Berkeley Parents Network: Helping older kids fall asleep

Berkeley Parents Network

Helping older kids fall asleep

Berkeley Parents Network > Advice > Sleep > Helping older kids fall asleep

Bedtime Ritual for 7-year-old

Nov 2002

My 7 year old son has a hard time falling asleep at night; it can take him 45 min. And getting up in the morning is not easy for him. We have a regular bedtime routine which includes reading, but I am wondering if you have any ideas that will help ease any tension or anxieties so that he can relax more easily. Thanks for any suggestions! Jennifer

It's not uncommon to take 45 minutes to get to sleep, but here are a few ideas I tried for the same problem that worked. Try and give him dinner before 6.30pm. Make sure he has had enough liquids througout the day. Many children go to bed thirsty, and what they drink at school is never enough. Give him more water. Eliminate all sugar from his diet. Look at the ingredients in the drinks and yogurts etc. that you give him. Sugar will keep them wide awake. Make sure he gets enough physical excercise every day, about 2 hours outdoors. Read low-drama books before retiring. Keep to a schedule. Baths with essential oil of lavender help. I also give my kids chamomile tea throughout the evening. (Either Choice Organic from Natural Grocery Store, or loose leaf from Lhasa Kharnak on Shattuck. You can buy a Beehouse teapot in Andronicos or Peets which comes with inbuilt strainer. If you need it sweetened, buy Stevia, a herbal sweetener, also from Natural Grocery store.)Hope this helps. maura

Try rubbing his back. I did this for several years with my son (now late teens) when he ws young. He ws always hyper at bedtime even after being read to. So the routine was book, then 10 min.'s or so of back rub, which inevitably put him to sleep. joan

When I was very young -- probably around 8 or 9, I learned a little relaxation routine that I STILL use; it's very simple but very effective. You might have him try it if his problem is he can't relax. I imagine that I am a cloth doll, filled with sand, and that someone has poked a hole in my toes. I then imagine all of the sand slowly draining out of each body part, and that the result is that I am a floppy cloth doll with no sand in me. I find that the concreteness of this imagery makes it much more effective for me, even now, than just ''relax your feet, relax your legs, etc.'' I start with my toes, and I'm usually asleep by the time I reach my knees. Another thing that occurs to me as I write this: does your son get much exercise? I know for me the single most effective way to make sure I sleep well is to get exercise most days of the week. Just a thought... Karen

My 7-y-o has a bath every night, and that calms him down a lot. We've been on that ritual almost since the beginning, though, so it might not be an immediate fix for another child.

Another ritual, a big-R Ritual, is that after reading, we do ''blessings.'' He blesses all the people he loves (or who are on his mind that night). ''Blessed be Mom, blessed be Dad, blessed be Auntie Pat...'' etc. I don't know if it helps him to fall asleep, but I think it's important to get him into the habit of sending loving energy to the people he loves on a regular basis. Letitia

8-year-old can't do early bedtime

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!

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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