Daddy I can’t get to sleep!

We all know the feeling of trying to get ourselves to sleep. It’s like if we try real hard we’ll force sleep upon ourselves. We all know where that leads, tossing and turning and cursing our way through the night. You just don’t own that part of your body do you? It’s like you have this mysterious project manager that you never see but sure enough he turns up every night to switch the lights out. Trouble is when you try and do his job you discover how bad you are at it. Where is that guy?! I love that guy…I’m sorry, I promise to never do it again…you’re so good at what you do…please, please come back.

But what do you do if your child can’t get to sleep?

“Well you just have to…lie there, keep still and stop coming out!” says exasperated parent. After all it’s like an hour after lights out.

Well that went well. Great strategy dad! A real winner; guaranteed to send any child into frustrated tears.

So chastising your child is a clear no-no. You just can’t get to sleep by focusing on getting to sleep. So what can you do?

 It’s helpful to look at how we got to this situation in the first place. I began thinking ‘what had we done to upset the balance of the cosmos here?’

We’d been reading Psalm 119 together and noticing how much it reflects on the beauty of God’s laws and his word. Respecting God’s order, even loving his order was celebrated in the Psalm. Now getting to sleep might not come under the kind of laws the Psalmist had in mind but it does remind me how patterns, order, routines are part of our world and good for us and indeed common to mankind.

I’ve got to fix this as my wife is away and I we won’t make it through the week without sleep. Good thing is my daughter was already onto it. After school the next day she dropped a print out from the internet on me…’tips for getting your kids to sleep’. I had to laugh. But I was also stoked by my little problem solver. Daddy needs the internet to parent. You see the things to help a child get to sleep, well we’d pretty much broken them all.

Have a consistent bedtime routine

We normally do, but last night I decided to break free of silly routines and let my kids wind down with a bit of tele…a noisy, funny, American sitcom, The Middle. Bad idea, routines help us get ready for sleep. Normally the kids would read or be read to quietly or have a bath.

Turn off the TV at least 2 hours before bedtime.

Mum was away so I thought I’d make things memorable with a real break from routine and have a bit of fun. We finished watching the show 30 minutes before bedtime…bad idea. Stick to the plan.

Keep it cool

The weather had turned significantly warmer (25 degrees Celsius instead of 17 the day before) but we hadn’t’ factored that into the kids bedding. About the only thing I got right was to cut down the amount of blankets…after 9:30pm!

Other things you can do include

Reducing stress before bedtime – no hard topics, homework or difficult tasks that create tension.

Create a sleep inducing environment – keeping the room tidy, darkening the room, soft lights, soft sheets and surprisingly…don’t have too many soft toys.

For more details on my daughter’s internet research I think she got it here:

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