09/29/2026
Before my daughter was born, my son was able to fall asleep independently. After she was born, he started asking for things he hadn’t needed in months. We had to massage him, or cuddle him.
For a lot of families, this can feel like going backwards and may go into a power struggle. They resist offering more support out of fear that they are going backwards. While their child resists sleep.
Research shows that when we go through something stressful or uncomfortable, we reach for older patterns of comfort. The ones that worked before. Adults do this too. You can learn to manage stress differently and building new responses, then go through something genuinely hard and find yourself right back at the beginning. The work you did still counts. You’re simply human.
Babies and toddlers work the same way. A new sibling, an illness, teething, a big developmental leap: any of these can temporarily pull a child back toward what used to feel safe. Nervous systems do this when the world shifts, and it is not a sign you did anything wrong.
What matters is what you do once the disruption passes. Once the tooth is through or you start seeing your child settle more easily at bedtime again, you return gradually to the way you were doing things before. This usually takes a couple of weeks. But you will get where you were.
If your child is going through something like this right now and you’re not sure what’s driving it, the free guide in my bio walks you through what’s actually behind frequent night wakings. It’s a good place to start making sense of the pattern. And please know you are not being weak for supporting them the way they ask. You are providing comfort and safety.
