Bedtime is brutal. There’s no other way to put it. When you’re putting your toddler to sleep for the fourth time in an hour and they still don’t seem tired, but they also somehow have been up for what seems like eternity, it hurts. So one day I called my mom because I just couldn’t do it anymore. After all, she survived four kids. The one piece of advice my mom had for me was this: make a bedtime routine.
At first I was frustrated because I thought I had a bedtime routine for my son already. We read a story before bed every night, I change his diaper, and then I nurse him. Thats enough right? Apparently it’s a bit more complicated than that. A good routine needs to be consistent. For me, this meant creating an order in my routine. I’d switch up the order of the diaper change and the story, sometimes the story would even come way before bedtime. In addition, having a multi step routine can be helpful. This lets your child start connecting those specific activities grouped together with bedtime. Kids want routine! So let’s create a good one together.
Include Multiple Steps but Start Early:
You want to have your a bedtime routine that has multiple steps (maybe 4 or 5) and maybe is a little lengthy (but also not too long; we’re shooting for that sweet spot). The tricky part though, is that you want to make sure you start it at the right time. If you start your routine too late, your kid might be too tired to finish. Likewise, if you start it too early they may not be ready for bed by the end. It’s good to try to keep a consistent bed time, but it’s also important to keep track of your baby’s schedule. For example, if they took a late nap, they may need a later bedtime.
Be Consistent:
Like I said earlier, consistency is key. If you’re trying out new bedtime ideas every day, your kids not going to really know what to expect. It’s totally okay to alter your routine, and it’s fine if there are days you have to skip steps. But the key is to create a routine your baby can expect every single night before bed. You may even notice once you establish a routine that it starts making your baby tired.
Include Calm Activities They Enjoy:
You don’t want your kid to get hyped up with your bedtime routine, so include a calm activity! For us, this is reading a story. We especially love to read stories that relate to going to sleep! For example, one of our favorites is The Pout Pout Fish and the Can’t Sleep Blues. But I know some babies don’t love reading. While reading itself is a great thing to include in your daily life, if your kid doesn’t love it for bed time just switch it out. Maybe you can include singing a lullaby or cuddling. You could have them take a calming yet fun bath, or even include something like doing a goodnight drawing before bed.
Tire them out:
If your kid is really just not tired, it may not be the best plan to start your bedtime routine. You don’t want to do the routine and then be up for another hour. So if you notice you have a kid who is absolutely pumped up, tire him out first! Let him run around or play a high energy game. Spend a short time doing an activity that will use up that last little bit of energy. Usually this is my husband’s job. He has a great knack for coming up with the most chaotic, high energy games possible. If my kids not tired enough for his bedtime routine 15 minutes with dad usually does the trick.
Create a Checklist for Them To See:
This one may be something your kid needs to grow into, but once they do you can keep it around for awhile. Creating them a list that they can see and participate in can help them stay consistent and understand what’s happening better. The way we did this was to print little picture cards, laminate them, and then attach Velcro’s to the back. We then Velcro them to his “bedtime board” (poster board with Velcro attached). When bedtime comes around we let Ollie pull off each activity as we complete it and put them in a “completed bin”. This helps him participate in bedtime and feel ready for sleep once he pulls off the “go to bed” card. If you’re interested in a downloadable pdf with pre-made bedtime cards for you to print out to make your own bedtime board check out our shop here! They come with 16 different bedtime card options for you to choose from to include in your routine.
Don’t Let Them Play Past Bedtime:
I used to be guilty of giving up and letting my son play if it didn’t seem like he was going to bed. This actually caused loads of fights between my husband and I when we’d still be up with our son at 10pm. I thought it was cruel to “force” him to go to sleep. Eventually we came to the agreement that we didn’t have to force him to go to sleep but we didn’t have to let him play past bedtime either. For us this usually means putting him in bed and letting him look at a book himself. That way he’s already in bed when he’s ready, and he’s also not waking himself up more by playing. Letting him play actually used to push him into an overtired stage that made bedtime a whole lot more difficult, so try to avoid letting your kids get overtired.
Don’t Be Scared To Try New Things:
We started our routine simple: brush teeth, change diaper and pjs, read story, bed. I felt like that wasn’t really working for us though! So we decided to try new things and lengthen the routine a bit. One thing we tried that was really successful was adding a diffuser into the mix. We put in some calming lavender or other “bedtime scents” right before we start our routine so our son can associate those smells with going to sleep too! I have to admit, I start getting sleepy when the diffuser goes on now too. Then we also added a baby massage with an amazing calming lavender lotion during the diaper/pj change. These two steps added an extra layer to our bedtime routine that, in my opinion, brought it all together. They calmed my son down, lengthened the routine, and gave him another thing to connect with sleep. It was amazing the results we saw after being consistent with those steps for a few days! While those might not be the exact items to add to your list, don’t be afraid to try new things to complete your routine.