It’s challenging for so many mamas to get kids off to bed. From power struggles from brushing to reading one more book. And one more and another. Children resist sleep.
Man if only I could get away with a 8:30 PM bedtime, don’t these kids know how good they got it with an early bedtime?
The average kid has a busy day. There’s school, taking care of your pets, running around with friends, going to sports practice or other activities, and doing your homework. By the end of the day, your body needs a break. Sleep allows your body to rest for the next day.
As our children grow and get more active, we spend enormous amounts of time preparing our kids to succeed in the world from helping them learn to read, to schlepping them to endless sports and extracurricular activities, policing their screen-time and making sure they have time to free-play.
But as our kids get older, we don’t teach them much, if anything about sleep, a key building block of all those other things.
And of course the best way to teach them is less by telling and more by modeling the very behavior we want to encourage.
2 steps to teach better sleeping habits
1. Reinforce that sleep keeps us healthy, happy and gives us energy to play
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- Talking to your children about what kind of person they want to be and how sleep is such a big important part of that needs to be told to kids as young as 3.
- Ask your child if you leave a car on all night, every night what would happen to it? Your child might say run out of gas, overheat, turn off, break-down. Let your kids know that your body is a machine like a car. We need to give our cars a rest at night time when they aren’t being used so they can work for us in the morning when we need them too. That’s just like our body. If we don’t give our cars a break, it will break down.
Use this guide to talk to your children about how you feel when you get enough sleep versus when you don’t.
When you get enough sleep you can:
•Pay attention better in school
•Be creative and think of new ideas
•Fight sickness so you stay healthy
•Be in a good mood
•Get along with friends and family
•Solve problems better
Without enough sleep you can:
•Forget what you learned
•Have trouble making good choices
•Be grumpy and in a bad mood
•Have trouble playing games and sports
•Be less patient with brothers, sisters, and friends
•Have trouble listening to parents and teachers
2. Make bedtime calm and relaxing
Bedtime routines are not just for infants and toddlers they are great for children of all ages.
Having a ritual of breathing essential oils, praying, massage feet with oils, taking a warm bath or reading is a great way to calm the mind and body before bed.
Remember start young and it’ll become a natural part of their routine.
Teaching our kids that the bed is a place for sleeping not drawing, homework or playing games helps children associate the bed with sleep. Make bedtime a sacred ritual and we can then help our children transform their relationship with sleep..
Now I’d love to hear from you.
Share one of the tools you use to help your children have better sleeping habits and leave a comment below.
Remember so many mamas come to this site so you wisdom might be exactly what another mama needs.
Here’s to great zzzz’s,
