By Meenal, founder of Anaario
My son has never once, in his entire life, needed water at any point during daylight hours. And yet the moment the lights go off, he develops a thirst so urgent and specific that I genuinely worry about him sometimes, right up until the exact second the lights come back on, at which point the thirst evaporates completely and he forgets water is a substance that exists.
Bedtime stalling is, I am now convinced, the closest thing toddlers have to a professional discipline. He has a repertoire. He rotates it. He deploys it with the timing of a man who has genuinely studied comedy.
The greatest hits
"I need water" arrives first, reliably, within ninety seconds of the light going off. Then, once the water has been supplied and consumed under close supervision, "I need to potty" — which is either completely genuine or an Oscar-worthy performance, and I have long since stopped trying to tell the difference. Then, my personal favourite, "my leg is itchy," delivered with the gravity of a medical emergency, requiring a full inspection of a leg that is, upon inspection, entirely fine.
The negotiator's opening bid
"One more story" is not a request. It is an opening position in a negotiation he fully expects to lose, offered anyway, on the theory that you cannot get what you don't ask for. I have watched him make this exact bid on nights when we've already read four stories, as though volume alone might eventually wear me down. It has, on at least two occasions. I am not proud of this.
The sudden, urgent need to discuss unrelated topics
Somewhere around minute fifteen, mid-tuck-in, he will remember something profoundly important that cannot possibly wait until morning — a question about where clouds go, a report on something a friend said three days ago, a sudden and passionate need to discuss dinosaurs. None of it is bedtime-related. All of it is deployed at exactly the moment I think we're finished.
What sleep consultants actually say about all this
I've read more about this than I expected to, and the advice is consistent: this isn't defiance, it's development. Bedtime represents a break in connection after a full day together, and most toddlers don't yet have the words to say that directly — so it comes out as requests, negotiations, and stall tactics instead. A few things that genuinely help:
Build the stalls into the routine, before they're requested. Offer water, a bathroom trip, and a cuddle as standard steps every single night, before he asks. If the need is already met, the request loses its power as a stalling tool.
Keep your response calm and boring, every time. A big reaction — frustration, negotiation, extra attention — accidentally rewards the stall. A flat, kind, unremarkable response ("we already had water, now it's sleep time") teaches, over time, that the tactic doesn't get more than it's worth.
Have a consistent, predictable sequence. Bath, book, cuddle, lights out, same order every night. Predictability itself is calming, and it gives a toddler less room to insert a new negotiation into an unfamiliar routine.
Check the nap and the timing. An overtired toddler stalls more, not less, and a nap running too late in the day can genuinely push bedtime resistance higher. If stalling has gotten suddenly worse, the schedule is worth a look before anything else.
Expect two to three weeks of consistency before it properly improves. This isn't a one-night fix. Sleep consultants generally agree that steady, boring repetition of the same calm response is what actually shifts the pattern, not any single clever trick.
What I've settled into
These days, water and a bathroom trip happen before the last story, offered rather than requested, which has genuinely cut down on two of the classics. The cloud questions, I've decided to just answer, briefly, because they're rather lovely and I don't actually mind them. Some stalls are worth holding the line on. Some are just a small person wanting five more minutes of you before the day ends, and honestly, some nights I don't mind giving him that either.
He asked for water four minutes ago. I gave it to him preemptively tonight, before he asked, and the look of genuine confusion on his face was, I have to say, worth every strategy in this entire post.
— Meenal
