Vacation Sleep: Why a Few Anchors Matter More Than a Perfect Routine
Vaction Sleep
As a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and sleep specialist supporting families across British Columbia, I spend a lot of my summer answering some version of the same worried text: “We leave for vacation in a week, is this going to undo everything we’ve worked on?”
It's an understandable fear. Vacation changes where a child sleeps, what they do all day, and when bedtime actually happens. But that doesn't mean sleep has to unravel. The research on how children's sleep actually works gives us some real reassurance here, and a much simpler job to do than most parents think.
Sleep Is Not Held Up by One Perfect Bedtime
It's tempting to think of sleep as fragile, like one missed nap or one late night in a hotel room could set everything back to zero. But sleep is not supported by a single perfectly executed bedtime. It's supported by patterns, predictability, and the cues that help a child's body recognize when it's time to rest.
This is actually the same idea behind why bedtime routines work so well in the first place. Bedtime routines function as an environmental cue, a signal to a child's body about what's coming next, rather than a magic sequence of steps that has to be followed exactly (Lam et al., 2023). While you're away, those cues might look a little different than they do at home. That's okay. Different is not the same as absent.
You Don't Have to Rebuild Your Routine Brick by Brick
Here's the part that tends to bring parents real relief: you don't need to pack up your entire routine and recreate it exactly as it exists at home. A study of over 10,000 children across multiple countries found that the benefits of a bedtime routine are dose-dependent,the more nights per week a family kept the same routine, the better the sleep outcomes, but it wasn't an all-or-nothing switch (Mindell et al., 2015).
You don't need a perfect routine to get real benefit from a familiar one.
Keeping a few anchors is often enough to support rest, while still leaving room for late nights, special outings, and the memories that make vacations so meaningful. A few anchors that tend to carry the most weight:
A consistent (even shortened) bedtime routine
A comfort item from home
A predictable wake-up time
Not Every Piece of the Routine Carries the Same Weight
Every bedtime routine is made up of several small components, a bath, a snack, a book, a song, a bit of cuddling, and research suggests these pieces don't all matter equally. Some are simply “nice to have.” Others are doing the real work of telling a child's nervous system, this is what comes before sleep.
A 2023 study following toddlers over time found that bedtime routine consistency at 12 and 15 months predicted measurably less behavioral dysregulation, and fewer externalizing and internalizing problems, months later, even after accounting for other factors (Lam et al., 2023). The researchers describe two likely mechanisms behind this: the routine acts as a predictable environmental cue, and it creates repeated opportunities for warm, responsive parent-child interaction (Lam et al., 2023). That second piece is worth sitting with, it means the connection embedded in the routine may matter just as much as the sequence of steps itself.
Practically, this means identifying which parts of your routine actually help your child transition to sleep, the book, the specific lullaby, the particular stuffed animal, and protecting those, while treating everything else as flexible. That one shift can make it so much easier to build room for the rest of your trip.
Vacation Can Also Be an Opportunity
Recently, I worked with a family who used their vacation as a chance to try something new. New environments and new routines can actually be a great opportunity to help kids build flexibility around sleep, sleeping in different spaces, under different conditions, with a bit more scaffolding than usual.
And coming home is its own opportunity, too. Take note of the growth your child showed while you were away, and look for ways to carry those same wins back into your everyday routine.
If Sleep Has Felt Challenging This Summer
You don't have to figure this out alone. We offer:
Virtual sleep consultations for families across British Columbia
Hybrid support from Vancouver and the Fraser Valley to Victoria and Langford
Support for families across Canada and beyond
Sources:
Lam, J.T.Y., Williamson, A.A., Salih, Z., Heere, M., & Mindell, J.A. (2023). Bedtime routines, development, and caregiver educational attainment in toddlerhood. Frontiers in Sleep, 2, 1197297.
Mindell, J.A., Li, A.M., Sadeh, A., Kwon, R., & Goh, D.Y.T. (2015). Bedtime routines for young children: a dose-dependent association with sleep outcomes. Sleep, 38, 717–722.