So your child may struggle to fall asleep at bedtime. Cortisol can make it hard to fall asleep and stay asleep. Being awake too long results in excess cortisol production (cortisol is a stress hormone and also a stimulant). Generally a “too late bedtime” comes part and parcel with an “awake too long.” Often the last nap ends around 3:00 PM, so if bedtime is late you end up with a loooong stretch of time awake. It’s probably hard to get riled up about this when you’re parenting a baby or toddler, but tah-rust me, when that baby is 14 years old and they’re sleeping through calculus, you might feel differently about it. It’s also why the AAP issued a public statement about the need to push school start times later. This is why most American teenagers are chronically sleep deprived and are routinely falling asleep in school. At that point they’ll need to sleep later in the morning, something made almost entirely impossible due to early school start times. This isn’t just because they’re teenagers and would rather stay up texting their friends (although screen time doesn’t help), it’s a biological shift. This pattern of “early rising” continues until they’re teens (anytime after 10-12 years) when their circadian rhythm shifts later and they have a hard time falling asleep before 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM. If your child is going to start the day at 6:30 AM regardless of when they go to bed, a late bedtime just decreases the overall amount of sleep they’re getting. We have an innate circadian rhythm and when we’re young, that rhythm sets us up to start the day early. Why is Early Better? Most Kids Wake Up Early I fully understand why logistically an early bedtime is challenging or undesirable for most parents. Most parents work which can make evenings feel like a mad dash to pick up baby, shovel some mashed peas into them, and get them washed up for bed. Older siblings (who often have soccer practice, music recitals, etc.) can muck up your good intentions to be home on time. ![]() Early is not always easier for you however. Most kids between 3 months and age 10 should be going to bed around 7:30. If I had to put a stake in the ground, it would be 7:30 PM. Bedtime: When?įiguring out the right time to put your child to bed can be a bit of a tricky wicket. So your last bottle/nursing session should be the first step in your 20-30 minute bedtime routine, ensuring there is a solid gap between that feeding and your baby falling to sleep. If you’re working to gently nightwean your child, then you want to remove all bottles, nursing, and pacifier use from your bedtime routine. Ideally everything prior to bedtime would happen in a dimly lit room, with only the minimum amount of light needed to conduct your bedtime activities. Light hitting our retinas inhibits our body’s ability to produce melatonin, a crucial sleep hormone. Light is a powerful determinant of sleep, so you don’t want to have any bright, sunny, or outside playtime just prior to bedtime. If you conquer the how, when, and what of bedtime, you are officially a night sleep ninja master (and you get a sassy belt which is remarkably on-trend for this season). This is bedtime, except generally wolf-free.Įverything starts with bedtime. I should have taken the other path!” But it’s too late and you have no options but to trudge on. Then you come upon a fork in the path: which way to go? You choose one way and hike on for a while and then decide, “Ugh, this path is the worst, it’s muddy and smells like possum pee. You hear the howling of wolves behind you, there is no way to go but forward. ![]() Imagine bedtime is like a path in a dense, bramble filled woods. You can’t make a course correction at 3:00 AM, you committed yourself back at bedtime. Much of what happens during the 11-12 hours that makes up your child’s night is determined by bedtime. What happens at bedtime, when bedtime occurs, and how you approach bedtime will determine how well your child sleeps (and thus how you sleep) at night.īedtime is the linchpin of the entire night. And your efforts to improve your child’s night sleep is entirely dependent upon one thing. When everybody is sleeping better at night, improving naps is far more likely. I tend to emphasize night sleep because it’s easier to sort things out at night (stop laughing, I’m totally serious).
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