Helping Older Kids Fall Asleep
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Helping Older Kids Fall Asleep
June 2005
Our 4 year old hates to go to bed unless she is ultra tired.
We have a consistent routine and bedtime but getting the whole
process started is the biggest problem. She just knows she is
missing something (What? cleaning up and falling asleep on the
sofa - whoopee!) and does not want to go to bed. She is
transitioning out of naps and on nap days she is more open to
the routine but then plays the hopping up out of bed game. On
non-nap days she goes from fine and resisting bed to crazy-
manic-tired in the blink of an eye which leads to tantrums.
When she finally calms down she is asleep within 5 minutes. I
have tried games to get her into bed & we have a ''star chart''
to reward her on sucessful bedtime nights. Tonight I even
resorted back to driving her around like an infant. It didn't
work. Any other suggestions? Please!
Tired of Bedtime
We had a similar situation with our 4-year-old. She didn't so
much throw a tantrum as she stalled going to bed by having about
100 excuses (needs water, looking for teddy bear, etc.). Anyway,
we got a kitchen timer and let her know how much time she had
before bedtime. When the timer went off, it was time for bed. I
had my doubts about this method but it actually worked ! No
fussing after that. You might want to give it a try.
R.K.
March 2002
My sister's daughter, who just turned five, is not falling asleep at
night until 10:00 pm! She is up at 7:30 most mornings, has a busy day
at preschool, and takes about a 45 minute nap most days. I have tried
to skip the nap, but that usually results in her being very cranky and
demanding at about 4:00 pm.. She can and has for months at a time gone
to bed at 8:30 pm, which works well for all of us. Right now she says
she can't fall asleep, which is difficult for me because I have anemia
in the winter. So getting her into bed at a reasonable time is
important to me, since I need to get to bed too! Thanks for all your
good thoughts!
Patricia
First of all, my sympathies. Everything is so much harder when there has
been little sleep. In terms of the amount of hours of sleep your niece is
getting, it sounds about normal. Sometimes my son, who is just three, can't
or doesn't fall asleep until 9 or 10 pm but the deal is always the same:
he's in bed between 7:30 and 8 and then he can play in his bed (is not
allowed to get out of bed) or read, listen to books on tape etc. We've had
this routine always an he just falls asleep when he is ready. This may be
hard for you to do if it's new but it may well be worth it. She may enjoy a
new routine??? Good luck!
We had this problem with our son when he was about four. He would take a
two hour nap starting around 4 pm (!!), he would wake just before I got home
from work at 6 and then stay up until 10:30 or 11. First, we had his
pediatrician tell him at his 4 year well child checkup that he was a big boy
and didn't need naps anymore (this was amazingly helpful!). Then, we
started to allow our son to watch TV for an hour in the afternoon (at the
time Sesame Street was on at 4:30-5:30, so this was perfect). We would sit
and watch the show together, talk about what was happening, eat a snack and
cuddle on the couch. He got the down time he needed (and so did I or his
sitter), but it engaged him enough to keep him from falling asleep. Without
the nap, he was asleep by 9pm. Good luck!
My three year old has never been a sleeper. He was born at 10:00 PM and did
not go to sleep until 8:00 AM the next morning....nothing has changed. He
usually does not fall asleep until 10:30 - 11:30 PM and wakes at about 7:00.
Our routine is to put him in his bed at about 9:30 and just let him stay
awake in bed. He can have his books, toys, etc., as long as he stays in
bed. We do not tell him that he has to go to sleep, but rather he must stay
in bed. He does play, but eventually falls asleep. This was a
recommendation from his doctor because I too am very exhausted. It seems to
have made things a little easier.
I think you have already hit the nail on the head...your sister's daughter
is at that age where the nap has to go, otherwise the bedtime will be 10 or
11 o' clock each night. It happened with our oldest at four years of age,
but this transitional age does vary from child to child. We finally decided
we had to put up with the cranky late afternoon/early evening period for the
sake of enforcing a regular, sane bedtime for everyone. Be comforted in
that while it's not the easiest, you'll have much easier bedtimes and
perhaps at 4pm or so she can spend some quiet time with a caregiver, books,
or coloring so her body gets some rest if not actual sleep. For our
daughter, even if we gave her a 15 minute catnap it wreaked havoc with the
bedtime when she was at this stage. While our daughter still occasionally
gets tired at dinnertime or late afternoon, six months after we've
eliminated her naps, those periods are shorter and less frequent than
before. Our bedtimes are now stable at 8pm - 8:30 pm on the dot. Good
luck!
Does your niece read yet? If she does, try putting her to bed earlier with a
book.
My daughter will soon be nine, but ever since she could read on her own
really well (around five) I never had a problem with her going to bed. I'd
tuck her in with a book (after she no longer wanted me to read to her
preferring to do it herself) and within 15 minutes I'd come back and she'd
be asleep with the open book over her face. Worked like a charm. Still does.
As far as I know kids need 10 hours of sleep at that age in a 24 hour
period. Mine sleeps from 8pm to 6am, when we need to get up for work.
Definitely no naps. We let her stay up late on Christmas Eve when we do the
gift exchange - that means an afternoon nap of 1.5 hour and she stays up
easily until 11pm in the best of mood/energy. I suggest you determine when
bedtime should be, count 10 hours forward and set the alarm for the new
earlier wake-up time. The 45 min nap must go. Transition slowly over
several days in 30 minute intervals.
Oct 1999
My 8 yr old son has a really hard time falling asleep at night. Partly
I think that his body would like to be on a later schedule, but since he
has to wake up at 7, he also has to fall asleep by 9 or so otherwise he's
sleepy and irritable the next day. He will lie in bed with the lights
out for up to an hour, just keeping himself awake with his own busy brain.
It helps when we lie down with him, but that's not a good long-term
solution! And no, he never has caffeine, and he finishes soccer by 6:30
(I know exercise right before bed is a no-no). I'm thinking some kind of
meditation or relaxation exercise might help. Any ideas? Thanks!
As a child I had problems going to sleep at night. My mind just kept working.
Come to think about it, I have had this problem most of my life until I became
a father and now I am so exhausted at night that I easily fall asleep. In
fact I have fallen asleep while playing with my children, if I am in a
horizontal position! What I did as a child and occasionally with my 7 year
old, is to read with a flashlight. There is nothing like reading that helps
those eyelids start to close.
I always had a hard time falling asleep too (until I had my son). What
always worked for me was what my mom called "the relaxing exercise." My
mom would say it to me when I was younger, but as I got older, I would say
it to myself in my head. The way it works is, while your son is laying in
bed, in the dark, in a comfortable position, say "Feel your feet, feel how
heavy and tired your feet feel. Now feel your ankles, etc." Work your way
up the body, front and back, out to each arm and hand and up the neck and
head. You say it slowly in a nice relaxing voice. I've used this on my
husband a couple of times and he is always asleep before I get to his
torso.....
Good luck!
My 8 yr old son has a really hard time falling asleep at night. Partly
I think that his body would like to be on a later schedule, but since he
has to wake up at 7, he also has to fall asleep by 9 or so otherwise he's
sleepy and irritable the next day. He will lie in bed with the lights
out for up to an hour, just keeping himself awake with his own busy brain.
I would like to share something that worked like a miracle in helping
me get to sleep. I just wish I'd figured it out twenty years ago.
I have had trouble falling asleep all my life. As a teenager it used
to take me over an hour to fall asleep every night. My brain just
kept going, thinking about this and that. Especially if I happened
to wake up in the middle of the night, I would often spend a couple
of hours lying awake thinking or worrying. As an adult, I tried
everything: sleeping pills (didn't work and made me groggy), herbal
remedies (didn't work), relaxation techniques (worked only sometimes).
Total exhaustion would sometimes help me get to sleep more quickly
in the evening, but then I would wake up around 2 a.m. and start
the cycle of lying awake again.
Most recently, when I became pregnant, it was horrible. I was waking
up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night 4 or 5 times,
and losing 3 or more hours of sleep a night.
Then, my husband started reading me to sleep in the evenings and it
worked like a charm. You have to pick the right type of book: one
that doesn't have too gripping a story. We found history books
or other nonfiction worked great.
However, this didn't help when I woke up in the middle of the night.
So we started taping him reading. We made about six 45-minute-long
cassettes. Now, whenever I wake up and need to go back to sleep, I
just pop one of those cassettes in the player, and I am *always*
asleep before the end of the tape.
The story requires just enough attention that my brain doesn't
keep spinning away on its own thoughts.
To me it seems like a miracle! I was so exhausted from lack of
sleep during the first part of the pregnancy, and now I get a
full night's sleep every night!
Hope this helps someone else.
Other, more lyrical books to read adults to sleep with are Ivan Doig's
autbiographical-historical fiction. This house of sky, his first, is
his best. But they are all wonderful. And they work like a charm.
Who thinks, can't sleep! You need to make yourself stop thinking. Of
course, you can try eloborate things to eventually stop yourself from
thinking through external stimulation (music, being read to, exhaustion
from baby care) or you can try the direct route, which has always worked
for me, since I was a teenager. Almost every night I fall asleep within
5 minutes, unless I purposefully allow myself to think - then I'm in for
an hour or longer tossing and turning. My strategy is to immediately catch
myself when the first word forms in my mind or cut off the first sentence.
"No words" I remind myself in my mind and don't allow my brain to go
further. Instead, I focus on the snuggly/cocooning feeling I get from
my pillow and when another word or thought comes back up I stop it
right in the track with the same reply. After five or more attempts
of this your mind and body gets so tired of this, you fall asleep
out of boredom and lack of stimulation. It's all about not permitting
yourself to think. Just this little bit of consistant discipline/control
over yourself will do the trick. Of course, you make it much easier on
yourself if you only go to bed when you're tired, if you make the time to
think about and solve your issues during wake hours and if you don't
go to bed with the emotional charge of the 10pm news that you haven't
had a chance to digest. Furthermore, it helps if you don't go to bed
following a big meal and if you use your bed for sleeping only
habit forming) and not reading, talking or writing. Good sleep is as
important and should be treated with the same respect/have the same
value as our other basic needs.
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