10 Tips to Help Your Kids Sleep Better

Are you tired of being awake at all times with your baby? Follow these simple tips to help your little one sleep through the night.

Sleep, or lack of it, is one of the major concerns of parents with young children, especially when they stop being babies. In the vast majority of cases, more than a real disorder, parents’ expectations for how much their children should sleep are not met. This can lead to arguments in the family environment, although children get up the next morning like flowers and perform 100% throughout the day.

In this sense, what parents complain most about is that their children go to bed later than they would like, that is, they find it difficult to fall asleep and wake up many times at night. Please keep reading to know some tips that pediatricians always recommend that can help your child sleep through the night or at least longer in a row. And so you can also sleep better and have the peace of mind that your child is sleeping well.

1. Set a time for children to go to sleep and accompany her to previous routines. The human body gets used to repeated schedules every 24 hours, so it is very appropriate for children to go to bed at the same time every day. Also, if a few hours before the child goes to sleep, we carry out quiet routines (dinner, bath, bedtime story) his body will understand that the time has come to disconnect and it will be easier for him to fall asleep.
2. On weekends, bedtime and waking time should be similar to that of school days, at most one hour apart. In this way, it will be easier to return to routines on daily days, and the child will feel more secure about the time to go to sleep when Monday arrives.
3. The hours before bedtime should be quiet. High-energy activities should be avoided before going to bed, such as television, rough games, or highly stimulating activities.
4. Children should not go to bed hungry. Something suitable is little milk or fruit. Heavy meals should be avoided for one to two hours before going to bed as they can interfere with a child’s healthy sleep.
5. Avoid drinks that contain caffeine like cola, tea, or chocolate before bedtime. It doesn’t seem very advisable that a drink containing a stimulant is the last thing a child drinks before falling asleep, right?
6. During the day, children should play outside and exercise routinely. For melatonin, the sleep-regulating hormone, to secrete appropriately at night, children must play in natural light during the day. If some regular physical activity accompanies that, success is assured.
7. Avoid long naps and naps that take place after five in the afternoon. Until two years of age, children usually take two naps a day (one in the morning and one in the afternoon). From this age on, they typically maintain an afternoon nap even up to the age of five. At this age, napping can negatively influence nighttime sleep.
8. The room where a child sleeps should be quiet, better if it is dark and quiet. For children who are afraid of the dark, a little intensity light is acceptable so that, if they wake up in the middle of the night, this is not a reason for them to wake up.
9. The children’s bed should be comfortable. Sometimes mattresses are not very comfortable on their own, but for this, there are toddlers mattress pads for greater comfort that will make your child not want to get out of bed once they lie down. As soon as they fall into bed, the deepest sleep will invade them instantly, that’s why it is so important to choose a suitable mattress pad for their rest so that they can recover at night all the energy spent during the day
10. The room where the child sleeps should not be used, to the extent possible, for daytime play or punishment. Children must internalize from a young age that the bed and their room are for sleeping and not playing or doing any other activity.

The vast majority of these tips are applicable from 6 months of age, at which time the children’s circadian rhythm is established and regulated, and they begin to sleep better. That is why it is worth starting to use them from a young age.

If your children sleep poorly and have decided to put these indications into practice, you should know that, although they improve the quality of children’s sleep, the results are seen over time and always associated with a culture of rest that must be followed during 24 hours a day.

On the other hand, it is possible that many (or all) of these things you have already tried at home and your children continue to sleep poorly. In these cases, inadequate sleep is usually associated with certain behaviors that the child associates with falling asleep, such as cradling in young children, the presence of parents in the room, needing many, many songs for the child to stay quiet.

Nothing happens because you as a father or mother continue to allow them, however, until the child gets used to falling asleep it is only confusing for these routines to disappear from your “protocol” for the child to fall asleep. And finally, I remind you that the comfort in bed that a suitable mattress pad can give your child will make him want to be in bed always on time.

However, do not forget one thing: each child is different and will respond differently to the measures we have told you. So try until you find the ones that are most favorable for your little one.

Finally, remember that getting your baby to sleep through the night is not a way to assess your ability to raise a child. Take the time to understand your baby’s habits and way of communicating; so you can help him sleep better. If you have concerns, you may want to talk to your baby’s doctor.