CHAPTER EIGHT

Bedtime and Sleep

Sleep is an essential part of life—but more important, sleep is a gift.

—William C. Dement, MD

It’s the end of the day and your toddler is running naked laps around the house. Your older child refuses to get out of the bath. You chase the little one down and wrestle him into pajamas, while the older one finally stands dripping on the carpet, waiting to be dried. They act like you’re suggesting torture when you say it’s time to brush teeth. As soon as teeth are brushed, one remembers a piece of homework that is very important to do for tomorrow and wanders off to spill out the contents of his backpack again. The little one starts crying that he’s suddenly, and desperately, hungry and needs a snack.

Many moms and dads dread this time of the day. Parents tell us all the time how frustrated they feel as the evening rolls in and their kids wind up. There are ten steps to do before bed, no one listens, and they basically can’t wait for the whole thing to be over. We’ve worked with thousands of families on sleep issues, and almost all of them stem, in some way or another, from what happens in the steps leading up to sleep.

Often parents’ frustration, very understandably, comes out in the words they say and the tone they use about sleep. Here are examples of common phrases we hear before bed:

Bed, now!

You have to go to bed!

Get in bed, right now.

If you don’t get your pajamas on, you’re going straight to bed with no dessert.

Forget it, no stories tonight. Go straight to bed!

You’re cranky. Do you need to go night-night?

These words may sound mild, but they contain some pretty negative messages about sleep. With this language, sleep is a consequence or a dreaded end. It’s not a great place to go, or a time to look forward to. Some parents might even send their child to his bed or crib for a time-out if he’s broken a rule.

We know you don’t think of sleep as negative (or, if you do, it’s time to examine your own ideas about sleep!). Most likely, you feel like sleep is a welcome place to go and you probably look forward to it yourself. Sleep is lovely. Sleep is a luxury.

We wrote an entire book full of strategies to help children (newborn through school age) establish healthy sleep habits, sleep through the night, take good naps, and more. If you want help with these topics and specific guidance please read our book The Happy Sleeper. We can’t solve specific sleep problems in this chapter, but if you’re like the families we hear from every day, our sleep book will do the trick.

In this chapter, we’re going to help you reposition sleep in your house, using language and tone. Sleep should be a priority—it’s essential for your child’s health and happiness, and yours too—and it can be a time that everyone looks forward to and has positive feelings about. A family that sleeps well has more energy for each other during the day, when life’s challenges will always arise. It’s almost impossible to communicate well when you or your child is sleep deprived. With sleep on your side, everyone is more creative and patient.

Connected, Capable, and Cozy

When it comes to sleep, babies and children need to feel what we call the three Cs: connected, capable, and cozy. They need to feel connected, which means we acknowledge their needs and they can say good night knowing we’re nearby. They need us to believe they are capable, which means we keep clear expectations and family practices around sleep. Finally, they need a cozy, optimal sleeping environment.

This chapter is structured slightly differently from the others (although it too has scripts and conversations using ALP at the end). We will address certain aspects of the three Cs, like creating a positive atmosphere around sleep, establishing wind-down and bedtime routines, and important elements of the bedroom environment that promote healthy sleep. We’ll give you examples of language and conversations and share ways to promote a warm, positive climate around bedtime. If you need specific help with sleep issues (for example, a child waking in the night, having trouble with naps, not falling asleep independently, and more), please refer to The Happy Sleeper. Methods from that book are incredibly successful for babies, toddlers and school-age kids.

Balanced Days Lead to Better Sleep

Stressful days can lead to fitful nights. Lots of parents and kids are overscheduled and frantic with activities and responsibilities. There’s no simple trick for solving this dilemma—and as busy, ambitious people ourselves, we wouldn’t even say that being very active and involved is a bad thing. Both of us are working parents, and our kids work hard, get involved in clubs, and are dedicated to sports. Our homes are busy too!

At the same time, when life feels out of balance, it’s harder for kids to relax and for their biology to support a long night of good- quality sleep. Saying good night also requires confidence and peace of mind, which is created through connection during the day. Rest assured, this is more about quality than quantity. Even busy working parents who don’t have much time to spend with their kids each day can give their kids a sense of connection. Get down on eye level to say good-bye, give a hug, and tell your child to keep that hug “in your pocket” for during the day when you’re thinking of each other. Snuggle on the couch together, even for ten minutes before bed, and share your highs and lows of the day. Video chat with the parent who isn’t there for bedtime. Leave a note in your child’s lunch box. It’s the quality that our kids feel—this is part of what creates a secure attachment and a sense that they can go out into the world (and also disconnect at night) with confidence.

There are a lot of ways to create a less stressful day; for example:

Limit playdates after school to once or twice a week. That is, unless playdates create less stress for you, and your children are still able to be home early enough to eat and have wind-down time (see here).
Have kids choose one sport or activity at a time.
Arrange carpools.
Grocery shop with meals planned for at least a few nights.
Have groceries delivered.
Ask grandparents, friends, and neighbors for help. Most people understand and you will have a chance to help them or someone else in return down the road.
Limit weekday screen time. This sounds counterintuitive, because many parents use screen time as a reward or a chance to get chores done. If weekday screen time makes life easier, that’s fine, but really consider it: Do screens create power struggles and meltdowns? Are your kids focused on screens and unable to find enjoyment in building, running, and creating games of their own? Kids need unstructured time playing in the physical world. When they don’t have it, they feel less regulated and peaceful.
Embrace boredom. Help your kids enjoy doing nothing, daydreaming, lying in the grass, or whatever comes up when there isn’t a structured activity.
Look here for suggestions on structuring chores and to-do lists.
Practice the mindfulness exercises in chapter 2.

Wind-Down Time Shifts the Brain into Sleep-Ready Mode

The hour leading up to bedtime is when your child’s mind and body should be shifting. You don’t see it happening, but under the surface, the body is preparing for sleep. Lots of parents we work with expect their kids to go from playdates, screens, homework, and more and move straight into their bedtime routines. This often doesn’t work, and kids have a hard time clicking over immediately into teeth, books, and popping into bed (unless they’re exhausted, which we don’t want). It can also cause them to have disrupted sleep or wake up too early in the morning.

This is why we implement “wind-down time” for our families. Wind-down time is different from the bedtime routine. It simply means parents are helping their kids’ minds and bodies shift gears. Wind-down time is a feeling, not a particular activity—you can create your own and it might change night to night (whereas bedtime routines should stay the same).

Try to be home for an hour before bed. Coming in the door and immediately getting into pajamas might be fine on the occasional Saturday night after an evening with friends. Most nights, though, it helps for kids to be home for wind-down time.
Turn down the lights, draw the curtains. Light, especially sunlight, bright white light, and blue light, suppresses the release of melatonin, which your child needs to become drowsy and fall asleep. For at least one hour before bedtime, turn off bright overhead lights and close curtains in the summer.
No screens. Here you’ll find an explanation of why screens interfere with sleep. At least one hour before bed (we prefer it to be at least two hours) should be screen free.
Lower your voice, avoid stressful talks, put your own devices away. Whoever is home with the kids during wind-down time could be doing anything—prepping lunches for the next day, folding laundry, listening to music, drawing with the kids—but it should be relatively relaxing. This relaxation is absorbed by your kids. Put away your phone and computer if you can. This allows you to connect with your kids, which in turn makes them more open to moving through the steps of the routine. They’ve filled up on you, so they can now disconnect and fall asleep. Enjoying each other before bed makes saying good night feel good. This can take a deep well of patience and some advanced planning on your part. Read here if you find yourself getting very stressed or reacting with anger before bed.

The Bedtime Routine Cues the Brain for Sleep

The steps leading up to your baby’s or child’s bedtime, whether they take just fifteen minutes or forty-five, should stay consistent night to night. If you have the exact same bedtime routine, after a few nights it makes it easier for your child to fall asleep (this goes for you too—parents also need small bedtime routines). Bedtime routines can be anything calming. They should include tending to physical needs, like taking a bath and brushing teeth, and also activities that your child enjoys, or you enjoy together, like reading books, singing songs, and child-led play. Even babies need social activities in their bedtime routines, and many times when we do sleep consultations with parents of babies we see these social elements missing.

WHAT’S THE BEST SLEEP SCHEDULE FOR MY CHILD?

The best sleep schedules for little kids are early and regular. As parents of babies and little kids know, most children are early risers. They can be ready to start the day at 6:00 a.m. In our online sleep classes, we put it this way: Let’s say you put a child to bed at 7:00 p.m. and she wakes up at 6:00 a.m. If you put the same child to bed at 9:00 p.m., what time will she wake? Most parents answer 6:00 a.m.! This is usually true. Babies and small kids are programmed to wake up early and have strong internal alarms. They have the best chance of getting a full night’s sleep if they have an early bedtime. Babies and little kids need eleven to twelve hours of nighttime sleep, and school-age children need ten to eleven hours of nighttime sleep.

Kids also thrive on regularity. This is a fact about how the human body works. The internal clock helps us anticipate and regulate many of our behaviors and states, like eating and sleep. When kids (and grown-ups too) go to bed and wake up at the same time each day, they’re working with the body’s natural inclination for schedule. We fall asleep more easily, feel better, think and learn better, and have more patience and greater powers of emotional regulation.

Establish an early bedtime and keep it the same every night of the week (rather than staying up late on the weekends). Of course there will always be exceptions to the rule, but try to make early bedtimes the norm.

The Right Words Engage Cooperation in the Bedtime Routine

If your kids are not getting ready for bed, try not to criticize, threaten, or yell.

Instead of:

Why are you not listening to me?

You’re so slow!

Get your pajamas on, now!

If you don’t put your pj’s on you’re not going to the birthday party this weekend. Is that what you want?

Go brush your teeth or you’re going to time-out!

You can state realities in a matter-of-fact way:

Anyone know what our next step is here? Where’s the list of bedtime steps?

Let’s get our steps done so we can climb in bed and read.

The clock is telling us it’s time for a bath.

Use natural enticements:

Let’s do our teeth so we can have lots of time for reading. I’m excited to hear what happens next.

When your teeth are brushed and jammies are on, we’ll climb into bed and do our highs and lows of the day.

Position sleep as a welcome treat:

Come on, let’s get cozy!

After you guys climb into bed, I can’t wait to snuggle up with my book.

Let’s all go to bed a little early tonight and fill up on sleep.

Is your pillow cozy? Lemme climb in and lay my head on it to check. Oh, that’s nice.

The bedtime routine goes more smoothly if there’s something kids look forward to at the end. That could be as simple as the next chapter of a book, a shadow puppet show with a flashlight when they climb into bed, or anything else that motivates.

My kids have had different bedtime routines as they’ve grown, and often it’s the next chapter of a book they’re interested in reading (and me too—we choose books we’re all excited to read), but recently I taught them how to do a backrub chain. We sit one in front of the other and the person rubbing someone’s back asks, Would they like tickles, massage, or what? After a minute, the front person moves to the back. It’s really sweet. They think it’s fun (but it’s relaxing too), and it’s definitely a way for us to all connect before bedtime.

The Pitfalls of the Sticker Chart

After a preschool sleep class one evening, a sweet dad approached us and said, “This thing about language makes so much sense! I get it. Tonight I’m going to start talking differently about sleep.” This all sounded great, except that he followed up with, “So should I put up a reward chart? Every time she stays in bed, she gets a star, and she gets a prize at the end of the week?” Woops. We realized that “positive” messaging can be misinterpreted. As with other realms of life, heavily praising can backfire. If you lay on the rewards and praise over sleep, it could get you through a stuck moment, but in the long run, this doesn’t contribute to a healthy relationship to sleep.

**How praise can backfire, and what to say instead.**

The Sleeping Environment Promotes Quality Sleep

We could write a whole chapter on the sleeping environment (ask the parents in our classes and consultations—we love to talk about it!), because it’s such a powerful force. A smart, thoughtful bedroom makes all the difference.

Dark. Harness the power of light and dark to promote sleep. The bedroom should be completely dark from the last step of the bedtime routine (also for naps) until your child’s optimal wake-up time and. Use darkening shades and blackout curtains. Do not have electronics with lights in the bedroom at night. Light is activating to the brain and sends wake-up signals.
Cool. The optimal sleeping temperature is sixty-five to sixty-eight degrees. That’s cooler than most parents keep their baby’s or child’s bedroom. It doesn’t mean you need to crank up the air conditioner in the summer, but it does mean you should set a lower temperature for heat in the winter. You can also use a fan to create moving air in the bedroom.
Quiet. Use white noise on a low volume. We like slightly variable noises like rain or waves, but any sound that is constant and low during the night (such as a low fan or air purifier) will help muffle noises from inside and outside the house and protect sleep.
Peaceful. Kids’ rooms are often also playrooms, so it’s hard to keep them uncluttered, but if you can—if toys are minimal, and put away and stored for sleep—it helps kids feel relaxed and associate the room with sleeping.

“Collecting Frogs”

Heather’s friend called her one morning to vent about her kids’ bedtime routine. “They don’t listen to me and I end up so frustrated every night. I get one of the three of them close to bed, then turn around and the other two have gotten out of the bedroom. I get them back and then the other one won’t brush his teeth. I’m standing there after saying six times to my son to put his pajamas on, and he’s staring at me lazily without doing it. It drives me crazy! It’s like I’m trying to collect frogs in a corner: I get one there and then one hops out.” As her friend talked, she realized how tense she was, and that it was making bedtime unpleasant. Her son, the middle child, who used to always ask her to cuddle before bed, no longer did. “He knows I’m so frustrated, he doesn’t ask me to snuggle anymore. I feel like I’m losing my kid,” she worried. She felt like it was her job to change the tone around bedtime. One day, when everyone was calm during the day, she met with her husband and the son who had the most trouble getting ready before bed. “Something’s not working before bed, can you guys tell?” She asked for ideas. Her son said he wanted to be in charge and didn’t want anyone telling him what to do. His mom and dad said that was okay, as long as he took responsibility for keeping track of his pre-bed steps. They printed a list of things that needed to happen before tucking into bed. They decided the parents would only give reminders about the time, like “Check your list,” or “Hey, I just noticed it’s almost eight o’clock. Just checking—I know you like to have your backpack packed up before bed.” When the son was in bed, they had cuddle time and would talk about their highs and lows of the day. It became like a game to get into bed by 8:15. That natural reward, along with the feeling of responsibility and team cooperation, was enough to motivate the son to move along in his steps. The parents stopped yelling and the enjoyment of nighttime went back up.

Scripts and Conversations

Scripts

SCENARIO: The kids are running around and not moving into their bedtime routine.

Conversations

Your Child Gets Stuck During the Bedtime Routine.

Time for pajamas.

I can’t get into pajamas. I’m working on this drawing! (Sitting in a chair, starts to cry.)

Oh, I see. (Dad comes over and gets down under child’s eye level.) Yes, I can see what you’re working on. It’s an intricate drawing. It’s not finished yet, huh?

No, and if I don’t finish it, I’ll forget and I’ll never finish it!

You worry if you don’t finish it now, you’ll never finish it.

Yesssssss!

Hmm, well, let’s see. (Pause.) It’s time for bed, so what could we do?

Keep drawing till I finish!

Only that’s not going to work since it’s almost time for stories and bed. Hmm.

Draw for one more minute.

That sounds like it would work. Should I tell you when a minute is up?

Yes.

This conversation has two endings. In the first, when the dad gives her the “one minute’s up,” the little one puts away her drawing and brushes her teeth. In the alternate ending, it doesn’t go so smoothly:

Okay, one minute is up. Meet you in the bathroom for teeth!

No! One more minute! I have to finish.

It’s hard to put it down.

Yes, I can not. (Starts to cry again.)

It looks like it’s really hard to stop. I’m going to help you, okay? Do you want to put the drawing down on the bookshelf so you can finish it tomorrow, or should I do it? (The dad is not using a scolding or threatening voice, just a matter-of-fact “I’m going to help you” voice. He has to take a deep breath to do this!)

Okay, I’m helping. Here, I’m taking the drawing so you can go to your next step. (This is a follow-through step.)

Saying Good Night With Confidence.

In this conversation the mom has made a new, very clear sleep plan (from The Happy Sleeper), she’s shared the plan with her daughter, and then she checks in about how the first night went.

You like your zoo ones, huh? They’re in the laundry, so we’re wearing the train pj’s. Okay, so we’re tucked in here. Remember, when the lights go out and I say good night, you’re in charge of your own body and your own stuff.

I have my sippy cup of water on my table.

Yup, and you have your favorite stuffed animal. What would you do if your blanket fell off in the night? Let’s practice pulling it up.

I’d pull it at the top and put it back under my chin. And grab Doggie.

Wow, you really know what to do.

Instead Of “Good Job” Or “Bad Job.”

I noticed it was hard to stay in your bed last night. You were really upset. I checked on you, but kept taking you back to your own bed, just like we planned.

I want to sleep with you!

I hear you. It seems nice to sleep with me, and we used to do that. This feels different. But it’s my job to help you sleep, and now we have a new plan. Let’s remember it together. When the sun goes down and the moon comes out, we all go to sleep in our own beds. When the sun comes up in the morning, we see each other and play.