Easy Tips To Get Your Kids To Sleep Early

Your children need to have enough sleep during the night so that their brain development is maximized. With little sleep, not only do children tend to get crankier, but they are also less active and they aren’t maximizing their full development capacity.

The challenge is getting your kids to sleep early. This can be quite tricky. It takes a steady bedtime routine for putting children to sleep less stressful and more effortless.

If you’re struggling with this, you’re in the right place. Here are some of the tricks to help you get your kids to sleep early:

1. Invest In Their Bed Or Crib’s Mattress

For them to be excited to get to bed after a long day, you have to make your children’s beds comfortable. Apart from making the bed regularly and ensuring that it’s well kept, you need to have a good quality foam mattress and comfortable pillows, too.

Also, you can go the extra mile by choosing sheets or covers that are their favorite cartoon character, sport, or favorite color. Kids really like it when they feel safe and secure in their sleeping areas, and it’s up to you to create this haven for them.

Apart from these, you can also create a better sleeping environment for your children through the following:

● Setting the right heating or cooling temperature
● Having a night light
● Having a noise machine, if your children are too daunted about too much silence

2. Wind-Down Your Kids Early In The Evening

When your children have been playing all day, or have been in school, you don’t need to keep them playing even until the evening. Sleep and health experts recommend that you start to wind down your kids early in the evening.

At five in the afternoon, you should start slowing down their activities and slowly lead them to their evening routine. The fewer activities they do at night, the easier it becomes for you to put them to bed.

3. Give Your Kids Enough Physical Activity In The Day

In connection with the previous point, for you to be able to wind down your kids early on in the evening, it’s vital that you have kept them busy with activities during the day. Children are naturally more active, and they have more energy than adults do. All this energy has to be placed somewhere so that they don’t end up burning it at night, leading to more difficulty in sleeping.

Keep your children away from too much screen time and allow them to engage in a physical activity instead, like the following:

● Playing outdoors
● Running and jumping around
● Coloring and drawing
● Doing sports

4. Create A Bedtime Routine

Children are creatures of habit, and it’s up to you to create a routine for your children to remember. It isn’t about controlling them and turning them into robots. Instead, it’s about helping them have a more effortless and better transition from an active day, to slow nighttime.

Also, when you have a bedtime routine, you’re helping your children remember that once you start doing this and that, it means that they’ll have to go to bed soon. With this, they tend to be less cynical about bedtime.

Examples of activities that you can include in your bedtime routine are the following:

● Having a relaxing bath
● Putting on their sleepwear
● Reading a bedtime story
● Good night cuddles

5. Time Your Night Time Meals Appropriately

It’s suggested that your kids’ dinner should be at least two hours before bedtime. Anything beyond this can also be unhealthy for your children. You need to give your kids’ digestive system the time to work correctly and to break down the meal before you slow them down for bedtime.

The closer their mealtimes are to night time, the more active they become. Think of it like you’re putting fuel in your car, the more fuel it has, the better it performs and it’s more active. The last thing that you would want is to have an active child by 9 pm, when in fact they should’ve already been sleeping at least an hour ago.

Sleep is very important for your growing children. But, as sweet as your children’s dreams may be, for parents, putting their children down to bed is an entire nightmare. Nearly every parent experiences difficulty in letting their kids go to bed. For young children, the phrase “go to sleep” can often lead to distress and tantrums.

With these tips and tricks to help you out, now you can be less daunted about the task of putting your children to bed.