Earnest Parenting » Toddlers

Help Your Kids Beat the Bedtime Blues

Amy LeForge — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:40:56 +0000

(Editor’s note: Lima shares some night-time sanity-saving strategies. Thanks Lima!)

Bed-time can be battle-time for many parents. Settling your children down with a nice bedtime story seems a simple enough idea in principle. But when your child has dragged themselves into the living room for the umpteenth time, insisting they don’t feel tired, and can they ‘have a glass of water’, those cozy ideals, and hard-headed practice, seem a world apart.

If your young children are turning your evenings into a long tussle of wills, then rather than trying to sort things out at bedtime, you need to go back to basics. What is it that is keeping your child so restless? And what actions can you take to help them beat their bedtime blues?

The answers actually start a long way back from the moment the bedroom curtains are drawn. They lie with the building of a balanced routine – to both day and night – for you and your child. The banishing of nighttime blues is not beyond the grasp of parents ready to engage fully with the problem.

The best place to start is to think about where to put that big dividing line, between a busy day and a restful sleep. That’s not only for your children, but also for you and your partner. To do that, you need an idea of what amount of sleep children of different ages need. Infants need at least 14 hours sleep, spread throughout their day; a 2-year old child will be down to 12 or so hours sleep; whereas a 6-year old can have under 11 hours. Obviously those times will need adjusting for the inevitable differences between kids, but they’re a good starting point.

Now plan your typical routine around that number – starting with the time your child needs to be woken in the morning. Then work backwards, so the routine is built around the sleep-time. That routine will be taken up by some immovables, like work and school-time pickups.

But when working out a reasonable bedtime, don’t try and force the creation a protected ‘adult time’ zone in the day. We all need that as parents, but you need to focus on the child’s needs first. The rest will then hopefully slot into place, once your child learns to become settled. Having a sense of ‘entitlement’ to a child-free period can create tension that feeds conflict, stress and sleeplessness.

Perhaps the most important thing to elbow into their routine is exercise. Your body needs a good workout, to help ease out those accumulated muscular stresses and so relaxed at bedtime. And that definitely applies as much to kids as to adults. Although they do usually have some running around – at kindergarten or in the playground – the more exercise the merrier.

So try and get an extra activity into your day-plan – late afternoon is best. It could be a walk one day, a trip to the playground another or a swim the next. A bit of variety and flexibility will be good for both of you. And not only will their bodies benefit, that quality time with you will help ease feelings of insecurity, and reduce the need to grab your attention at bed-time.

Then you need to create the right props for bedtime itself, and that means a strict routine. If you can build up a number of steps that lead inevitably bed-wards, and promote a sense of winding down, your child will be more acquiescent when it comes to turning the lights off.

Have a turn off time for television and games consoles, that’s at least one hour before their bed time; and certainly don’t allow them to have such powerful stimulants in their own rooms!

Finally, set aside half an hour of your time for putting your child to bed – and don’t rush it. Follow a simple sequence of getting them ready being changed for bed, having supper, cleaning their teeth and then reading a story. If you follow that exact same routine each evening, the pointers towards going to bed are firmed up for your child. Once those markers are laid down consistently, with time, those bedtime blues will be banished for good.

This article is written by Lima who is a fitness enthusiast & owns a website offering free fitness tips at BuildMuscle.org

Earnest Parenting: tips for parents who want peaceful bedtimes.

Photo provided courtesy of egg on stilts via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.

Get your bonus copy of my book Fun & Free Activities for Families on a Budget. Download here

Make the First 5 Count With Easter Seals

Amy LeForge — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:14:56 +0000

(Editor’s note: I received an important email from Holly recently, highlighting a new program that Easter Seals has developed to help kids get a solid start in life. Thanks for sharing with us, Holly!)

As parents we all know how important the first five years of a child’s life are. They’re incredible years of learning that shape children’s futures. Yet, every year 1.45 million children, all under the age of five, enter school with learning and health issues that put them far behind their peers and have a lasting, negative effect on their ability to meet their full potential.

As the leading provider of autism and early intervention services, Easter Seals know what’s possible when kids get the support they need – and also what happens when they don’t. Because of this, Easter Seals has created a new program called Make the First Five Count which encourages parents to be more aware of the social and developmental milestones their children should be reaching during the first five years of life. Some of these developmental milestones include:

Cognitive: Thinking skills: including learning, understanding, problem solving, reasoning, and remembering.

Social/Emotional: Interacting with others; having relationships with family, friends, and teachers, cooperating, and responding to the feelings of others.

If a child misses a milestone, or if something doesn’t feel quite right, notify your doctor — it might indicate a problem. The most important thing for parents and loved ones is to follow their instincts and share their concerns with their pediatrician. Recognizing a problem in developmental milestones is the very first step to ensuring your child gets the services he or she needs early – at the time they can benefit the most. When kids get the right treatment and therapy early in life, they’re ready to learn alongside their peers and build lifelong skills. Known as early intervention services, these therapies work to strengthen a child’s physical, social, emotional and intellectual abilities well before kindergarten.

To show you how early intervention changes lives I invite you to view Kyle’s story in the link below. Kyle is a first grader who was diagnosed with a form of autism at age 2; thanks to early intervention services through Easter Seals Kyle’s teachers say he may be able to live independently someday. You can check out Kyle’s story by visiting the link below: www.westglen.com/online/makethefirst5count.htm.

You can learn more about the program by visiting www.MaketheFirstFiveCount.org as well as learning more about CVS Caremark’s All Kids Can Program which has assured the delivery of Easter Seals services to the lives of nearly 100,000 children with disabilities served by Easter Seals nationwide.

Together, we can work to ensure every child has a chance to achieve their dreams!

Photo provided courtesy of Camp ASCCA via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.

Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want to make sure their kids have a solid start in life.

Get your bonus copy of my book Fun & Free Activities for Families on a Budget. Download here

Timer Training

Amy LeForge — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:15:49 +0000

How to teach your children to take turns.

I don’t know if it was desperation or inspiration, but I timer trained my boys when they were very young.

Okay I’ve thought about it. It was desperation.

By the time the older boys were 18 months old, I was able to defuse the inevitable screaming match that was going on over one toy or another by announcing that one boy could play with it, and then when the timer dinged it would be the other boy’s turn.

I doubt it’s something that only twins go through….any set of siblings will clash over a treasured (or just novel) toy at one point or another. In my case, it was about every 20 minutes that a new tussle broke out. I almost lost my mind, let me tell you.

When you first try it, and depending on the age of the children involved, you may want to only set the timer for a single minute, to show them how the system works. It took a lot of talking and demonstrating of the plan before they began to trust me that everyone would get their turn. This was very time-intensive for me. In other words I had to stay right there and be sure that the kid waiting didn’t clock his brother in frustration, and then make sure the hand-off went smoothly upon the much anticipated ding of the timer. When the system was understood I was able to take a more hands-off approach.

Once they could deal with the one minute turns, I started lengthening the time for each turn. Since they had no real concept of time I didn’t bother telling them how long I was giving them after a while, and I even snuck in slightly longer turns for the child who had to go second. Heh, heh, heh. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

When they were older I did start telling them what the turn length was and if someone was getting a different amount of time. If a fight broke out over who got the first turn, announcing that the first boy got 15 minutes and the second boy got 20 helped sort things out very quickly.

This technique was even more popular when the younger boys came along. When they were 2 and 3 it was common for them to come crying to me pointing to a toy the other one had asking me to set the “Timer go ding.”

I frequently find my egg timer by the computer after it’s been used by one or more of the kids these days.. My only concern at this point is that they’ll break it with enthusiastic dial twisting, lol. I have one of the old fashioned ones that just has a simple ding, and a new one can be difficult to find. Not to worry, I located one at the hardware store about a year ago and it’s safely in reserve should the original give its life for the cause of peace in my home.

A couple of things I’ve noticed: sometimes the fight isn’t about the toy at all. Frequently the boy who has the first turn gets bored with the item and hands it off early, especially if brother has found something else to do in the meantime. Also, it’s best to have a timer that’s devoted to just the turn-taking. I tried using my oven timer for turns and managed to confuse the little guys tremendously when I was cooking one evening.

If you try this technique at home, I’d appreciate knowing about it. Please leave a comment for me on how it’s working for you.

Earnest Parenting: tips for making life easier with toddlers.

Get your bonus copy of my book Fun & Free Activities for Families on a Budget. Download here