Once Upon A Bedtime

01/26/2022

The hormone melatonin signals the timing of sleep. It is produced directly in response to darkness: as the sun sets, melatonin rises. If your child is taking a long time to fall asleep at bedtime, pay close attention to how much light they are exposed to in the hour before bed.

"Even in response to light measured at 5 to 40 lux, which is much dimmer than typical room light, melatonin fell an average of 78%. And even 50 minutes after the light extinguished, melatonin did not rebound in most children tested."

A new study shows when preschoolers are exposed to even dim light in the hour before bedtime it can significantly lower levels of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, potentially disrupting sleep. The research serves as a reminder to parents to turn off electronics and dim the lights to promote he...

11/18/2021

One of the BEST things you can do for your child is to keep a consistent, early bedtime. But why is that? What difference does it make?

Playing the Long Game: How Bedtime Now Affects Your Child Later The Science of a Consistent, Early Bedtime Cheat Sheet: Bedtime should be before 9pm until children reach puberty Maintain a consistent bedtime, including on weekends Bedtimes later than 9pm are associated with difficulty falling and st...

10/21/2021

The University of Houston offers continued evidence that sleep restriction is directly linked to social problems later in life.

Proven ways to improve your child's sleep:

🔵 Set a regular bedtime, including on weekends, and gently enforce (rather than suggest) that this time be kept.
🔵 Encourage a bedtime routine, even with older children.
🔵 Dim the lights before bed, and keep the bedroom as dark as possible. For children with a fear of the dark, red night lights are less disruptive to sleep than blue or white.
🔵 Keep all electronics--television, phone, tablet, video games--out of the bedroom.

Emotional Expressivity After Sleep Restriction Forecasts Social Problems Years Later

09/23/2021

Boppy lounger recall. Also, although they have not yet been recalled, in-bed sleepers such as the DocATot have been linked with infant deaths as well.

A: Alone. Baby should have his/her own sleep surface.
B: Back. Baby needs to be placed on his/her back to sleep.
C: Crib. Place baby to sleep in a crib or bassinet with a firm, flat mattress and no loose toys or bedding.

Federal safety regulators say the products are "simply too risky to remain on the market” after eight infants in five years accidentally suffocate in them.

08/10/2021

What time do your children go to bed?

Studies have found that a late bedtime can affect more than just kids’ sleep—it can affect their weight, too. One study of elementary-age children found that 71% of participants with a late bedtime had obesity. Learn more: bit.ly/37xAHhW

03/25/2020

"When it comes to fighting the common cold and flu, sleep is your internal body armor that helps you fight some viruses and disease."

At the same time, if you're currently struggling to sleep well, remind yourself that sleep is involuntary. Anxiety, even about sleep itself, keeps your mind alert. Instead of focusing on the valid feelings of distress you might be experiencing over situations beyond your control, maybe look around today for things of beauty that are also beyond your control. There's always joy to be found when we look for it.

COVID-19: Best Defense? It could be a full night of sleep.

03/01/2020

Gain a day today, lose an hour next week. But most people don't realize is that it's not a matter of losing one hour. You're asking your body to behave more like a morning person for the next 8 months. Good luck.

On Sunday, March 8th, we’ll spring forward one hour. We think of it as losing one hour of sleep–but what’s actually happening is that you are asking your body to behave more like a morning person for the next 8 months of the year. Here’s why that’s pretty simple for kids, difficult for som...

02/24/2020

Is it safe to give my baby melatonin to help her sleep? No. There is no evidence to support the use of melatonin in babies to help them sleep. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in

02/20/2020

Anyone else ever had trouble with a kiddo who just couldn't stay dry at night, long past potty training? 🖐

I have one child who has gone from soaking his pull-up every night on a regular basis to being completely dry at night for the last 7 months after following the advice of pediatric urologist Dr. Steve Hodges.

He explains here why the majority of the advice you'll hear about treating bedwetting and constipation doesn't really solve the problem, and how to really help your child. If you already know that your child is constipated and your doctor is telling you to just keep giving your child Miralax, check out this post as well as his one on "What to Expect From M.O.P."

At what age should bedwetting be treated?The medical community’s boilerplate answer — around age 7 — is profoundly misguided, unsupported by science,

02/02/2020

You want what's best for your child. You want to sleep. Can you trust that sleep training is a good option for you and your little one?

What Does Science REALLY Say About Sleep Training? The sleep training debate is a passionate one, with many citing research to back their claims. Unless you have the drive to read through all of the research yourself, it can sound like the science backs both those opposed and those in support equall...

01/23/2020

71% of children aged 6 to 10 with a bedtime of 8:48 or later were obese, in a new study looking at the link between sleep timing and obesity.

Daily lifestyle behaviors of children, such as late bedtime, increased TV exposure, and late dinnertime, are associated with obesity, according to a new study. The study finds that 71% of participants with a late bedtime have obesity. bit.ly/2Rg0Sm4

12/18/2019

"My one-year-old has never slept through the night. People are telling me that this is normal, and that some kids just don't sleep through the night until they're older--like 3 or 4 years old. But I can't take this anymore! We've tried everything."

No, this is not normal.
No, melatonin will not help--it is not a treatment for night waking.

The biology that regulates sleep and wakefulness develops between 3-6 months of age. Yes, it is entirely reasonable to anticipate that your baby can sleep a full 10-12 hours through the night by 6 months.

(If you've been told that "sleeping through the night" means 5 hours, it's because the foundational research on this topic, published in 1957, needed a definition of when "night" occurred. They decided on midnight to 5am.)

However, 20-30% of little ones continue to have difficulty falling and/or staying asleep beyond 6 months of age.

Aside from cases of serious neurological issues, there is no reason why these little ones cannot learn healthy habits to get a full night's rest. Yes, even a 4-year-old who has never slept through the night is capable of doing so: as long as her doctor finds no physical problems (snoring and restless legs being the most common), there is nothing inherently wrong with her. And given how essential sleep is for proper brain development, it's critical that families get the help they need in order to address sleep problems.

The issue these families are seeing is called behavioral insomnia of childhood (BIC). There are two types of BIC--sleep onset association type, and limit setting type. Infants are more likely to have frequent waking due to sleep onset associations; toddlers and older children may have either or both types.

In sleep onset association BIC, little ones fall asleep with someone or something present that is then removed once the child is asleep. This could mean:
🔹Falling asleep while eating from the breast or from a bottle
🔹Falling asleep on a living room couch then being placed in bed while sound asleep
🔹Having a parent close by while drifting off

or any number of other cues that the child strongly seems to need in order to fall asleep. These cues are not something children are born with--they are learned. Because they are learned, they can be changed.

Waking during the night is a natural phenomenon. Everyone wakes 2-6 times during the night. So the problem is not the waking--it's what your little one expects in order to return to sleep. Typically they'll want whatever they had in order to fall asleep in the first place.

In limit setting BIC, parents are unwilling or unable to set predictable limits for their child. One family I worked with had a million excuses for indulging their child's behavior. "He was too excited at dinner time to finish eating, so of course when he woke at 2am he was super hungry." "It was a dreary day today, and he didn't get to do all the running around he usually does. That's why he woke at midnight and took two hours before he went back to sleep." From the child's point of view, nothing is ever predictable. Mom thinks she's setting limits and the child is just unpredictable, but this isn't the case. Mom can always imagine a scenario that requires her to be actively involved in her child's sleep, rather than maintaining the limit that night time is for sleep--period.

Here's what it boils down to:

👉The key issue in every case of BIC is the myth that you have to "get" your child to sleep.👈

Sleep is involuntary. No one controls when they fall asleep themselves, let alone when or how someone else falls asleep. You don't "get" your child to sleep. You simply make it more or less likely that sleep can happen.

❤️When we create bedtime routines that make sleep an automatic next step, sleep becomes more likely.

❤️When we understand the body's internal rhythms, and how appropriate timing and darkness at night make it easier for the body to prepare to sleep, sleep becomes more likely.

❤️When we keep the bedroom cool, quiet, dark, and free from distractions, sleep becomes more likely.

❤️When children younger than 3 have a regular nap schedule, that avoids naps late in the afternoon, sleep becomes more likely.

The converse to each of these is also true.

Good sleep is essential. You are able to set the stage for it to happen for your child.