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Many new parents struggle to put their child to bed, tackling everything from endless cycles of wake-ups to challenging nap times. Rest assured, these nighttime woes won’t last forever. Parents can begin implementing solutions today that can have a lasting impact, beginning with learning how to approach their child’s sleep differently.

To help you understand how to best tackle your child’s sleep issues and help them get through the night, we spoke to pediatric sleep experts for their fool-proof tips for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. With just a few adjustments to your routines, your little one may just drift off to dreamland in no time flat.

How You’re Sabotaging Your Newborn’s Sleep

It may be tempting to cuddle your newborn to sleep to avoid hearing them cry at night, but experts recommend to stop this practice by the time they reach 3 months. Parents spend too much time rocking and holding their infant in the beginning of the night, preventing their newborn from learning how to self-soothe and slowing the development of healthy sleep-wake patterns.1

“As a result, a baby learns to fall asleep with this help—and then when [they] wake up during the night [they] can’t get back to sleep alone,” says Judith Owens, MD, director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital.

During the first several weeks of your baby’s life, nearly anything goes as you attempt to get your baby to sleep however you can. However, by the time they reach 3 months old, experts recommend putting them down in their crib “drowsy but awake.” Although they’ll cry for a while, soon, your baby will learn to drift off without help.

Here are additional ways you may be sabotaging your newborn’s sleep and what to do instead, according to experts.

You nap on-the-go

As much as possible, have your baby nap in their crib. “If [they] often fall asleep in a stroller or a car seat, [they’re] going to associate motion with sleep and have a hard time nodding off without it,” says Jodi Mindell, PhD, associate director of the Sleep Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Aim for at least half, though ideally more, of your baby’s naps to be in their bassinet or crib.

You feed during bedtime

When her son was a baby, Angela Mattke, MD, a pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic Children’s Center in Rochester, Minnesota, would breastfeed right before putting him down. “Because of this, whenever he’d wake during the night, he wouldn’t fall back asleep until I breastfed him,” she says.

At 8 months, when he was still waking three or four times a night, she decided to switch the routine and start sleep training. After a challenging week in which she gradually allowed her son longer times to calm himself before returning to the room—while not offering additional nursing, Dr. Mattke’s son learned to self-soothe.

You may be able to avoid this problem by finishing your baby’s final feeding before you start the bedtime routine. Also, try to feed your baby in a room they don’t typically sleep in so they don’t associate nursing with bedtime.

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