Author’s practical guidance
Both awake at night
Source named in the book: AAP · pediatric sleep research (Mindell & Owens)
At three in the morning nobody makes good decisions, including you.
Say this now
“It's still night. I'm here. Back to bed and I'll come after her.”
Identical words every night. The sameness is what makes it work; improvisation is what keeps them awake.
“The noise woke you. Nothing is wrong. Everyone is in the house.”
Answers the actual question, which is usually about the household rather than about them.
Do this
- Agree the order between the adults in daylight, and write it down.
- Give the older child the same short sentence every night, unchanged.
- Use white noise in their room before moving anyone anywhere.
- Keep the response boring, dim and short — nobody negotiates at night.
- Follow up in the morning if something frightened them, not at three a.m.
Avoid this
- Deciding the order of operations while standing in a dark hallway.
- Moving the older child to a different room as a punishment for waking.
- Bringing both into your bed on some nights and refusing on others.
If it repeats
Night waking that continues for more than a few weeks, or that comes with fear of the room itself, is worth raising with your pediatrician.
Why the book suggests this
At three in the morning nobody makes good decisions, including you. Whatever you improvise at that hour will be inconsistent with what you improvised the previous night, and the children will keep testing the inconsistency until it resolves.
The older child waking alongside the baby is also often not a sleep problem. They wake because there is noise and movement in the house at an hour when there used to be neither, and they check whether you are where you were.
From this collection
Same Words: Two Children
45 prepared situations in this family area.