Bedtime Starts at Breakfast: The Power of Daytime Skill Building for Better Sleep
As BCBAs, we are taught to look at skill acquisition through the lens of building prerequisite competencies. We wouldn’t expect a learner to independently cross the street before they’ve mastered responding to their name, right? Yet when it comes to sleep, we often skip the developmental scaffolding altogether and assume a child will fall asleep peacefully, alone, in the dark, without the same kind of skill-building we’d apply in any other behavioral domain.
The reality? Sleep independence is often less about sleep and more about everything else leading up to it.
When Bedtime Is the Only Time
Take a moment to reflect on the demands we place on learners at bedtime. For many children, this is the first time all day they’re being asked to:
Follow a structured routine
Transition away from a highly preferred activity (usually screens)
Calm their bodies
Separate from caregivers
Be alone in their rooms
Remain still and quiet
That’s a lot to ask—especially if none of those expectations have been introduced, practiced, or reinforced during daytime hours. The result? Challenging bedtime behaviors that are often misinterpreted as refusal, defiance, or “bad habits,” when in fact, they’re a natural response to unfamiliar or unsupported demands.
How to Shift the Focus to Daytime Practice
Here’s where we, as behavior analysts, can step in with intention and strategy. By embedding these sleep-adjacent skills into the day, we can reduce the learning curve—and the conflict—that so often shows up at night.
Here are a few practical ways to support daytime skill-building:
Routine Rehearsals: Practice structured, predictable routines (like toothbrushing, dressing, and putting away toys) outside of bedtime. Even if the activities differ slightly, the pattern of a multi-step routine can be generalized later to bedtime expectations.
Transition Practice: Introduce 1–2 transitions each day from a preferred activity to a less preferred one. Use timers, visual schedules, and consistent language. If a child can’t yet pause a favorite show without a meltdown, expecting them to end screen time and fall asleep peacefully 10 minutes later is unrealistic.
Quiet Body Activities: Designate calm moments in the afternoon—this could be coloring, puzzles, supported sensory input, or listening to music. These micro-moments give the child’s nervous system time to rehearse regulation and stillness in a low-pressure setting.
Separation Routines: Use phrases like “I’ll be right back” with short, successful separations during the day. Build from 3 seconds to a few minutes. This can normalize being alone in a safe, supported way before it becomes part of the nighttime routine.
Alone Time in the Room: Help the child associate their room with enjoyable, low-stimulation activities like reading or playing with soft toys—not just bedtime. This can reduce resistance or fear that crops up when the bedroom is used exclusively for sleep.
Why This Works
When we treat bedtime behaviors as learned skills rather than emotional events or disruptions, we empower families to teach, support, and celebrate progress. Better yet, we reduce reliance on reactive solutions at night—because we’ve done the work proactively during the day.
Bedtime success doesn’t start at bedtime. It starts with thoughtful, intentional teaching woven into the hours long before the lights go out.
Let’s help families reframe the way they prepare their children for sleep—not just with melatonin and bedtime stories, but with skill-building that starts at breakfast.
Want to bring more of these practical, evidence-based strategies into your ABA practice? The Sleep Collective is designed to equip BCBAs with the tools to assess and treat sleep behaviorally, ethically, and sustainably.
