Unless your child has specific neurological problems, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to sleep. A good sleep pattern is something that you help your children learn

Extract taken from Your Child Your Way by Dr Tanya Byron, published by Michael Joseph

Some parents have children who fall into a good sleep pattern easily and some don't but, fundamentally, as parents it is our responsibility to train our children to sleep. From six months onwards they should be in a pattern where you can put them down, they can fall asleep on their own from being awake on their own in a dark or dimly lit room and sleep right through until the morning when they wake and they ask to see you.

The key thing about sleep is the environmental cues that you set up for your child to sleep. Think about what your child would perceive as being the cue for sleeping. It might be lying on your lap on the sofa sucking on a bottle, while the TV is on.

If those are the environmental cues that they have to help them to go to sleep, then they will continue to need those cues because you have conditioned their sleep behaviour around them. A calm bedtime routine is crucial for children, something similar to this:

• Last meal of the day, around 5.30pm
• Play for a bit, maybe watch a bit of TV until 6, 6.30pm
• Go upstairs, have a warm bath, because if you increase the core body temperature, it can induce sleep, then straight into pyjamas
• Have a final drink
• Clean their teeth
• Get into bed
• Have a story and a song and a kiss and a goodnight

Keep your child calm

Be aware of your children's arousal levels before they go to bed. Often parents will come home from work, want to play with them and be throwing them in the air and spinning them round, and, of course, the kids are on the ceiling and can't sleep.

If they're drinking lots of fizzy drinks and eating loads of sweets, then that will have an impact on their wakefulness. I think it's important that once little ones are in their pyjamas, they then go straight into bed, still warm and cosy from the bath, and we sit and read to them as a sleep cue. Once you've done that and said goodnight, don't keep popping back in as you will reinforce wakeful behaviour rather than sleep.

Settling your child

If you are trying to get your child to settle in bed, there are four key ways to do this:

1. Controlled Crying
With this technique, follow the bedtime routine outlined above, say goodnight and leave. If they scream and cry, but they're still in their bed, you can either leave them for a while or go in, pat them and just say, 'Shhhh, it's bedtime/night time - it's time to go to sleep,' and walk out, but be very low key so that your response is non-reinforcing.

And then just leave it for increasing amounts of time up to a maximum of fifteen minutes. I strongly believe that you shouldn't leave your child crying for longer than a fifteen-minute spell. After that time they have actually been crying for half an hour in total: 5 + 10 + 15 = 30 minutes.

Apart from becoming exceedingly stressed, there is a chance that having had a last drink before bed, your child is likely to vomit it up. If they do, just go in and, with as little fuss as possible, without big cuddles or anything, you just take off their clothes, wipe them, put new ones on and lie them down.

2. Checking
Use this approach if you don't feel comfortable with the controlled crying method or you have found it too distressing for you and your child.

Check your child at five-minute intervals. Keep the intervals at five minutes and do not increase the time. At these five-minute intervals go in calmly even if your child is crying and say, 'Shhh, it's bedtime/night time - it's time to go to sleep.' Then you can leave your child for five minutes safe in the knowledge that you don't have to go in for another five minutes but that doesn't feel too long a time for you or your child. This method usually works within three to five nights.

3. Rapid return
Use this method when your child won't stay in bed. You simply wait outside the door, and literally just walk them back to their bed every time they get up. You put them back in bed and walk out. You have to be prepared before you embark on this technique, as it can be emotionally and physically exhausting in the short term. I have had an extreme example of a couple who had to return their child approximately 300 times in one night. But the good news was then that was it. The child slept from the next night on in their own bed.

4. Gradual withdrawal
If you feel your child's sleep problem is anxiety related, or if you feel too anxious yourself to be able to rapid return.

When you put your child to bed, sit on the floor near them, or maybe if your child is very used to you lying with them to go to sleep, lie there and have a bit of your body touching them but look away and say nothing. If your child tries to engage you, simply say, 'Shhh, shhh, shhh.'

If your child gets up, lie them down, look away and say nothing, and over the next few nights gradually withdraw the physical proximity to your child.

Extract taken from Your Child Your Way by Dr Tanya Byron, published by Michael Joseph (£10.99).
Copyright Tanya Byron 2007.