10/27/2021
BIG KID SLEEP//
It’s no secret that my kids aren’t perfect sleepers. I know, I know, it’s shocking!
But we can’t force them to sleep, we can provide them opportunities and healthy sleep habits and the rest is up to them.
If our big kids are sleeping well, having night wakings, fighting bedtime - there’s usually (almost always) a reason.
Ev had been waking up 1-3 times a night for a long time - I’m talking like a year… I couldn’t figure it out, she has healthy sleep habits, bedtime is solid (so I thought), she knows the rules and can verbalize to stay in bed but she just wasn’t doing it.
We tried melatonin, magnesium, consequences, rewards, locking the door, child psychology, behavior therapy… nothing was working.
Finally I took her to a sleep specialist (a doctor who does sleep consulting) we walked through her bedtime routine and made a tiny change and BAM! I don’t want to jinx it but she’s slept through the night more times than not this week!!!
What was the change?? Get ready because it SO SMALL!
Instead of saying “I’ll come back in 1 minute to check on you” (and eventually 3, 5, x number of minutes) we switched it to “I’ll come check on you AFTER you fall asleep”
Somewhere along the way she decided that she NEEDED us to check on her to fall asleep. So in the night she would wake and feel like she needed us to check on her in order to go back to sleep.
So long story long, if you have a big kid who isn’t sleeping well, look super super close at their bedtime routine. I bet there’s a culprit in there.
