The holiday season is over, school life starts. This also brings a change into sleeping times of our children. If you haven’t changed the to-bed-go-time of your offspring a couple of days before school started, it’s advisable to do that now, at the latest. Children of preschool and primary school age need from nine to eleven hours sleep. Here, the individual sleep need can differ.
The time to sleep should be selected according to the time to get up. Meaning, if your child has to get up at 6.30 a.m., for example, you should take care that it sleeps at about 8.30 p.m. Don’t forget to consider the time for the ritual to fall asleep and the fall asleep time itself.
How can you tell whether your child has slept sufficiently?
Do you have to wake up your child several times in the morning? Is it difficult for your child to concentrate during the day, is it short-tempered and inattentive? Is there an increased urge for movement and your child can’t sit still? All these might be signs for lack of sleep.
Sleeping problems?
Sleep disturbances don’t arise all of a sudden, so take to above mentioned signs serious and try to solve the sleeping problems before they increase.
- Rituals to fall asleep: Does your child try to frequently test the boundaries and refuses to go to bed at night? Hold firm! Develop binding rules which ensure that your child sticks to a regular sleep-wake-cycle and goes to bed at the same time. Rituals to fall asleep significantly facilitate going to bed. Read out some short and nice stories to your child before going to bed, tell a story, let it read something itself or let it listen to an audio book etc. No matter what you choose, best is to do this when your child already is in bed.
- Exercise in the fresh air: Observe the daily routine of your child. Often children lack exercise and therefore still have a lot of energy in the evenings – and consequently are not tired enough for sleeping. Therefore take care that your child has sufficient exercise in fresh air.
- Discuss fears and sorrows: In case you notice that something is bothering your child (a fight with a friend, an oncoming test etc.) – try to discuss it with your child. But, this discussion should not take place right before falling asleep. Otherwise your child will take its fears and sorrows into bed.
- Leisure time stress, overstimulation and media consumption: Is your child watching TV or playing Video games in the evening? There are some points to consider: take care that the games or shows are not to stimulating and that they stop at least one hour before going to bed. Otherwise they might negatively influence falling asleep or lead to nightmares. Nightmares not necessarily have to be triggered by an exciting TV show. They also can be caused by stress and overstimulation. Try to quiet the everyday life of your child.
Receive further information in our sleep-healthy-guidebook “sleep yourself young, fit and successful”, free of cost.
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