Establishing a bedtime routine with your kids is an important part to maintaining healthy sleep habits. In this episode, Brittany, a pediatric sleep consultant, discusses how to create a a consistent bedtime routine…
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Connect With Brittany But First Sleep
This Episode Discusses:
Why bedtime routines are important.
Tips for starting a bedtime routine and staying consistent with it.
Helpful tips for staying consistent with bedtime routines.
Nursing to sleep and night time snacking.
DON’T HAVE TIME TO LISTEN? HERE’S THE EPISODE ALL TYPED OUT:
Today I have a guest, Brittany from But First Sleep. She is going to about sleep and in particular bedtime routines so if you struggle with bedtime in any way this episode is a must listen. I learned so many helpful tips that I'm excited to implement with my own kids. I hope you enjoy the episode!
Lets face it…Being a homeschooling mom who also works from home can be pure chaos! As you’ve probably already noticed, despite the occasional laugh track, life isn’t a sitcom and everyday struggles are rarely resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks to keep your sanity in check so the right strategies and mindset are vital for becoming more productive and less overwhelmed with all the things life throws at us. Enter the Simply Freeing Podcast…Episodes for the highly passionate, busy work at home, homeschooling mama ready to break away from cultural norms and raise life long learners. So let kick stress to the curb, throw chaos out the door and order in some peace and simplicity…with a cup of coffee, or 3.
Jackie: Hi Brittany!
Brittany: Hi!
Jackie: Let’s just jump right in. I want you to share a little bit about yourself and why you started teaching family’s about sleep.
Brittany: Awesome. Yes! First, thank you for having me Jackie. I am a pediatric sleep consultant and I am super passionate about sleep. I'm a pediatric sleep consultant and I work with babies and children between the ages of zero and five. A little bit about me…I'm a mom as well. My daughter is a little bit older no but I was definitely in that early stage of all the sleep stuff. I kind of panicked right before I was gonna have her. I said what's gonna happen? How do I do this? And it just kind of took off from there. From there, I was like I must find every information I can about this because I would have to admit that people scared me. It’s gonna happen. You're never gonna sleep again! And I have that kind of personality that says well watch me! I'm gonna figure it out! That's kind of how I got into this and it's led me to be an advocate for it and let other moms and families know that you can have a new baby and you can have sleep, I promise you.
Jackie: Let’s talk about that really quick. Why is it that people are so negative about sleep even before you have your child? That very much drives me insane!
Brittany: I don't know I I feel like it's maybe because we don't know enough information out there I don't think there's a lot of advice or tips given to us when we are in the hospitals like there is for feeding and nurturing and changing diapers and all these classes. It's like well what about sleep you know? So I kind of wanted to be that person. I wanna be able to give that information out to other moms whether they take it or receive it or not. I want it available and to know that there are possibilities of having newborns and babies and toddlers love sleep.
Jackie: Yes! So can you talk about bedtime routines. I have really noticed a big difference in my kids is when we have a bedtime routine. We do our reading at night. I have a book that I read to them at night and I noticed when we skip that because often we will go to bed later and then I'll say, “We're not reading tonight. It's too late!” and that that just kind of causes them to get more hyper because they're not getting their routine and then I can't settle them down and it's just like this vicious cycle so if you could just talk about bedtime routines I think that would be really helpful.
Brittany: Yeah absolutely! Obviously you're noticing it when the routine is missed. The behavior starts to come out and they're kind of freaking out and the biggest thing I can say about that kind of relates back to what I used to teach actually. Young kids kids thrive off routine. They love knowing what is coming next. They have this expectation that we do this a certain way. I want to do that and I want to repeat it. It's really funny with bedtime. Kids like knowing mom and dad have this under control. I'm gonna do my bath I'm gonna do my lotion and my pajamas and I'm gonna get my story and then I go to sleep. So yes, when something like that is kind of taken out of routine and interrupted kids are like, Hey what's going on? Is something else gonna happen or am I going to go to sleep? Then it becomes a guessing game for them.
So again, yes! I like letting parents know the first thing is that you have to establish a bedtime routine. Everyone's bedtime routine is gonna look different and that's totally fine but having that routine and sticking to it as close as possible at each and every night is where your bedtimes are going to run so smoothly. People kind of get somewhat confused with getting ready for bed and a strict bedtime routine and kind of touching on that is getting ready for bed would be simple things like dimming lights about an hour before bedtime, turning off all electronics about an hour before bedtime, helping your child's own body start producing natural melatonin so they can start getting ready for the evening.
I also always recommend earlier to bed the better, before 8:00 o'clock. There's a lot of brain development and body development that kind of happens in the early evening with hormones and everything like that so with that, after that comes the bedtime routine. I was just talking about this on my page where you want your bedtime routine to be somewhat short. I'm talking like 5 to 15 minutes. You don't wanna drag anything out. You don't wanna delay. You don't really want to give an opportunity to, I need to go potty. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. Starting new ideas of how they can kind of get out of this bedtime routine or start a new tactic where like, hey…well this worked last time. Let's see if it works again. You always want to keep bedtime. If you're more of a relaxed mom or parent or kind of do things differently when it comes to bedtime, I recommend just being firm in that area…keeping those healthy boundaries for bedtime because it's gonna benefit them and then when they're well rested, you're well rested as well. Having that quick bedtime routine which is typically going to look like reading a short story. (I'm talking like less than five minutes.) Doing your good nights, your cuddles, prayers and out for the night, walk out. Those kind of things…those keeping it short, keeping it simple, instead of dragging it out can kind of delay and start giving them more, just giving them more opportunities to chime in and want to do something different and kind of get their last wiggles out when essentially, if they're at that point they're probably past their tired point when you start to see that hyperactivity happening, it's typically a sign that they're past the tired point. So I always again recommend earlier winding down about 60 minutes before bed and everything like that.
Jackie: Wow so the short story…that kind of changes everything for me. We read a chapter book and that is long and I get the I'm hungry, I didn't eat enough. I feel like my kids are literally, my little ones I'm talking, I spend most of the time at night with my three and five year olds and my 5 year old especially… It's like she literally looks like she's vibrating. I can't go sleep. Rub my back. And it's like, Just go to sleep! But by that time, I think we've just gone way past the time that we should have 'cause my routine ends up lasting a long time.
Brittany: Most likely but if that's something you want to continue to do, it's not something like oh completely cut that out. I think that's important but I would recommend it outside of the sleeping space so in the living room with the family, turning that TV off, turning the lights down low and having family time somewhere outside of their bedroom space. Bedtime routine should be 5 to 15 minutes in their sleeping space and it's just fairly quick like I talked about a few minutes ago but if you wanna do something different, having family time or playing a family game, making it outside of their sleeping space is also really important too. Kind of separate sleep from play, sleep from eating, sleep from whatever else we do.
Jackie: That's really helpful! I never really thought of that. That would help. I know there are many homeschooling families that have older kids and younger kids. I have to be really careful with my big kids. I need to do a better job of saying stay in your room. Stop coming in. The bigger ones want to talk to me at night and I'm still trying to settle down my little ones. It throws them all off. Having really good structure and boundaries set up with the big kids is another thing that I've been trying to work on because when you have so many different ages it just gets to be really challenging to get everyone settled with their routines.
Brittany: Yes and and that kind of goes into my idea of why I wanted to do this starting really early. Starting as soon as possible and obviously I do get clients that are older than under a year per say but I always recommend starting as early as possible. When I do get clients, I want them to understand, don't lose hope for those those habits can always still be established. They're going to come with more of a fight at this stage because they're older. They're more aware of things and you know your older kids of course that's gonna play a different role. They're pretty much adults, young adults, at this point but I think it's ambushing report you know something early on with your younger kids so when they are older they know sleep is kind of always gonna be a sleep thing and having talking with mom or reading with mom is gonna be something that we separate from that and so you can establish those small boundaries from the start.
Jackie: I also have another question about nursing to sleep. If someone is nursing their child to sleep. With my kids, I would nurse them to sleep and then they kept waking up to nurse in the middle of the night. What would you say to moms struggling with that and feeling like their child is comfort nursing throughout the night? Is there something that you would recommend that they do?
Brittany: Yeah so first of all i like to say that if something like that is working and your okay with doing it, keep doing it! But a lot of clients that I do get are coming to me when the child is more or less snack feeding. (A little here, a little there.) So they're kind of on this cycle of like I'm just going to take it whenever I can because there is no consistent routine. There's no structure. There's nothing set up for me to go by so I'm just gonna do it as I please and yes! They are gonna wake through the night 'cause they could possibly be hungry but more often around past six months old, they're typically not starving. I like to remind my clients that sleep is a learned skill so with that, it's going to take practice and your parent led direction at that point. I like to say this phrase…as parents, in order to get your child’s sleep response to change, you as a parent have to first make the change. A lot of times their babies will just naturally kind of drop the night feedings because they're meeting their calorie intake during the day. It’s not always the case but yeah more often than not when they're younger it kind of starts to happen that way. I teach parents how to respond differently and effectively without just offering a bottle or offering breast every single time they wake up.
Jackie: Let's talk about consistency. I know that if I want to do something and I don't actually write it down and have a visual in front of me of the steps that I want to do, I'm going to forget. If I don’t make it a priority by writing it down and placing it in a spot I will remember, I will forget about it and start working on something else and then you know I get frustrated with myself so if I was working on a specific bedtime routine, I would put it on their bedroom door. If someone is struggling with consistency what would you recommend with bedtime routines?
Brittany: I think you said it. Clients are often saying just tell me how to do it, when to do it, just lay it out for me! I'll print it out! I just want it laid out so I can see it 'cause you know they kind of want me to take the thinking out of it and just give it to them, which I get! I understand that's kind of how I am and how I work. Making bedtime fun with simple pictures and charts for the kids that you can stay consistent with it but also be flexible when something comes upin for them that's something that can be consistency for you yes obviously things are going to happen sometimes there isn't going to be a full bed that's OK as well you can be flexible for the most part human things happened as long as it's not going to continue happening over and over where you mow making inconsistencies and of course you can get in trouble but yes so
Jackie: Let's say somebody has a day that's like completely out of the norm so now instead of getting your kids to bed at 7pm, it's now 8:30 and they haven't started the routine. Would you still suggest doing the bedtime routine even though it’s later. I know that when I say no reading now because it is way past our bedtime, that always triggers them! Do you think it’s a good idea to take a part of their routine away?
Brittany: I think part of why having a 5 minute bedtime routine is good is because of nights like that. Yes you can still make 5 minutes happen. More often our kids 5 and under don't really have a sense of what 5 minutes actually is and instead you could talk with them and instead of saying, we're not doing this, we're not doing that…Let them know what's going to happen. Let them know this is what we're doing because it's late. Once they know that five minute routine is established there are going to be less questions asked and less fighting, because this is how it's always been and this is what it's gonna continue to be and I think that's important to build trust.
Jackie: Thank you so so much! This has been really really helpful. You've actually given me a lot to think about regarding our bedtime routine. I do love reading a chapter book with them at night but I think we can do it outside of the bedroom. I know that this is such a helpful topic for so many busy moms! Can you share how someone could work with you?
Brittany: My website is But First Sleep. I’m on Instagram and Facebook under the same name. Message me with any questions you may have and let’s have a conversation. No pressure!
Jackie: Perfect! Thank you so much! It's been so nice to chat with you.
Brittany: Thank you!
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