What can you do when your toddler takes a very long time to go to sleep in the evenings?

How long and exhausting the evenings can be when we have a toddler to care for! How tempting it is to put our little one down early, so that we can have a break, or get something done, or have some time to relax with our partner!

If your toddler is not going to sleep easily in the evenings, you might even hear that he's 'resisting' sleep and you just need to be firmer.

But sleep is under the control of the two biological regulators. If your toddler is taking a long time to go to sleep in the evening, it's because her sleep pressure isn't high enough yet, or her body clock settings aren't well aligned with yours. Trying to put your toddler down to sleep when the sleep pressure isn't high enough can result in

• Sleep battles, in which you spend long (and miserable) hours trying to get your toddler to sleep, only for her to wake the minute you put her down. You might find yourself breastfeeding or bouncing on a fit ball for much of the evening, desperate for a break. It's normal to feel resentful in this situation!

• Sleep battles, in which your small child fusses and cries a lot in the evenings as you try to get him to sleep. He seems desperate for you not to leave him, and wakes the minute you tiptoe out of the room

• Excessive night waking, often from after one or two o'clock in the morning

• Extremely early starts to the day.

Parents often receive unhelpful and inaccurate information, such as

• Healthy toddler sleep requires early bedtimes (e.g. seven o'clock in the evening)

• Healthy toddler sleep needs dimmed lights or low stimulation before bedtime.

But if you shift your attention on to providing rich and changing sensory motor stimulation for your little one in the evening, as best you can, and create evenings that you enjoy as a parent and as a family, you can trust your toddler's sleep regulators to do their job, without much fuss.

You can find out about normal toddler bedtimes around the world here.