Christine Brown | Child Sleep Consultant & Parent Coach
What is one piece of advice you’d share with parents about bedtime routines for young children.
Remember that you are in control of the routine! Our children start trying to add things into the routine to delay bedtime. They are trying to figure out the boundaries and if they ask say “one more book” or “one more tuck in” and we say “no” and then give in if they push us, it teaches them that there is wiggle room and they will continue to push. If you stay consistent, it doesn’t mean that they won’t ask, but they won’t continue pushing hard because they know that you follow through on what you say you are going to do. This doesn’t mean that they don’t get a say in what happens with the routine, as they got a little older, but that is something that we have to collaborate and decide on together.
What’s the best way to help an overtired child get well-rested again?
Short answer: an early bedtime for at least a few days.
You know your child needs an early bedtime if their behavior between 4-5 pm is cranky, clingy, clumsy or hyperactive. These are signs that they are overtired and would benefit from going to be earlier. This will help your child meet their sleep needs and get more of the super nourishing, deep sleep that happens before midnight. It also helps your little one from going down overtired, which can have a downward spiral effect, resulting in difficulty settling to sleep, night wakings, restless sleep, early morning wake ups and short naps. For babies, this can be as early as 5:30 p.m. if they’ve had a short nap day and for toddlers, as early as 6:00-6:30 p.m.
Recommend a book, article or podcast for families to read or listen to.
My favorite parenting book of all time is The Whole Brain Child. It is an exciting read, centered around raising children using strategies that foster healthy brain development. One of the biggest takeaways that blew my mind was that children’s brains aren’t fully developed until they are 25 years old so we need to keep that in mind when parenting to have realistic expectations of where they are developmentally. If our expectations are in alignment, it enables us to be more understanding and patient with our little ones.
What is your go-to parenting hack?
Focus on the positive. Parenting children can be CHALLENGING and if we are in the thick of it with our kids, we can start focusing on all the behaviors that we don’t like. What we focus on we get more of. The easiest way to turn the energy around in the house and improve your child’s behavior is to focus on all of the positive things that they do. Provide positive feedback on those behaviors and you’ll start seeing more of them! A good rule of thumb is 5 positive reinforcements to every 1 correction.
BIO
Christine Brown is a Mom to twin boys and the founder of Bella Luna Family, a parent consulting company that specializes in some of the most challenging aspects of parenting, including child sleep, child behavior and potty training.
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