END OF DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
The end of daylight savings is fast approaching and; like many other parents of young children, you may be dreading it.
While moving the clock forward or back one hour is something that makes adults sleepy for a couple of days as their bodies adjust to the change, it can take babies a lot longer to assume a new sleep routine but there are ways you can minimise the impact of daylight saving on your child’s sleep patterns.
With the end of daylight savings, we put the clocks BACK, which means that babies are going to bed an hour earlier. They are also most likely to wake an hour earlier. What was a 6 am wake could now potentially be a 5 am wake up GULP.
What does that mean for your child’s sleep?
First things first – don’t worry! It doesn’t need to interfere with sleep at all. Your baby’s 7 pm bedtime doesn’t need to be 6 pm, and their 5:30 am wake up doesn’t have to be a terrifying 4:30 am!
Baby’s rhythms are set by food, light and play time so by using these three elements we can bring it all back on track.
The aim is to move your child’s sleep, food and play forward in small increments of time over the period of a week or less. You can start this either the week before daylight savings ends or afterwards. You can easily do this over a period of 2-4 nights also if a week feels too long for you. To help your child cope with the change, distract them with quiet cuddles or fun games. It also helps to be in the sunlight first thing in the morning and late in the afternoon.
|
DAY |
DAY TIME ROUTINE |
BEDTIME |
| Wednesday | Usual sleep and feed times | 7.00 pm |
| Thursday | Sleep and feed times 15 minutes later eg, first feed at 7.15 am not 7 am | 7.15 pm |
|
Friday |
Sleep and feed times 30 minutes later eg, first feed at 7.30 am not 7 am |
7.30 pm |
| Saturday | Sleep and feed times 45 minutes later eg, first feed at 7.45 am not 7 am | 7.45 pm |
| Sunday | Wake your child at 7 am (new time) then your usual routine times for feeds and sleeps. |
Here are some tips to help with the change.
- About a week out from the date for daylight saving (or as soon as you can), begin to bring your child’s bedtime earlier by 10 ish minutes each night. It’s a small amount of time and they will barely notice.
- Continue to bring the bedtime earlier by 10 minutes per night until you have gradually adjusted the bedtime to an hour earlier than usual.
- For early morning wake ups in a child under 1 year of age, attempt to resettle as you would for a night wake. This will take consistency.
- Keep your baby’s bedroom as dark as possible to emulate night time and help with the body clock adjustment.
Older babies and toddlers may not be so easily convinced that it’s not time to get up!
- You may like to think about having a little bag of books or toys that you can place in the child’s bed for them and turn a dim light on. Having some things to entertain them may help to keep your child in bed a while longer until it’s a more sociable time to get up.
- Tell them very clearly and firmly that it is not time to get up yet.
- For older toddlers, a special clock with the numbers for ‘getting up time’ displayed can help them to learn to stay in bed until they see the numbers appear.
- Allow older children to do a calming quite activity till your desired getting up time like reading.
Daylight saving changeover can be a very frustrating and tiring time for parents with young children as children’s body clocks can take longer to reset to the ‘new’ time. Just like jet lag, a time change of even only one hour can affect your baby’s circadian rhythms (physical, mental and behavioural changes that generally follow a 24-hour cycle) therefore putting sleep out for us all – adults included.
Make sure you are taking some time out for yourself, when you can, to recharge your own batteries.
It is never a nice feeling that summer is coming to an end, but autumn is a beautiful season and it leads itself to many fun outside games and leaf collecting! Give us a call or check out our packages sound you require help.
It also means Easter is coming up! Check out our blog below on health Easter treats!
