Toddler Won’t Sleep on Vacation? These Tips Will Help

I speak from experience when I say that I understand the challenges that can come with getting a toddler to sleep on vacation. Our family has travelled internationally many times, including traveling overseas to Europe and Asia. I’ve encountered many situations where my toddler won’t sleep on vacation, including dealing with toddler jet lag, or refusing to have a nap on vacation. It’s fair to say that getting a toddler to sleep while traveling can be challenging.

These tips on how to get your toddler to sleep on vacation are based on my personal experiences while traveling with my family. If you’ve ever wondered what to do when your toddler won’t sleep on holiday or what to do if a vacation ruined your toddler’s sleep, then you’ve come to the right place.

Whether you’ve ever worried about your toddler sleeping schedule or how to manage your toddler not sleeping on holiday, you should know that you are not alone. In this post, I share all my best tips to help your toddler sleep on vacation, along with useful toddler travel gear that will help.

This post contains compensated links.

12 Effective Tips to Help your Toddler Sleep on Holiday

When your toddler won’t sleep on vacation, it can impact all areas of your family trip. As a general rule, over-tired toddlers aren’t the most co-operative travelers in the world. I’ve compiled all my learnings from our years of traveling with toddlers to improve your chances of getting your toddler to sleep while traveling.

1. Toddler’s Sleep Schedules Are Still Important

As parents we go through many stages of sleep with our babies. While a sleep schedule doesn’t always work for everyone, if your toddler has one at home, you should honor their sleep schedule while you travel.

I get it, while on vacation you might not want to return to your hotel early or lose an afternoon while your toddler naps. However, there are ways to be flexible while still trying to get your toddler the sleep she needs.

Keeping up with your toddler’s naps and bedtime will help your toddler sleep while traveling. While this won’t always be possible, if you can adjust your sightseeing schedule to accommodate a nap or early bed time then it can help make for a well rested toddler.

This might mean heading for a walk in a quiet park so your toddler can sleep in the stroller, or planning long drives when your toddler needs a nap.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to do Earlier Bedtimes

Travel is exhausting for everyone and especially toddlers who will be working hard to take in these new surroundings! While it’s tempting to stay out late when traveling, it never hurts to have a few nights with earlier bedtimes.

Any time we found our toddler starting to not sleep well on vacation, we’d do a few nights of an earlier bedtime. Even with toddlers, sleep begets sleep. This usually helped with longer night sleeps and a happier toddler the next day.

We try to remind ourselves that these years are short and that these small travel sacrifices won’t last forever. The small sacrifices (like extra naps or early nights) are well worth it in the big picture.

3. Get Creative in Managing Toddler Naps While Traveling

It’s not always easy to get a toddler to nap when life is pretty exciting around them. Getting a toddler to nap on-the-go can prove to be quite challenging some days. This can especially be true for toddlers who still take more than one nap a day or a long nap in the middle of the day.

Sometimes you need to get creative with naps on family holidays. As mentioned earlier, a long walk in a quiet park with your toddler in his toddler travel stroller is an excellent way to fit in a nap while traveling.

If your toddler has gone too many days without a nap, it’s time to start doing some early bedtimes or even have one parent stay behind to catch up on a nap. You can also do the first nap back at the hotel and one nap on-the-go.

Stroller covers can work wonders at creating a dark environment around the stroller to help your toddler nap on-the-go. If you plan to go this route, make sure you try it out at home before traveling with it.

4. Bedtime Routines Can Work Magic

Routines are just as important for toddlers, and your bedtime routine is one of them. Whether you are flying with a toddler or staying in a new place, use your bedtime routine to signal to your toddler that it’s time for sleep.

I recognize that replicating an exact bedtime routine isn’t always possible while traveling, but you can do some key parts like a bath, pajamas then stories. You’ll skip the bath on a plane, but getting pjs on and reading a story is still completely possible!

5. A Familiar Sleep Environment is Possible

While traveling, everything is going to feel new to your toddler. The sleep environment you create on vacation can offer a sense of familiarity for your toddler. Think about your toddlers room at home. Is it dark? Is your toddler used to falling asleep with white noise?

These are easy things to replicate when you travel. If your toddler still sleeps with a sleep sack, pack it. A portable white noise machine is also easy to pack.

Likewise, if your toddler sleeps in a crib at home, start using a pack n play or travel crib at home before you travel so your toddler is used to it. This will be easier than getting on your trip and finding that your toddler won’t sleep in a pack n play.

If your toddler sleeps in a bed at home, you can pack a toddler travel bed or toddler bed rails to keep it similar while you travel. I do recommend getting a toddler travel bed and practicing with it at home before your trip. Practice with naps then a full night sleep at home so it’s not so new to your toddler.

To keep a dark room no matter where you go, you can either pack travel blackout curtains or use a SlumberPod (which will fit over portable toddler beds). A SlumberPod is especially useful if you’ll be sharing a hotel room with your toddler, who may not be used to going to sleep with someone in the same room.

6. Get On Local Schedule

If you are traveling internationally with your toddler, or even crossing a few time zones, getting on the local schedule right away is especially important to help combat toddler jet lag. We always try really hard get on the local schedule as soon as we arrive. We then incorporate our toddler’s sleep schedule on the local schedule.

7. Toddlers Need Time to Play and Explore

This one was a hard lesson for us. It’s easy to spend a full day sightseeing while your toddler enjoys the view from a travel stroller or on your back in a toddler travel carrier. Unfortunately, toddlers need to burn off energy every day, or they may have trouble sleeping at nap time or overnight.

I strongly recommend you find time each day to visit a park or playground with your toddler. Let your toddler tire herself out. Your trip will be so much better for it!

8. Try Toddler Sleep Gear at Home First

If you want to try some new toddler travel gear to help your toddler sleep on holiday, try it at home first. Again, if it’s familiar to your toddler when you use it on your holiday, there’s a much better chance it will help your toddler sleep. If you spring something new onto your toddler while traveling, there’s a good chance it will be distracting and will impact their ability to sleep.

Sure, sometimes it’s inevitable if you are using a hotel crib for your toddler, but make sure you bring other familiar items to make it a familiar sleep environment for your toddler.

We let our son sleep in his KidCo PeaPod Plus travel bed several times at home before using it on vacation.

We always try a new sleep environment for a nap first, then after getting a few successful naps on it, we’ll try a nighttime sleep.

If you are planning to use a toddler travel bed on your family vacation, set it up in your toddler’s room at home before you go. Putting a new sleeping option in a familiar environment makes it less distracting for them, helping them get to sleep.

Similarly, if you are expecting your toddler to sleep in the stroller or in a carrier, try it out at home first! It might take a few tries before your toddler has a successful sleep on-the-go.

9. Practice Having Naps Out of the House

If your toddler is used to having every nap at home with the room completely dark, they might not be able to nap on-the-go as easily as you would think. Take the opportunity to do a nap on the go at home before you travel with your toddler.

10. Find Accommodation with Separate Sleeping Spaces

If your toddler is used to sleeping in his own room at home, it may be difficult for him to sleep with the excitement of being in the same room. Toddler friendly hotels or vacation rentals with separate rooms can help this! Just make sure you have a reliable baby monitor to keep an eye on your toddler.

If this isn’t possible and you are sharing a hotel room with your toddler, a SlumberPod can also work wonders to create a separate sleeping space or keep your toddler from trying to get your attention all night.

11. Get Outside

Everyone sleeps better after they get plenty of fresh air and this is especially true on vacation. Make sure you are spending time outside and giving your or toddler time to explore.

Parks are the perfect spot to take a picnic lunch and relax while you give your toddler time to burn off some energy and explore. All that fresh air and exercise is a magic formula to help get your toddler to sleep on vacation.

All that sunshine will help with toddler jet lag too!

12. Get Toddlers To Sleep on Airplanes

If at all possible, start your vacation by having your toddler keep their sleep schedule on your flights. Once you arrive at your vacation destination, it’s much easier to get your toddler to sleep if they aren’t overtired.

I’ve tried several brands of toddler airplane beds, and can tell you that they are one of the most important pieces of toddler travel gear that I have ever used. If you have long-haul flights, I highly recommend you use one as well.

What If Vacation Ruined Your Toddler’s Sleep

If your toddler won’t sleep on vacation, don’t let it ruin your trip by being stressed about it. Just do the best you can to keep your toddler well rested. You can always get your toddler back on her sleep schedule when you get back home.

We always found that our toddler’s sleep routine returned after a week or two once we were back home and in our old routines.

If you are worried that vacation ruined your toddler’s sleep, you’ll just need to focus more on a routine and be consistent for sleep. Thankfully, that’s much easier to do at home. The next trip, use these tips to help keep your toddler sleeping well on your holiday.

What to Pack to Get Your Toddler to Sleep on Holiday

I’ve already covered many of my favorites above, but if getting your toddler to sleep on vacation is important to you, then check out my recommended travel gear to help your toddler sleep on vacation.

We consulted the sleep experts at WeeSleep to put together these tips to help toddlers sleep on vacation. WeeSleep’s team of Certified Infant & Toddler Sleep Consultants, helps parents who are having challenges with their babies’ and toddlers’ sleep by providing a very personalized and high level of professional support to aid them in becoming independent sleepers. WeeSleep is for exhausted families who want their babies sleeping properly.

Found this post useful? Share it with your friends!