There are many different reasons why children find it difficult to go to sleep, but studies show that most parents are tired at some point in their parenting journey through lack of sleep. Whether it’s through worry over an illness or just the fact that your child really isn’t a fan of sleep, there are lots of different things that you can try that can help you with this situation. It can feel hopeless to try at certain times and we don’t always have the energy to put into the effort required, but mostly we are able to find some sort of balance to encourage our children to get a good night’s sleep.
Downtime
There are lots of things that can excite your children before bedtime, quite often we find that dad might come home from work just before bedtime and everybody will be excitable again and not wanting to go to sleep, it could also be that they have been allowed to watch an exciting program and then expected to go to sleep. But studies have shown that blue light from screens in devices can be detrimental to children’s sleep patterns. This is the same for adults too, so the main advice is to look into link link link, And also restrict any blue light in front of your children’s eyes before bed for at least half an hour. This will help them relax into a more natural sleep state, and hopefully keep them there until the morning.
Fresh air
Plenty of fresh air can really help a child sleep peacefully. You may remember the last time you went to the seaside and commenting on how well your children are sleeping, this is because there is plenty of fresh air coming from the sea and you tend to spend more time outside when you are on holiday. This can be replicated at home, and taking a short walk before bedtime arranges your local area, can induce the same effect. It doesn’t take an awful lot of effort, just putting on the appropriate clothing and getting outdoors for a short walk can really help the overall sleep patterns and rest that not only your children get, but everyone else in the household gets as well.
Diet
We all know that too much sugar before bedtime isn’t going to be helpful for a restful night’s sleep, but there are also plenty of other things that could cause disruption to our children to sleep patterns. For example, too many additives have been discovered to cause problems in children with ADHD for example, so there is certainly something to consider when you are feeding your children. That’s not to say that you must never give them anything with sugar or additives of course, but commonsense and being a bit more conservative with the amount of sugar and additives that you are giving your children, can help prevent this disruption to their sleeping habits.
Ultimately children grow out of this phase, and if they don’t then one day they will be grown up and you won’t need to worry too much about them during the night. Everybody is different, and some children sleep better than others this is a fact. So making sure that you have plenty of rest yourself, support to back you up if you find yourself fatigued, and a positive mindset will get you through.
