Make It Easier to Fight Before Bed With a Rolling Period
Sometimes children are simply not interested in going to bed. You know they are tired (they swear they are not), you are definitely tired (they sense your weakness), and you don’t want to be in this battle again.
If your children are old enough to read on their own, you can let them stay up after their usual bedtime to calm down reading (I did this with my eight-year-old son with great success). But with small children it is more difficult; a young child’s energy is harder to drain.
One parent on Reddit may have come up with the perfect solution. User u / Say_Meow commented on this bedtime post to detail how they incorporated some rest time into their daughter’s daily routine:
Before going to bed it was a serious battle for us. So we started letting our daughter (4 years old) “play quietly” in her room. The lights are dimmed and she is allowed to play quietly in her room after she goes to bed, as long as she is not tired. She shouldn’t call us if she doesn’t want to be put to bed. Now almost half of the time she just goes to bed.
Now that she’s gone to school, I think we’ll set a harder time to turn off the lights, but so far we haven’t had to put it into action.
This may seem counterintuitive. We want them to sleep more, not less. We want them to go to bed and not keep playing until the morning. But the combination of dim lights, silence and solitude seems to work for many children – other parents began to respond by saying they were successful in “quiet time” or “rest time” with their toddlers and preschool. children of age.
“We have always had this policy, and my 5-year-old child is now great at self-regulating his sleep,” writes u / JaneJS. “When he is tired, he turns off the lights very early, and in the first week in kindergarten, he never even got out of bed after sleeping.”
I should note that the original poster on this Reddit thread also implemented a switch to their day / night routine, which might work for some parents. The morning in their house turned into a real struggle. Their 6-year-old son did not want to get up, eat breakfast and go to school. Here’s what u / burnt_soul tried in response:
So, last night I wanted to swap. He skipped the shower and just washed his face and hands. But this morning I got up early with my son and made him take a shower. All it took was 5 minutes and he woke up cheerful and ready to eat.
Sometimes the answer to problems before bed or in the morning is a simple, routine switch.