We know sleeping rather badly in childhood is normal to some extent. But how can you tell whether poor sleep is getting in the way? When your child is tired, restless and irritable during the day, you need to keep an eye on them! Very noisy environments, lack of routine, and the use of the wrong strategies are the factors that most hinder a good night’s sleep. That’s why we came up with a few tips to bring more serenity into your night!
1) Establish a routine
Routine is key. Sleep hygiene focuses on good practices and the creation of a ritual that can help induce relaxation. For babies, worth offering milk, giving a warm bath, changing their diaper, dimming the lights and even singing. For older children, a good practice is to have some sort of orderly sequence of actions that they will always carry out right before sleep time, such as brushing teeth, changing clothes, turning off lights, and listening to a story, for instance.
Having a daily routine is also important. If the environment is organized and tasks are performed at similar times, the child feels more secure and can understand what they will do after each task.
2) Sleep in your own bed
In the first months of life, it is normal and secure to share the same room, but remember that everybody has his or her place: parents in bed, the baby in a crib or attached bed.
Sleep in the parents’ bed, besides danger through risk of suffocation and other accidents, makes sleeping harder for the mother and father and impossible to give a sense of safety to the child in different environments. Such over protection may even be the genesis for the insecurity of a child with difficulties with contacts to other subjects.
3) Prepare the Environment
A good night’s sleep needs a comfortable environment. Select a noiseless and dark room. Noise intrusion into the sleep cycles makes this impossible, and light affects hormone production (cortisol and melatonin), which impairs the quality of the sleep and gives a feeling of being tired in the morning time.
4) Early to bed goes to early to school.
Do you know that the peak growth hormone is secreted around midnight? And by that time, your child must have been asleep in order to utilize it. So getting 8 hours sleep wouldn’t count at all. Healthy means going to bed by 8 pm to gain a restful refreshing sleep.
5) Avoid distractions
Stopping using cell phones, video games and tablets at night also helps improve the quality of your sleep. Keep them turned off! They directly interfere with the body’s shutdown process and, consequently, cause insomnia, since they generate curiosity. And their blue light prevents the proper production of melatonin, the hormone responsible for telling the body that it is time to sleep.
6) Respect your sleeping hours
The amount of time spent sleeping would depend on age. For a newborn, the amount of time spent sleeping should be 16 hours in a day or even more. Between 1-5 years, it was recommended to be 13-14 hours in a day. Between 5 and 10 years, that is during the preschool stage, it was 11. During adolescence and adulthood, this amount reduces to about 10 and 8 in a day, respectively. Thus, the amount of sleep by night must fall within a child’s age range.
7) Maintain good posture
For as long as anyone can remember, the experts have been urging everyone to lay their babies down to sleep on their sides so they don’t choke to death if they happen to vomit. However, after all that time listening to experts, the common opinion has changed. After much research, the American Academy of Pediatrics started recommending that babies should be placed in their crib to sleep on their backs. After the child’s first year, you can start giving your child postural support. It is essential to let them sleep on their side and with a really soft pillow which can offer support to the cranium while providing comfort but is not damaging the spine.
8) Use the correct pillow
At birth, a baby’s neck is still very small and their head is much larger compared to the rest of their body, so it is not necessary to use a pillow. However, from 6 months onwards, it is possible to introduce a low, soft pillow just to support the head and prevent deformations.
From the first year onwards, little ones start to have shoulders that are wider than their head and to keep their spine aligned and avoid discomfort, a slightly higher pillow model should be introduced .
Children who are changing from a crib to a bed should preferably sleep on their side and the pillow should completely fill the space between their head and the mattress.
To identify the best time to change the pillow for a higher one, it is important to observe the child’s posture. When sleeping on their side, if you notice that their neck is tilted downwards, it is time to replace it with another one.
9) Control daytime naps
It is normal and necessary for children up to 5 years old to take naps during the day, but you need to be careful not to disrupt their nighttime sleep. Naps between 4pm and 6pm should be avoided! Maintain a routine that allows for strategic rest times that do not affect the quality of the main sleep.
10) Eat healthy
Dinner should be taken at least two hours prior to sleep, and it should consist of nutrient-rich and easily digestible foods. If still hungry, aim for light snacks of fruits. The children should retire to bed neither too hungry nor overly full, as this may cause irritation to their intestines.