Tip—A consistent bedtime ritual substantially decreases hassles at bedtime.

After a long day with a young child, it’s really important for that child to get into bed and go to sleep. Young children, despite their seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy, need their rest (the average preschooler requires somewhere around 11 hours of nighttime sleep). Parents need adult time in the evening. You notice I didn’t say “should have” or “it would be nice to get”—I said “need.” Although rewarding, taking care of young children is a very draining job. If you don’t refuel on a regular basis with sleep, balanced meals, and a certain amount of adult time, then you will not be at your best. Your child deserves your best and you deserve the self-care it takes.

That being said, getting young children into bed is no easy proposition. If you have a high-need or temperamentally-demanding child, then your task is harder. The most stressful times I remember from my children’s early childhood involved sleep issues. Both of my children had periods in their toddler and preschooler years where they would not stay in bed or refused to fall asleep—singing determinedly to themselves and kicking the wall to stay awake.

Tools—I’m sure you have stories and struggles of your own. Lucky for us, Rebecca Huntley, parent educator and author of The Sleep Book for Tired Parents offers solutions. This book saved my and my husband’s sanity many a time during the early childhood years. Her first suggestion for keeping a child in bed is to establish a bedtime ritual. “The purpose of a bedtime ritual is two-fold. First, it eases that transition from wakefulness to sleep and, in many cases, to being alone. Second, it signals to your child ‘time to go to sleep’ or ‘it’s okay to go back to sleep,’” says Huntley. The following tips for making bedtime rituals are drawn from Huntley’s book.

• A ritual needs to be calming and reassuring. Soft voices and calm bodies—as opposed to a before-bed wrestling match—will help children settle down to bed. This can mean reading, soft singing, a prayer, or just a quiet review of your child’s day—the content isn’t as important as the calming atmosphere and the consistency of the routine.

• The ritual should be just long enough to ease the transition, not to get the child to sleep. If you stay in your child’s room until he actually falls asleep, then he becomes dependent on you to get to—and back to—sleep.

  

• Keep it simple. A lengthy bedtime ritual can become a burden on you. Ideally, the ritual should be simple and something that Mom, Dad, Grandparents, or the sitter can carry out. One family’s ritual consists of saying goodnight to the three teddy bears in the crib, the parent covering the child up with a special blanket, then a kiss and a “night-night.”

My school-age children still have bedtime rituals. They include more things, but they aren’t burdensome on my husband and me because we come in mid-ritual. My ten-year-old son brushes his teeth, feeds his lizard, then asks one of us to come in and read. We read aloud one chapter of his book, say prayers and then it’s lights out. It works remarkably well.

You’ll find more practical tips you can use right now in The Sleep Book for Tired Parents by Rebecca Huntley.

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