6

Bedtime

At the end of the evening, just as you’re winding down and starting to relax, do behavior problems begin to erupt? Sometimes it seems like it never fails; at the very moment you’re feeling that you are home free, a problem crops up unexpectedly and puts a damper on the evening. Unfortunately, bedtime is ripe for difficult behavior.

Forgotten school projects are suddenly remembered. Sibling rivalry kicks into high gear. Tantrums arise. Resistance is high. Stress levels skyrocket. And then there are the many entreaties that kids make as the lights go off and the blankets are tucked in that can exacerbate or restart the problems and the drama.

Bedtime should be a period of relaxation and winding down after a long day. Calmness should make the transition to sleep an easy one. But in a home with children, you know from experience that it’s not always like this.

Luckily, bedtime is one of those problem areas over which you have a bit more control. This is a parenting issue that you can manage very effectively by using our Universal Strategies consistently, calmly, and, in some cases, creatively. The creativity comes in because routines and traditions play a big role in reducing the stress and problems at bedtime. They also provide an opportunity for you to strengthen your bond with your children as you soothe them. Putting your own, unique spin on these strategies is critical and can be very effective.

Think back to your own childhood. How do you remember bedtime—calm or chaotic? What comforted you most? Perhaps your parents sang special songs or read special books. Maybe there was a stuffed animal or pillow that made going to sleep more comfortable. While many of these soothing techniques begin when your children are very little, it’s never too late to implement some new routines or introduce treasured traditions to the next generation.

In this chapter, we look at the importance of sleep and the causes of bedtime problems. Then we go through some of the best Universal Strategies that will help make your nights go more smoothly. Additionally, we examine how to soothe your child after a nightmare. As with all things related to raising your kids, you have to first understand the root cause of the problems before you can fix them. Knowledge is often the best stress relief there is.

Your Child’s Sleep Is Very Important

Research indicates a strong link between the quality and amount of children’s sleep and their cognitive, academic, behavioral, emotional, and health outcomes. A full range of difficulties have been associated with insufficient and poor-quality sleep, including lower performance on IQ tests, poorer performance on classroom tests, and lower grades in school. Poor sleep is also associated with behavioral problems and trouble regulating emotions and mood. Studies have found that children whose parents do not enforce a regular bedtime are at greater risk for health problems. Additional research indicates that families that use a bedtime routine have children who tend to fall asleep faster.

Sleep nourishes the brain, similar to the way food nourishes the body.

Sleep nourishes the brain, similar to the way food nourishes the body. Those of us who either occasionally or routinely do not get enough sleep can certainly relate to the negative effects.

Not getting enough sleep can be behind health problems that are seemingly unrelated. It’s not common, but the following scenario has happened: A child with undetected sleep apnea is tired and unable to focus in school and is diagnosed with ADHD. At some point, he has his adenoids and tonsils removed (which fixes the sleep apnea) and the ADHD goes away because he’s now getting enough sleep. Doctors then realize the symptoms are stemming from the apnea and that the boy may never have had ADHD at all. While this is a scary possibility, we’re sharing it to underscore the point that not getting enough sleep can have major ramifications.

One question that parents often have is how much sleep their child needs. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that preschoolers typically get between 11 and 13 hours of sleep a night, that children in elementary school get between 10 and 11 hours of sleep a night, and that teenagers get an average of nine-and-a-quarter hours of sleep a night. The organization is quick to point out, however, that these are rules of thumb, and that each individual has his or her own sleep needs that can be determined only by assessing how the individual feels after different amounts of sleep. Most children stop napping by 5 or 6 years old, so if your school-age child seems tired enough during the day to want to nap, this may be a sign that he or she is not getting enough sleep at night.

As we’ve already established, a child can have a hard time putting his or her feelings into words, and this often translates into tantrums or other problematic behaviors. Children don’t know they’re tired, and certainly would never admit to it. You need to observe your child and his or her sleep needs closely. Even within a single family, one child may be able to function normally and happily on 9 hours of sleep a night, while the other is cranky unless he gets 11 hours of shut-eye nightly.

Regular exercise can have a positive impact on sleep patterns. Engaging in vigorous daily activity, whether it’s an organized sport, a brisk walk with Mom or Dad, or an hour at the playground after school, helps bedtime matters in measurable ways as well. That’s not to mention how healthy it is for us all to be active rather than sedentary.

Bedtime can become a battle of wills between parents and children, and you may often not know where to turn to help your child achieve regular sleep patterns. You may resort to strategies such as keeping your child up extra late in order to tire her or him out more, but that tactic only backfires and makes the problem worse. Circadian rhythms have dips and rises and, just like adults, some children get a second wind of energy in the evening hours. This can make it appear that your child is not tired, but in reality she’s likely to be overtired. If your house experiences what some parents (including Sara) call “the witching hour” between 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., when more behavior issues erupt, then circadian rhythms may be at work.

Keeping your child up late in order to tire her out only backfires.

Additionally, children become adept at delay tactics such as asking repeated questions or last-minute requests for snacks and drinks, which can push a parent into frustration and push the situation into a problem. A child may say:

• “I’m still hungry”—after a full dinner with second helpings
• “I’m still thirsty”—even after a third drink of water
• “I can’t fall asleep”—within the first two minutes of lying down
• “I’m scared”—saved for the last plea, said in a whisper while her hands clutch at you to prevent you from leaving the room

All of these may be valid requests and concerns. The child may still be thirsty, and many children, of all ages, are scared at bedtime. Your challenge is to enforce limits while maintaining a tranquil setting that’s conducive to sleep. This is not an easy task, but by utilizing our Universal Strategies, you’ll be able to work your way into a better bedtime and all the benefits that brings to your family.

Use Universal Strategies for Bedtime

One of the hardest parts of enforcing a regular bedtime is that you may feel tired yourself and simply want to wind down and relax rather than fuss over your child who resists going to bed. But a short-term investment into establishing healthy and regular sleep habits will earn you a long-term payoff in a child who goes to bed more easily. Once accomplished, you can end up enjoying more downtime after his bedtime because you put in the effort to help him establish good sleep routines.

A short-term investment into establishing regular sleep habits will earn a long-term payoff.

The goal with the following strategies is to establish a set of cues that are associated with sleep onset. It’s like setting a reminder in your child’s brain that says it’s time to sleep, just like sitting down to a full plate of food tells your brain it’s time to eat. The consistency of routines helps to establish this association between a particular set of cues (bedtime routine and rituals) and falling asleep, so your child will start to expect to sleep when the bedtime routine is initiated. It’s a cyclical process: The routine itself facilitates sleep onset by creating a calming environment in which falling asleep is easier to do.

While it’s great to start from the time they’re babies, good bedtime routines can be established at any age. Just a few tweaks that result in even 15 minutes of extra sleep a night can make a real difference, so an incremental transition will be the best approach. Using the Universal Strategies with applications specific to bedtime, as outlined ahead, will help your child enjoy the full benefits of adequate sleep.

Even 15 minutes of extra sleep a night can make a real difference.

Cultivate a Positive Relationship

Cultivating a positive relationship is useful for every situation, but it’s extra special at bedtime. A child who feels secure and content at home is a child who will be able to settle down a little easier when it’s time to go to sleep. When he feels comfortable sharing his fears, the very act of talking about them may alleviate the worry and allow him to fall asleep without as many issues. Please don’t misunderstand us: A child who has a great relationship with his parents may still have fears and problems falling asleep. It’s just that those who don’t have that positive relationship may have more trouble doing so.

The concept of a “clean slate” is another piece of the positive relationship strategy that is crucial to pacifying problems. A child who’s been in trouble a great deal, but knows that when she wakes up in the morning she’ll be starting anew, will feel much better about the end of the day and refreshing herself with sleep.

Engage in Role-Modeling

When it’s nearing bedtime, the entire household should begin to wind down. Some children have difficulty falling asleep when they believe that siblings or parents are still awake and doing fun things. Particularly for children who are resistant to going to bed, it’s important that your household environment begin to calm down as bedtime nears, because this can assist with your child settling in to sleep more easily. If you have older children who aren’t actually going to sleep right then, they should stay quiet in their own room or another part of the house. Any media viewing should not be audible or visible to your child going to sleep.

Enforce Limits and Rules

Here’s the crux of the bedtime solution: You need to thoroughly explain all limits and rules to your children in advance of the situation in which those limits and rules need to be enforced. And then the enforcement must be consistent.

Consistency dictates how fast children learn, and consistency is especially fundamental when you’re dealing with bedtime problems. When it comes to bedtime, consistency means repetition. Kids will try all kinds of tactics to get out of going to bed or staying in bed, so you need to be ready to respond consistently every time. Be rote and repetitive, disengaging from any drama your child may attempt to incite. Each time your child gets up, lead him back to bed. Each time he calls out for you, simply respond, “I love you, it’s time to go to sleep now.”

Here are some tips for enforcing limits and rules:

• Bedtime is not the time to institute a new rule. Have a discussion at breakfast and then again during dinner about any new guidelines you’re putting in place so that your child has enough time to process them. Consider introducing the new rule on a Sunday, so that you start the week out on the right foot. If it’s a big rule, choose a landmark date so your child is prepared well in advance. Alternatively for major changes, just prior to the start of the school year is a natural date to start a new routine.
• Maintain a regular wakeup time and bedtime, particularly if your child is having trouble going to sleep or waking up. Unfortunately for those of us who like to sleep late on weekends, these should be enforced seven days a week. (As your child gets older, or after the schedule has been in place for a long while, he or she may not require such a rigid schedule and you can start to be a bit flexible on weekends.)
• Don’t try to use weekends to get your kids “caught up” on their sleep—this is a myth. When a child has very different sleep/wake patterns during different times of the week, this increases the likelihood for insomnia during the week and results in greater difficulty falling asleep on school nights, kind of like permanent jet lag.
• Sleep experts universally agree that a standard bedtime routine can help promote a relatively easy and quick transition to sleep. One example includes a bath or shower, brushing teeth, and then 30 to 60 minutes of quiet activities before bedtime, such as reading or listening to a story before lights out. This is where you can be creative and hearken back to your own youth for calming ideas.
• Sleep experts also discourage watching television, using video games, or engaging in vigorous exercise as bedtime nears. When the brain is highly stimulated by these types of activities, it takes longer to transition to calm and to sleep. It’s for this reason that every child development expert advises us to keep screens out of the bedroom. By the time they’re adults, they’ll be able to self-regulate screen time, but at this age they can’t.
• A light snack/drink an hour or two before bedtime might help to satisfy hunger. Just make sure it doesn’t contain caffeine. One of those small medicine cups in the bathroom for bedtime drinks will allow them to wet their mouths without filling their bladders.
• For kids who truly are anxious about going to sleep, a common preemptive strategy can be the “Get-Out-of-Bed pass.” The pass can be used only once a night to get a drink, or briefly talk to you, or for anything your child needs. This gives him a sense of control and some power in managing his fears, because it lets him know that if his fears get bad enough, he has a plan.

Redirect Focus to a Specific Task

In most cases, you can gently redirect your child to the task at hand, settling down and getting ready for bed. Use those when/then statements: “When you finish brushing your teeth and you’re in bed, I can start the story.” Be sensitive in your redirection, especially as it pertains to your child sharing her fears with you, so that you still validate her feelings before you try to get her to focus on something else: “I know you’re a little scared, but Mommy and Daddy and (name pets, anything that makes them feel secure) are right here protecting you every minute. Let’s see . . . which stuffed animal do you want with you tonight?”

Coach for Specific Behaviors

Coaching is a terrific strategy with bedtime problems because it allows you to be there for your child when needed, but at the same time express confidence that he can do it independently. Remember to be very specific in naming the behaviors you want to see, specifically the routine you’ve set up for your family. Give reminders throughout the process: “Didn’t that shower feel good? Now, dry yourself off and then it’s time to brush your teeth.”

Periodic check-ins can be a form of coaching, too. Tell your child you’ll check on him every so often if he stays in bed. These check-ins can be spread out over longer time intervals, and eventually phased out altogether as he grows accustomed to the bedtime routine. But know that if you say you’re going to check in, you need to follow through. Nothing will mess up trust and provoke fear like a broken promise. If you’re consistent with check-ins, you’ll find that your child will start falling asleep more quickly.

If you say you’re going to check in, you need to follow through.

Practice Bedtime Routines

It may seem a bit contrived to practice going to bed, and for some children, especially older ones, it will be. But the point that you make by doing a practice session with your child about bedtime routines is that this is important and that your child doesn’t currently do it well. So pick a time when she’s happy, compliant, and when it’s still light outside so her fears are not an issue. Show her how you want her to do it (going through all the steps of the routine, including having her hop under the covers for even five seconds), and then you both have an experience to reflect back on when you’re going through the real thing. Throughout coaching and practice sessions, remember to use praise.

Offer Praise and Positive Reinforcement

Praise and positive reinforcement should be used liberally throughout all the strategies involved in bedtime behavior. Be specific, sincere, and build on your successes: “I liked the way you got right into bed last night and listened to the story. You’re doing a great job! Let’s get you one last drink of water now, because I noticed how many times you asked for a drink of water last night, and then it’s time to go to sleep.”

You can even use praise as a preemptive strike against your child getting out of bed again. Wait a minute or two after putting him to bed, and then go back in and praise him for remaining in bed. That positive attention will reinforce the behavior you want to see: staying in bed.

Use praise as a preemptive strike against getting out of bed.

Use Disengaging and Ignoring

You may need to implement the disengaging and ignoring strategies during those times when you need to set a limit, but because bedtime needs to remain a placid experience, you really don’t want to institute a negative consequence. Disengaging means you give a neutral, superficial response that does not feed into the heightened emotions of bedtime. An automatic response to those endless requests for another hug or announcements of being scared, repeated in a quiet, calm voice, can keep the focus on the matter at hand: “I know, but it’s time to go to sleep now.”

Similarly, if your child gets out of bed, you must take her back to bed as many times as it takes, ignoring the inevitable pleas for attention, all the while staying calm and having as little reaction as possible. Some children will really push this, especially if it’s worked for them before, getting out of bed 10, 20, or even 50 times to test your response. Repetition, serenity, and consistency are what will combat this behavior. If she meets with the same response every single time she gets out of bed, eventually (sometimes it takes several nights) she’ll stop trying.

Any extra attention will reinforce the behavior of getting up, especially if you give in after the 50th time.

It’s really hard for us to stay disengaged when this happens. But any bit of extra attention will reinforce the behavior of getting up, especially if you give in after the fiftieth time. That’s when they know they can wear you down, so the next night it might be a hundred times. Take turns with your spouse if you can. Perhaps begin on a night when you don’t have to get up early the next morning. Stay strong, disengaged, and calm.

Contend with Childhood Nightmares

A frequent culprit in the cause of bedtime anxieties can stem from childhood nightmares. These are bad dreams that most often occur during REM sleep. Nightmares can start in children between ages three and six, but they can happen at any age. The occasional nightmare is normal and not a cause for alarm, beyond the need to soothe your child back to sleep.

Repeated nightmares can have ramifications for your bedtime routine, feeding your child’s fear of going to bed or fear of sleeping alone. Of course, the sleep disturbance for both parent and child will also have an effect on behavior the next day.

Typically, a child is able to recount the events of a nightmare, which often involve some type of threat to him or his security. If your child wants to talk about the nightmare right then, let him, but don’t prolong the conversation with questions or a drawn-out discussion. Allow him to get his feelings off his chest, and then save your conversation for the next day, if at all.

If your child wants to talk about the nightmare let him, but don’t prolong the conversation.

Children who have the occasional nightmare need comfort and reassurance. Dr. Pete advocates staying with your child until she or he is back to sleep rather than bringing your child into bed with you. Bringing him or her into your bed can become a recurring habit that can be difficult to break, and you should consider whether that could be a problem for you.

There’s no wrong or right answer here, as long as you’re intentional about your choice and think it through. Sara elected to bring the kids into her bed, which began a years-long habit, but she was able to institute limits that worked for her children and husband. Her rules: Everyone had to start the night in their own bed, but in the middle of the night, if the kids needed to come in, they could. Eventually, her children weaned themselves off this habit on their own.

Nightmares may occur or increase during or following stressful periods for kids. Common times are major transitions, like back to school in the fall, before a big test, or after the death of a family member. If the nightmares are stemming in part from stress or anxiety, the source of the stress needs to be identified, and methods for changing this and/or coping with this need to be put in place.

If your child experiences occasional nightmares, you can use the coaching strategy to help her through it and to get past the memory for the next bedtime(s). It may be helpful to share with her an experience that you’ve had with a nightmare, to show her that everyone gets them every once in a while and that they aren’t real, no matter how real they feel.

Nightmares need to be differentiated from night terrors, sometimes called sleep terrors. These occur during non-REM sleep, and typically a child screams and seems terrified for a few minutes before falling back to sleep. The child is confused, doesn’t recognize the parent or caregiver, and is not consciously awake. Unlike a nightmare, the next morning kids don’t remember having a night terror at all, although it’s always memorable for a parent. As scary as they are for parents, in and of themselves, the presence of night terrors is not necessarily the sign of a problem.

If a child is having recurrent night terrors or nightmares to the point of disruption for child and family, professional help should be sought. Talk to your family’s pediatrician about the problem. Sometimes they may refer your child for a sleep study or to a mental health professional to address anxiety/stress symptoms and methods of coping. We go through the signs that indicate you may need professional advice in Chapter 11.

• • •

In using the strategies in this chapter, you should absolutely incorporate your own take on soothing children at bedtime. Make the routine a special time for your family. While cultivating a positive relationship can help make bedtime easier, a good bedtime routine can also nurture that relationship. And though your children may not love the rules you institute, that structure will help them settle in for the night, and they’ll come to rely on them as part of the routine.

When traveling and staying overnight either at Grandma’s or a hotel, consider ways you can keep to the bedtime routine, within reason. For some kids, having their favorite scented bath bubbles or making sure they have their blanket, stuffed animal, or pillow may be helpful in translating bedtime to a new place. It’s not necessary to replicate the entire routine like a Hollywood soundstage, but an element or two can help cue your child and anchor him to the bedtime routine he’s accustomed to at home.

When dealing with problem behaviors at bedtime, try to remain calm and use a soothing voice, which will reinforce the idea of settling down. Above all, remember that your children can be comforted best by you, the person who cares most about them in the world.