I found that having a bedtime routine for children helps to put them to sleep and have a better night sleep.
Sleep is one of the most important factors to stay healthy, for everybody and more so for young children.
If your child doesn’t sleep mummy doesn’t sleep! If your child is tired will get less cooperative, cry more, be very clingy etc, then mummy can’t do anything and no one is benefiting from this. So prioritise your Child sleep.
That is NAPS! and a good nigh time routine to enhanced a good night sleep, for everybody!
Naps: as many as your child need when he is very young and then maybe two, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. At around 2-3 years old, one a day, (for as long as you can until the teen years! at least a quiet time would be ideal!). Usually after lunch to give the children enough time to be tired enough for bedtime!
So in this post I will show you the bedtime routine for children I been using for years. I made up this bedtime routine for children after doing some reading and research. So obviously you will have to adapt it to your own family needs, but hopefully gives you some inspirations!
The most important thing is to keep it constant, unchanged and roughly at the same time, the earlier the better! Then you have some time for a to enjoy in peace and quiet a nice herbal tea before my own bedtime! But if you have young breastfed babies, this time doesn’t will probably won’t happen until babies are a little older.
So we start with an early dinner
Dinner
Have a light early dinner. It is better not to have dinner to close to the time we go to bed, so eating your dinner around 3 hours before you go to bed gives you enough time for a good night sleep.
Clear dinner and I like to leave the kitchen all nice and clean for the morning.
Quiet play
The children have a nice play follow by putting toys away, “to sleep” while I prepared the bath and bed clothing.
Bath Time!
Make sure the bath water is not too cold or too hot.
The night clothes of the children should ideally be natural materials and clam colours, no tv characters or messages keep it as neutral as can.
In winter I always put socks on my children, it keeps the body warms evenly while they sleep and if they kick the covers, the will keep warm.
Set the mood for bed
This is an especially important for children, and for you if you want your children to go calm and in a short time to sleep.
While the children are in the bath we turn most lights off apart from some low lights, close the blinds and/or curtains, to set the ‘mood for bed’
So when children finish their bath, brush their teeth and come out of the bath room the house feels “sleepy” we talk with lower voices as to not wake the house up!
Light a candle
Before the bed time story you can light a candle, in a safe place.
Beeswax candles gives a beautiful warm calm light that is magical and soothing for children
Learn to make beeswax candles here
Bed time story
The bed time story should be not too long and not too exciting nothing that is going to keep your child’s mind to active.
Here is a list of our favourite bed time stories if you want some inspiration.
And is good to read the same story for as long as you can bear it, this is specially important with younger children.
And don’t forget using a different tone that you would use at other times of the day, slow it down don’t over dramatise it
Sing a lullaby
Again, we don’t change the lullaby too often, after a month or too we might change it and then come back to it. So we sing the same lullaby every night.
One that we use for many many years is Hush little baby, and we have some others we made up together with my children!
Prayer
This is somewhat more personal depending in your spiritual beliefs.
Is peaceful for children to enter sleep with a nice prayer or a nice verse.
We use a book call Prayers for parents and children by Rudolf Steiner.
Extinguish Candle
We finish the bedtime routine by extinguishing the candle, we have a candle snuffer to turn the candle off.
The candle snuffer gently extinguish the flame minimising smoke.
Candle snuffer https://amzn.to/4iQiGyp
And sweet dreams little ones!
