Sleeping and young children
By the time your child is two years old he usually needs 12 hours of sleep at night and about one or two hours of napping during the day; once again, the actual amount will depend on the child.
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In general, the nap or rest time will shorten during the year, but bedtime will usually stay the same. The amount of time that your child sleeps at night won't decrease until he's around six years old when he'll reduce it half an hour at a time, per year.
Around the age of three many children stop having naps, although the majority still need a rest period indoors after lunch until they are about five or six.
Sleep routine for young children
Children around the age of two and three sometimes start delaying tactics at bedtime. There may be the desire to go to the lavatory or to have a drink and, of course, there's the possibility that he may just appear at your side with no excuses, wakeful and charming. In these circumstances I think you have to decide how to act according to what your previous routine has been. If you have been pretty flexible about bedtimes and never insisted that your child went to bed in his room, cot or bed, then you can't suddenly change tactics when your child is two or three: your child will simply not accept the inconsistency, and will quite rightly baulk at the new regime. In these circumstances, I think it is better to be practical and to let your child play in the room with you until he is tired; to let your child fall asleep beside you and to then carry him up to bed.
On the other hand, if the bedtime routine has been carefully set and this new behaviour is a departure, then I think your child will only benefit from your being firm about the re-establishment of routine. No doubt you will get a few whimpers and a few doleful pleas, but you have already established with your child that you are loving and will come if he is in real need, so you can afford to be firm. You have a lot of credit to draw on and your child will learn this lesson quite quickly, and soon stop repeating it. However, if you give in, then your child will certainly pick it up as a new habit.
The way you handle these situations depends quite a lot on how much energy you have left and how much you are prepared to have your evenings interrupted. If you have been with your children all day, you probably feel with some justification that the night times are your own, and if you've brought your children up to recognize this you can be quite firm in insisting on it.
Keeping bedtime sleeps happy
It is important to keep bedtimes happy. Personally, I was prepared to make quite a lot of concessions to make sure that my children didn't go to sleep unhappy. I forgave certain misdemeanours, which would normally have been punished earlier in the day, so that they didn't go to bed with the memory of my angry voice ringing in their ears. I tried to avoid them feeling upset or crying with distress. It is worth making pre-bedtime activities especially joyful and friendly: as your child gets older spend the time between supper and bed (about 30 minutes) in their company - even if you are only sitting in the same room reading a newspaper, or getting on with some work. Having your presence in the room is very comforting and consoling and will calm your child so that he'll be in a happy mood when he makes the transition from the living room to the bedroom. If you can, watch a suitable television programme together, or read a book or play a game before you take your child to the bedroom.
Bedroom sleeping rituals
Most children like a bedtime ritual. Mine always had half a dozen favourite songs they liked me to sing, and a storybook they liked their father to read. When we were home together we would share the bedtime routine: ten minutes with me on songs and ten minutes with him on a story. We would both stay in the bedroom and, as there were three children going to bed, bedtimes were communal with the children sitting or lying on each other's beds. It was a family time. My husband lay on the bed while I sang the songs. I stayed and lay on a bed while he read a story.
When the story and songs were over, it was lights out, except for a low night light, although we often stayed and talked over what had happened during the day. Sometimes we lay under the bedclothes for a short while to give our children the extra loving feeling of companionship.
In our household this sometimes rather protracted but worthwhile bedtime routine worked. The last thing we did was to switch on the hall light so that the children could see their way to the bathroom during the night or to our room if they needed us. It's quite useful if the light has a dimmer switch so that it gives a suitably low enough light so that no doors have to be shut.
Tips for making bedtimes easy
- Mark the bedtime with an alarm or a timer, so that you can give your children five minutes warning of bedtime.
- For a young child, have a toy clock next to the real clock and set the hands of the toy clock to bedtime. When the hands of the real clock match up with the toy clock, that is the time for bed.
- Keep a child's bedtime as near the same time as you can every night to help establish regular sleeping patterns.
- Children are quite often not sleepy at their bedtimes. They like the time to slow down just lying in bed looking at a new toy, reading a new book, or just chatting to one another. It is quite often a good idea to have children who are near each other's own age sharing the same bedroom until they require their privacy.
- Once your children get into a proper bed, have a little snuggle down with them before you leave them to go to sleep. It is very nice for them; it warms up the bed, and their last memories are of your closeness. It is also very relaxing for you: I did it with my children and I nearly always found that I dropped off before they did. It was a tradition we started when they were young, but continued after they went to school.
New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard
Posted 03.11.2010
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