Top 3 foolproof ways to get your kid to sleep

Keying the words “Help my kid to sleep” got 6.3 billion results on google this morning!

Life with Covid has certainly added some extra stresses to the lives of many around the world and there is no doubt that our kids are struggling emotional in many different ways.

As a practicing psychotherapist children make up almost 75% of my clientele, that’s 25% increase since Covid hit last year. There are lots of different reasons parents and carers seek out my help and the underlying cause, in the majority of cases, is related to some sort of anxiety or fear. In almost all of those cases the kids also struggled with sleep.

Most of us know that school ages kids need a significant amount of sleep to function well, in fact most of the studies I looked at talked about between 9 and 13 hours a night. Without this the child will start to struggle mentally, physically and emotionally resulting in poor concentration, irritability and emotional detachment.

So as a tired and stressed out parents or carer what can you do?

I have three simple but very effective tips

  1. Set up a routine
    1. Lights out and wake up time the same every day
    2. Bath, teeth, pyjamas etc
    3. Read, lullaby, stories
  2. Screens off at least 1 hour before bed If listening to a story on an app, then have device screen side down or away from the child
  3. Consistency – kids need boundaries and respond much better when they know what to expect.

See you next time

Elaine

kids sleep blog