6 Tips to Help your Kids Sleep

For the first 2 years of my oldest’s life she resisted sleep with every cell in her body. We spent countless nights rocking her, holding her hand through the crib bars or sleeping on her bedroom floor.

I remember one night it was my turn to spend the evening getting her to bed and I decided to try just leaving the bedroom door open instead of closing it. And she.didn’t.cry. That was just one battle won in the war of sleep with my oldest but, it was a learning experience. If what your are doing is not working, then try something else.

Through trial and error we have reached a point where she now goes to sleep relatively easily. But we still have to leave her bedroom door open until she is asleep or she gets upset.

Here are some of our recommendations for sleep tips and hacks.

1. No TV or Electronics in the evening

I do let my kids watch some TV while I am cooking dinner. We also let them help cook or bake, but sometimes evening are hectic so we are in a rush. In those situations it’s easier to turn on a show while I chop vegetables and use the stove.

But once we start eating dinner the TV is turned off and stays off for the evening. Electronics can be very stimulating. If they are allowed to watch TV late in to the evening, they will be too wired to fall asleep.

2. Have a routine

The bedtime routine should start long before actual bed time. We bathe our girls almost every night because it helps get them settled down in to the evening routine. We let them play and splash around until they are ready to get out.

Once they are in their pajamas there is usually a little bit of time to play or draw before we help them brush their teeth and hair and go to bed.

3. Read books

In addition to helping their reading and language skills, it also further settles them down. Sometimes they are still really wound up when we go to read books. But as we go through the books we work on getting them to be quiet and settle down.

In our house we let each girl pick out 2 books. Sometimes they’re very short board books, and other times we can be reading to them for 30 minutes. My kids share a bedroom so we all sit together to read. But I know other families will spend a little bit of time in each child’s bedroom reading to them at night.

You can adjust this to however it works for you, but I hope everyone will consider reading to their kids every night.

4. Set up a Comfortable Environment

Make sure the temperature in the room is comfortable. If the room gets warm in the summer then a ceiling or tower fan is a great option. My youngest runs hot so if we don’t turn on her fan she will wake up covered in sweat.

If their bedroom is cold dress them in some footed pajamas or if they’re old enough let them pick out some comfortable blankets.

Invest in some blackout curtains as well unless you want to wake up with the sunrise every morning.

We also use a variation of a night light which keeps the room from being too dark and also produces soothing waves of color on the ceiling.

5. Provide the Right Kind of Noise

Some children may do better with silence, but we turn on some white noise every night. With 2 dogs we did not want our kids to rely on silence to fall asleep.

We have an old iPhone plugged in to a speaker with a white noise app that we turn on every night. We also have this app on our everyday phones so we can use the same app when we travel. I also like sleeping with white noise so it even helps me when I am in a hotel or staying with family.

There are also some gadgets designed to play white noise but this just seems like something else you have to buy or pack, when almost everyone seems to have a smart phone.

6. Play Some Music

During the early struggles we had to get our oldest to go to sleep we were trying anything. One of our best hacks was to set up a Spotify playlist with several lullabies on another one of our old iPhones.

For years, right before turning off their bedroom light, we would turn on this playlist to play on repeat throughout the night. The playlist always start on the same song and so when they would hear ‘Lullaby and Goodnight’ they would start to get drowsy.

This wasn’t like they were hypnotized, and they usually didn’t fall asleep immediately. But it really seemed to help settle them down. And since it was on our Spotify account we could play this same list every night even when we’re out of town.

That old iPhone has finally stopped working so we switched to using an Echo in their room. My husband set up a command to play different music so they still go to sleep listening to soothing lullabies every night.

Also side hack: We have a rooster scheduled to crow at 7am from the Echo. And we’ve told the girls they can play in their rooms when they wake up ,but they can’t come out until the rooster crows. This has allowed us to each have some days to sleep in during this stay at home period.

Conclusion

I hope this post is helpful for someone, but I know these tips won’t work for everyone. The first two years of being a mother were filled with many sleepless nights. But if nothing else, we learned that when things aren’t working anymore to try something else.

Every child is different and what works for one won’t work for another. And they are growing and changing so quickly. As soon as you think you have this parenting gig figured out, they’ll throw you a curve ball.

So keep tweaking and adjusting your routine until you find the best one for your family. Lean on your partner for help when you start to feel stressed or overwhelmed.

Let me know below if you have any other tips for bedtime. My oldest still tries to find ways to stay up, so I am always looking for new ideas.