Bedtime Battles—5 Ways to Stop Late Night Kids

It’s bedtime; you’re exhausted, and your kids still have enough energy to launch the space shuttle. What’s a parent to do? Moving without a forwarding address is not an option.

There are a few easy ways to get a handle on bedtime and the most important of these is routine.

That means once you start a bedtime system, you have to stick with it until it sticks.

If the kids don’t want to go to bed, it’s a pretty sure bet they don’t have a routine or system to get them into “slow down and sleep” mode.

Think about it, there’s a routine for getting going in the morning. You get up, get dressed, eat something, brush your teeth, and you’re off to school.

This “system” gets the kids up and moving. You can employ a similar routine for bedtime, although you’ll want it to go in reverse.

1. Set a specific bedtime:

Make sure the kids know what it is. About an hour before bedtime, start getting them ready to wind down with the following steps. This is very important to do because it creates a pattern for the body of your child. It is scientifically proven that our bodies have an internal clock. So if you set a specific time for bed then your child will adopt this pattern, and will automatically fall asleep on time.

2. A warm bath is great for slowing kids down:

Not to mention the fact that they tend to smell better afterwards. The warm bath regulates the optimum temperature for sleep, which helps to fall asleep fast.

3. Provide a little snack after the bath:

The little snack will help make your child feel full throughout the night. Giving milk before bedtime is great because it contains casein protein, which is responsible for the muscle damage repair, which is usually done during night time.

After snack, make sure your child is drinking sufficient water, purified by a good water filter. If you don't have water filter, here is a list of the best water purifiers.

4. Then it’s time to brush the teeth:

Brushing teeth at night is very important habit to maintain healthy teeth.

5. Finally, read a bedtime story, play some soft music:

Make sure the night light is on. You may have to work with this one a bit to find out what works best with your kids.

You might even find you need to do different things for different kids in the same family. Using any kind of screen before bed is a big no no. These screens produces blue light, which gives a signal to the brain that it is day and to stay awake. If your child handles any type of screen before bed, whether that is mobile phone, tablet, or computer then this could be the main reason your child stays awake at night.

If you can't get rid of the screen then at least install a software that prevents blue light. You can also customize this software according to your needs—that is, you can set a specific time, then the software will automatically start preventing the blue light.

These kinds of software are available for any operating system whether that is windows or iOS.

And usually they are free.

Now is also the time to let the kids know this is the end. There’s no more water to drink, no more reasons to get out of bed, nothing to do except lie down and doze off.

Once you’ve gone through the steps, that’s it. The kids stay in bed and go to sleep. Right. OK, so it may take several nights of training to get them in the routine, but if you’re consistent, this system DOES work.

Give it a shot and make sure the same routine is followed no matter who puts them to bed. Nighty-nite!!