Helping children get into a regular sleep routine

Disclaimer: Every child is special and unique and these ways mentioned may not work for each and every child and definitely will need some tweaking to suit each individual child or even parent for that matter.

 
This post is perhaps most applicable to parents with children in the ages between 2 and 10.

The advantages of having a good sleep routine is obvious to many readers. A deeper analysis on the importance of sleep is available at Shane Parrishs' Farnham Street blog article. Another interesting article from Maharishi Ayurveda that introduces on how Ayurveda (the Indian system of medicine) helps one to deal with sleep problems based on one's personality type (Vata, Pitta or Kapha). Both the articles are quite interesting reads and also help one to develop a better understanding of sleep, the advantages of better sleep and foods that help people sleep based on their personality types.

Now onto the topic of this blog article - children and their sleep habits. The video below was made in 1950 called 'Sleep for Health' and it presents the importance of sleep from the view point of a child. It clearly presents the effects of good sleeping habits on a pair of children and contrasts that with the effect of the lack of good sleeping habits on another child. It also seems that the video is made with an intention to open up an new dimension in the children, that of introspection. It gently suggests the children to look into reasons beyond what is superficially evident for their own irritability or the actions of others.

The above video suggests that there need to be some gentle and winding down activities that the children go through to get into a sleepy state. It is hard to make a recommendation what activity will work toward helping a particular child wind down. A parent has to tread the path, observing, learning and adapting as one goes. I knew a 1.5 year old baby that would fall asleep especially if the music being played was some rhythmic hard rock!!!

The following is one of such many possible paths to help a child wind down after a regular day.

Prepare your schedule

Starting backwards helps, figure out the

• Time the child needs to wake up the following day
• Time the child needs to sleep given children need between 8-10 hours of sleep daily
• Time the child needs to have dinner

Eventually you might arrive at some time gaps between dinner time and sleep time. Principles of Ayurveda recommend that one does not go to bed at night immediately after a meal or on a full stomach. Hence if such a time gap between dinner time and sleep time exists in your case, it makes sense to plan some light activities to prepare the child for bedtime. The video above shows that the boy reads before bedtime and the girl plays preparing her doll for its bedtime. These are definitely light activities and are great for preparing the child to wind down.

Plan the activities before bed time

These activities might happen usually between dinner and the time the child needs to be asleep. Many parents prefer their child to have a nice warm bath just before dinner. In addition, there could be many activities that could be done together by the parent and child. Children are by nature very inquisitive and an activity that is interesting but not exciting (that keeps them awake!) needs to be chosen. Such activities  might also be very motivating for them to finish their dinner and prepare for bedtime. Based on experience over time, a parent can improvise and add a different activity for them every night. Low lights, soft music, light lullaby singing, meditation, story reading, passing on information/values/habits you consider worth for your child's betterment .. there is no end to improvisation once you have a routine setup.

Once started stay motivated and persevere

Since this is all about dealing with a child one can never expect things to go as per a plan. It might  happen that a parent might tend to focus too much on the plan and lose sight of the core purpose of having such a plan. For me personally, the core purpose of these activities are to create a 'placeholder', an excuse if you will, for quality time to be spent between parent and child. Another interesting facet to motivate a parent to be patient with this exercise is the fact that 'Parenting is a two way journey' - teaching and learning. A parent has so much to teach to a child, answer their questions, share their know-how, introduce them to the Animal Kingdom, Elvis Presley, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Krishna Das, Kraftwerk, NAO Robots or James. T. Kirk :-) .... Sharing with a child opens up a possibility for a parent to look at things like one has never ever imagined! There is so much for a parent to learn, even correct oneself, gain insights along this path of parenting. This is brought out in this article by Sri Sri Ravishankar and elaborated in the video (1 of 3 parts) below. He speaks about how the parent learns so much from the child, sharing your vision with your child, some very practical measures to deal with situations as a parent and some simple insightful events and their effects on a child. Some parts of the talk might be particularly applicable in India but the essence is applicable wherever there are children and parents.