, but it’s never been more than a swat on the butt and now that he’s 10 he’s more than capable of discussing why it was wrong etc. He also knows that I am not playing about getting a belt if he does something that he would never do, such as hit a little kid or steal etc. Those things he knows are, and should be, deserving of the worst punishments and thus nothing to left to talk about.

Which is the goal isn’t it? To raise an adult that won’t initiate violence of any sort, but is fully capable of dealing with someone who does? First with Reason, then with appropriate but sufficient force in response?
Blue Square May 25, 2015 , 1:02 pm Vote0

@bethcody1 That sounds wonderful.