The response to my last post genuinely surprised me. Not because I didn’t believe in what I wrote, but because I had been quiet for so long that I wasn’t sure anyone was still out there. And then the messages came in, and I remembered why I started this in the first place. So here I am. I’m going to try to keep going.

For those of you who are new here, I started this blog because I found myself retyping the same sleep training notes to friends over and over and figured it would be easier to just put it all in one place. It quickly grew into something broader, the whole messy landscape of pregnancy, babies, and parenting. And even though it has been over five years since I sleep trained my youngest (and basically that long since I last blogged), I am still answering sleep questions. From friends, friends of friends, and from people who find the Baby Concierge email on the blog and reach out directly. Reflecting on it now, so much of what made the sleep training work, the consistency, the follow through, the trust in the process, is really just parenting. It was all tied together from the beginning.

My plan for this post is to share a general update and weave in some of the parenting challenges we have navigated over the years. My youngest is five now, and because I wasn’t actively writing during a lot of his toddler years, some of his story never got shared here while my other kids were documented along the way. So let’s start there.

He loved his crib. Genuinely loved it. Stayed in it happily for years, long past when most kids are pushing to get out. Bedtime was easy. We had our routine, we said we love you, goodnight, and that was that. We were so used to it that I think we got a little complacent, honestly. And then when he was just over two years old, he came down with a bad cold and fever. Nothing serious, but enough to completely disrupt his routine. And when your child is sick, you hold them. You do whatever they need. That has always been my position and it hasn’t changed.

But then he got better. And we went to put him back in his crib the way we always had, fully expecting the usual cheerful goodnight, and instead he was absolutely not having it. Screaming. Refusing to lie down. Looking at us like we had completely lost our minds. We were shocked. And to make matters more urgent, we were leaving for a parents-only trip in a week, with our parents coming to babysit, and there was simply no way we could hand that situation off to them.

So I did what I always tell other people to do. I thought about it, I brainstormed, and I tried to engage him in the solution rather than just impose one on him. I went to the computer and made a chart of his bedtime routine. Laminated it, stuck velcro pieces next to each step, printed out little photos of his face with velcro on the back. That night we introduced it to him and he was so excited. He went through each step, moving his little face along the chart. Dinner. Bath. Pajamas. And then, at the very end: “goes to sleep nicely in the crib.” He slapped his face onto that last box with tremendous satisfaction.

And then we turned out the light. Tadah! It worked! Just kidding. It was exactly the same as the night before.

We stayed the course. We left him. He threw every single stuffed animal out of the crib. He took off his sleep sack, his pajama bottoms, his diaper, and threw those out too. It was not easy to stand there and let it happen. But we did. And eventually he exhausted himself and fell asleep in just a pajama top on the bare mattress. We went in quietly, got him dressed, fixed the crib around him. He was so tired from the whole ordeal that he slept right through it.

The next night he was excited about the chart again. Selective memory is a real thing with toddlers, and honestly it worked in our favour.

After about a week, he didn’t need the chart anymore. He just went back to his routine as if none of it had ever happened.

He’s five now, and we still have the OK-to-Wake clock, the one that looks like a traffic light. He waits in his bed every single morning until it turns green. The first thing I hear when I wake up, without fail, is “It turned green!” There have been bumps along the way, as there always are. But we always come back to the same things. Talking it through. Role playing what to do if you wake up and it’s still dark. And staying consistent about what counts as morning.

Recently, we got back from two weeks away (in January). During those two weeks he had shared a room with people around him the whole time, never really alone. When we got home, something had shifted. He was scared to be alone in his room. Scared to be alone in the shower. It wasn’t just showing up at bedtime, it was threaded through other parts of his day too. An underlying anxiety that wasn’t there before we left.

I called a psychotherapist who has helped our family before. I told her what was going on. She suggested we add a few exercises to our pre-bedtime routine, and I want to share them here because they were so simple and so effective.

The first one she called Spaghetti Bones. You lie down and make your whole body as tight and stiff as you can, like raw spaghetti, and hold it for a count of three. Then you release everything all at once and let your body go completely soft, like cooked spaghetti. The contrast is the point. It’s a physical reset.

The second was a body scan. You imagine a warm light slowly moving through you from head to toe, pausing at each body part. It sounds simple because it is. It works because it pulls your attention inward and slows everything down.

The third was a breathing exercise around a favourite food. You take a deep breath and imagine smelling something you love, like fresh baked cookies just out of the oven. You do it three times. It’s grounding in the most straightforward way.

Along with these, we also started leaving his door slightly open at bedtime. That one was actually his request – it had been fully closed for over five years and he had never asked before, but this time he did, and it made a real difference to him.

We did all of this consistently for weeks. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know exactly what worked. It could have been the exercises themselves, or it could have been the natural settling back into home routine, or probably both. But there was one night early on that told me something was landing. He wanted to go down to the basement to get something, and he paused, turned to me, and said, “I’m going to take a deep breath and then I’m going to run down.” He named his anxiety. He named his tool. He used it. He is five years old.

By mid-April he had stopped asking for the exercises. We stopped doing them naturally, not because we decided to, just because he didn’t need them anymore. He hasn’t shown any of that anxious behaviour since.

Good tools to have in the toolbox regardless. He is still young and I have no doubt there will be more of this in some form as he grows. But having a few simple things to reach for, and knowing he can name what he is feeling, feels like a good place to be for now.

Okay, I just looked up and this got much longer than I intended. I had plans to cover so much more, updates on all four kids, other things we’ve tried and learned along the way. That is going to have to wait for the next one. This is how blogging always went for me, you sit down with a loose plan and then one story pulls you in and suddenly it’s an hour later. I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, you can always reach me at askbabyconcierge@gmail.com.