My daughter Vanessa has always been a super sleeper. When she was young, we'd often find her sleeping wherever she happened to be when tiredness hit. We have adorable photos of her asleep on the stairs, in her high chair, and on the grass at a picnic. She's sound asleep in one family portrait because try as we might she just would not wake up. Some children, like my Vanessa, are able to sleep anywhere at all; they can fall asleep on a cement floor just as easily as they do in their beds. Others are like the princess and the pea: any little discomfort prevents them from sleeping at all. Most children, though, fall somewhere in between, and with a bit of effort you can make certain that your child's bedtime environment is conducive to a good night's sleep. Even if your little one seems to be one of those easy sleepers, it can be helpful to go over the following things to consider as you create a cozy place for your child to sleep.
You may have never given much thought to the surface your child sleeps upon, but it can be one of the keys to better sleep. It's common knowledge among adults that people all have different preferences when it comes to beds and mattresses. Some people spend a great amount of time and money choosing the right mattress with the perfect level of firmness and comfort. Children's mattresses, however, often aren't even selected. Parents simply take whatever comes with the crib or toddler bed without question. But these standard mattresses are notoriously uncomfortable; often they're hard and plastic-covered. Parents often use mattresses handed down from a sibling, cousin, or friend, which may be worn out from prior use. A good mattress may help your child sleep better, so when deciding on a mattress for your child, keep in mind the points that follow.
• Support. Mattresses can be made of coil springs, foam, or air, and there are a variety of gauges and types. (A water bed is not a safe choice for a toddler or preschooler.) A child's mattress should be of good quality and relatively firm without being uncomfortable.
• Construction. Mattresses and mattress covers are made in a variety of materials such as polyester, rubber, vinyl, cotton, and wool. While it's nice to have a water-resistant surface to protect against diaper leaks or bed-wetting accidents, your child's comfort should be the primary concern.
• Space. Make sure your child has enough space in bed to move around comfortably. If siblings share a bed, they need a large mattress. If your family practices co-sleeping, a large mattress is a necessity for everyone's comfort. If your child has outgrown her crib or toddler bed, she may find her old mattress increasingly uncomfortable despite her attachment to and the security of a familiar bed. (See page 287 for moving a child from a crib to a bed.)
• Safety and health. A child's bed and mattress should be perfectly safe for him. (See the safety checklists on page 371.) If your child has allergies or asthma, look into mattress and pillow covers (or specially made pillows) made especially for reducing typical allergens.
Vanessa, two years old
• Level. If your child sleeps in your bed, then check often to be sure that the place where your child sleeps is level. Frequently flipping the mattress can prevent dips and valleys in the place where your little one ends up sleeping. Also, run through the safety list for co-sleeping on page 375.
A good pillow can be just as important as a good mattress in ensuring a restful night's sleep, and it's even common for children to adopt their pillows as their nighttime lovies. There's no rush, however, to introduce your child to a pillow if she sleeps well without one. To keep your little one safe, it's wise to hold off on pillow use until your child is at least eighteen months old. Even then, choose a pillow wisely.
A child's pillow should be soft enough for comfort yet firm enough to be safe and to provide proper support. Shop for a crib pillow or toddler pillow, which is much smaller than a regular pillow, and use the special small pillow cases made for these types of pillows. Stick to a thin, flat, stiff pillow, and avoid fluffy goose down or feather pillows. To test a pillow's resilience, place it on a flat surface and push it down firmly in the middle. The quicker the pillow regains its shape, the firmer it is. If it hardly moves at all, it's too soft for your child.
If your child has allergies, or if you do (therefore, your child might), choose a pillow made of a hypoallergenic material and cover it with a tightly woven or specialty pillowcase. (Also see Allergies, Asthma, and Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease [GERD] on page 335.)
As a matter of safety, you may have avoided using a blanket when your child was an infant, resorting to thick sleeper pajamas as an alternative source of warmth. Many toddlers and preschoolers are perfectly happy to continue in this familiar way. As long as they are comfortable and warm enough, wearing thick sleeper pajamas is a fine way for a child to sleep. Other children enjoy using a tiny, lightweight, child-sized blanket.
In the grand tradition of Linus from the Peanuts comic strips, a large percentage of children adopt a blanket as their nighttime comfort object, or lovey. For these children, their blanket serves two purposes, warmth and security, and its importance shouldn't
Camille, twenty-three months old
be underestimated. A child who has a lovey can sometimes overcome nighttime fears and separation anxiety more easily than a child who doesn't have a security object to turn to.
If your child has a special blanket that he now sleeps with, it would be an act of brilliance to find an exact duplicate and trade off between the two. Usually the second must be precisely identical—even a frayed hem can make them different to your child. It's important that you keep your spare blanket hidden or cycle the blankets, giving your child only one at a time. If your child discovers there are two, he may adopt two blankets as his typical nighttime companions, leaving you to find two more spares just in case.
Even among those children who don't have a blanket-lovey, most have definite preferences when it comes to their nighttime covering. A simple way to determine the best blanket for your child is to provide two or three choices and ask your little one which he would like to sleep with. As a safety precaution, avoid heavy bedspreads or puffy down quilts—you don't want him entangled in a spread that he can't easily control. Beyond that, you can experiment with different textures and weights to see which type most appeals to your child. The right blanket can increase your child's level of comfort in bed and help him sleep better.
Your child's pajamas should be clean and comfortable. The thickness of pajamas should be geared to the weather: when it's hot, dress her in lightweight pajamas, and when its cold, use warmer styles. Just like adults, children have preferences, and learning what your little one likes to wear to bed is one more key to relaxed sleep.
Consider safety factors when you choose pajamas for your child. Flame-retardant materials or tight-fitting cotton sleepwear (as a nonchemically treated choice) have both been shown to protect children should they be exposed to fire. Because oversized cotton T-shirts pose a burn threat, they aren't a good choice for children. Pajamas should fit snugly around the legs, arms, and chest to keep a child safe from fire.
Pajamas are a sleep-time cue for many children. The ritual of putting on pajamas is often a key part of the bedtime routine. Many kids love the comfortable fit of pajamas and like to stay in them throughout the morning. You can reinforce the sleep-cue properties of jammies, though, by putting your child in his pajamas at bedtime and getting him dressed in daytime clothes first thing in the morning.
Earlier I talked about the powerful influence that light and darkness have over a child's biological clock. Basically, light equals awake time, dark equals sleep time. It's been discovered that even the glowing face of a digital clock can trigger wakefulness. This is an important reason to keep your child's room dark from the time he goes to bed until the time you want him to wake up in the morning.
Another reason you may want to keep your child's room dark for sleep is for the sake of her eyes. Some studies have shown that children who sleep with a light on all night have a greater chance of growing up to be nearsighted than children who sleep in the dark. "Our findings suggest that the absence of a nightly period of full darkness in early childhood may be a risk factor in the future development of nearsightedness," says Richard A. Stone, M.D., a professor of ophthalmology at University of Pennsylvania Medical Center Scheie Eye Institute and senior author on one such study. These reports are not yet conclusive and the direct connection has not been proved, but since it is a possibility and since darkness helps set your child's biological clock anyway, it makes sense to work toward having your child sleep in a dark room.
If your child has any fears of the dark, go to page 229 for specific ideas on handling and overcoming those fears.
When a child goes to bed in a room that is too hot or too cold, he will tend to have disturbed sleep. While all people, adults and children, have their own preferences for the right temperature, sleep research shows that the majority of people sleep best in a cooler room. Cooler has a different definition for different people, but generally the range from 60°F to 70°F (15.5°C to 21°C) is cited as best for sleeping.
In addition to the temperature in a room, the quality of the air can make a difference for sleeping, too, particularly if a child has allergies or asthma. It may help to pay attention to the level of moisture in the air and use a humidifier, dehumidifier, or air purifier to create the best air quality.
The level of noise that disrupts sleep is different for each child. Some children can sleep through a home smoke-detector siren (I have one who actually did!), but some kids are awakened by the slightest noise. Many children will actually wake themselves up if they hear voices and think they might be missing out on some fun.
Many children whose sleep is affected by noises will sleep better with the gentle hum of white noise. Even children who aren't awakened by noises can benefit from falling asleep to white noise. White noise is sound that contains a combination of sound frequencies in equal amounts. It can be described as nonspecific noise that exists in the background without definition. The best example is the sound that is made by a fan or air conditioner, a hum that people hear but don't really register with active thought.
White noise can be a critical component to getting some children to sleep all night without waking. It is helpful in three aspects. First, the gentle, consistent sound can be very effective at soothing a child to sleep. Second, it can filter out other noises that may jar her awake—sounds from siblings, kitchen dishes clinking, the television in another room, traffic, or a dog barking outside. Third, it creates a cue for sleep.
Many people have discovered the benefits of white noise for better sleep (not just for children, but for adults as well), so there are a wide variety of white-noise CDs and digital white-noise machines that offer realistic, tranquil sound environments such as rhythmic ocean waves, sounds of a summer night, or the sounds of rain or waterfalls. An alternative to these is to take advantage of a household object. Use the hum of a fan or an aquarium tank, create a white-noise effect by tuning a radio between stations for a static hum, or even make a recording of your clothes dryer!
If white noise is helpful to your child, there's no harm in leaving it on all night long (think of the times you've slept well listening to the sound of a fan or air conditioner). If you wish, however, you can let your child fall asleep to white noise and turn it off when you go to bed.
Many white-noise machines function as alarm clocks, so you can set one to begin working in the morning just before you wake for work or before older children rise for school. That way, the noises from the outside world won't so easily wake your little one before he should be up. (See the chapter The Early Bird: Waking Up Too Early.)
A lovey is a transitional object that comforts your child in your absence, and it can be especially valuable to a child when falling asleep or when she awakens in the middle of the night. A soft toy or small blanket that can be held closely can give your child a sense of security. Since young children have strong imaginations, these lovies can seem very real to them and can ward off any feelings of being alone.
A good way to promote this practice is to provide your child with two or three possible lovey choices and have them nearby
Melanie, four years old
throughout the day and before bed. Watch your child to see which she spends more time holding, and then put the toy in bed with her for naps and nighttime sleep.
Ideal lovies are small enough for a child to handle, don't contain any potentially removable pieces such as button eyes, and are soft enough for cuddling. A peaceful expression on the toy's face is important, as well. A wide-eyed, plastic-faced doll may not be as comforting as a doe-eyed teddy bear. A wonderful option is a widely available bear designed for babies called the Original Slumber Bear. (Coleton is holding one on the cover photo of this book.) This bear has the added features of a tiny, soft blanket for cuddling and a soothing white-noise recording of womb sounds, which are similar to ocean waves. While created for newborn babies, this combination of soft, gentle bear and soothing sounds can be just as comforting to toddlers and preschoolers. Specially created bedtime friends for children come in a wide variety, so shop around for one that suits your child's personality.
If your child does indeed become attached to a lovey, try to purchase at least two of them to prevent any future lost-lovey disasters—or at least choose one that is easily replaceable or widely available.
No matter your child's bedtime habits, evidence strongly suggests that the worst thing to have in a child's bedroom is a television set (second place goes to computers). Watching TV can be a stimulant to many children, preventing them from falling asleep. There are many other reasons to banish the set from your child's bedroom:
• Unsettling programs can create fears and nightmares.
• A child with private access to a television may be watching unacceptable programs without your knowledge.
• A child can develop a habit of TV viewing at bedtime and find it very difficult to fall asleep without it.
• A child who watches TV before sleeping may be staying up long past a healthy bedtime.
• Having a TV in the bedroom increases the overall number of hours watched, which can lead to obesity, anxiety, and depression.
• TV watching at bedtime takes the place of a very important prebedtime activity: reading.
Children's bedrooms very often double as playrooms. Frequently, an abundance of exciting toys and activities are just an arm's reach away from the bed. Although a child may spend many happy playtime hours in her room, these same toys can create too much of a distraction when bedtime comes. A partially completed Lego structure, a half-finished puzzle, or the latest collectibles can all call rather loudly to a child who should be focused on relaxing for sleep. Some children aren't sidetracked by their playthings, but others can't settle for sleep when thinking about all the exciting things of the day left undone. If your child won't fall asleep easily, wakes up in the night, or gets out of bed too early in the morning, you might consider making the bedroom a sleep-only zone and see how this affects the sleep situation.
While it's a good idea to separate a play space from a sleeping place, it's not always practical or possible to make one whole room for sleeping and one for playing. There are ways to make this idea work without remodeling your home! One way is to separate the sleeping place from the toy area by rearranging the room. Create a sleeping nook by separating the bed from the rest of the room with a wall of dressers, chairs, or bookcases between the spaces. You can also hang curtains, sheets, or fabric from the ceiling to separate the bed area, or use folding screens for the same effect. The sleeping area doesn't need to be large; simply the size of the bed will do. You may even want to get your child involved in designing the area, choosing fabrics, or designing the partition.
The only things included in your child's sleeping area should be a few stuffed animals for sleeping company, a selection of books, a white-noise machine or CD player, a reading light or night-light, and a glass of water. Once you've created this wonderful bed nook, you can explain to your child that it's her special place for sleeping, reading, and resting only. (Let Daddy or big brother or sister know that this means tickling and wrestling should be done in the playroom!) This new arrangement can help create a strong mental association between your child's bed and sleep. This tip might even make going to bed—and staying in bed—more interesting!
In order for restful sleep to occur, a child must feel safe and secure in her bedroom. Toddlers and preschoolers often fear being alone, even during sleep. They are of an age when they start to understand more about the world and begin to have more concerns and fears. The safer their bedroom feels to them, the more likely they will go to sleep willingly and stay sleeping soundly all night.
A child's room should bring about feelings of peacefulness. This means eliminating the bedroom as a place used for time-outs or punishment. It also suggests taking the time to clean, organize, and decorate the room so that it is an inviting and happy place for your child to retreat to for peace, relaxation, and sleep.