Daylight Savings Time: Tips On How to Handle Your Child’s Sleep
Daylight Savings Time is fast approaching and if you have young children you may be worried about what will happen to their perfect (or not so perfect) sleep schedule.
March 14th, 2021 is when we set our clocks forward. It’s bad enough that we lose an hour of sleep, and to make matters worse… it can wreak havoc on your child’s sleep schedule!
I have good news for you! If you survived “falling back” then “springing forward” will be a breeze! This time change is the less “disruptive” of the two, and here are a few tips on how to deal with daylight savings time regarding your child’s sleep.
- Sleep Environment: As the days will soon be getting longer and that sunshine will be beaming through those windows well past the “bedtime” hour, make sure that you keep your child’s sleep environment conducive to sleep. That means we want to make sure we are using our blackout blinds and ensuring that the room is super dark at that bedtime hour. You may want to start “darkening” the house an hour or so before bedtime so that your child has that visual cue that bedtime is approaching.
- Schedule: Thankfully, it is not necessary to play around with your schedule too much with this one. If your child is an early riser (5:30-6:00am) then you can do your happy dance, no more super early mornings for you !If your child is still on two naps a day, you can follow a “cold turkey” approach and just get them onto their usual nap schedule as per the new time. I always like to meet them halfway during these time changes until their body clock adjusts. It could look something like this : Your baby naps at 8:30am. First morning of the time change, your 8:30 is now 9:30 so you can put your baby down for 9-9:15 so that it’s not too drastic of a change but we are helping them along. Their circadian rhythms will adjust to the new time so your nap times will fall back to normal after a few days. If your child is on one nap a day,you shouldn’t need to adjust anything, and follow the new clock right away or if your child is more schedule sensitive, you can apply the same “meeting them halfway” idea which would look like this : Usual nap is at 12:30pm , new time it’s now 1:30pm so offer the nap on that first day at 1:00pm.
- Morning Wake Time: Resist the urge to let your child sleep in too much. Keeping the morning wake time the same will allow your naps and bedtime to stay relatively the same as usual.
- Social cues: What is important is consistency in your everyday routines. These routines serve as strong cues to our children. Keeping the same order in your day to day routine such as playtime,mealtimes, bath times will all help ease into the new time change without any hiccups!
Lastly, be consistent and be patient. It’s normal for things to be a little bumpy for a few days, however everyone in the house will quickly adjust and the worry about daylight savings time will be a distant memory.. until the fall that is !
Do you need help with your child’s sleep habits ? Contact tracy@sleeptightsolutions.com to find out how I can help!
Sal Ratz
May 7, 2017, 1:37 pm
Nice post. Its really helpful and I will apply it. My daughter who is 9 years old has been experience night terrors for years. It has been almost impossible to settle her down, but I came across a trick that works like a charm recently. I say to her “On the count of 10 you will fall into a deep sleep” a few times, then I count to ten and then say “Deep Sleep”. At this point she goes straight back into normal sleep.
Previously I have tried comforting her and a host of other ideas but nothing has worked – it’s like I’m not really there. This works brilliantly!
Michelle Henry
May 22, 2017, 9:22 pm
I think sleep environment is so important! Thanks for sharing these excellent tips.
Alexis
May 16, 2018, 11:03 pm
Biggest issue for me is getting the kids to bed while it’s still light. What worked (and it’s a bit sneaky) was to not change the clocks. They always look at a big clock we have in the kitchen to know when it’s time for bed. They still wake up early but are happy to amuse themselves until I get up, which is lucky!