Photos taken in collaboration with Larry Toh, featuring one of our ParentWise families
Getting your kid to bed early has more benefits than just a few extra hours of quiet time at night for parents. That’s because sleep plays a crucial role in the development of children’s young minds.
In addition to having a direct effect on happiness, research shows that sleep impacts a child's cognitive performance, mood, resiliency and vocabulary acquisition.
Sleep also has an important impact on growth, especially in early infancy. For toddlers, napping appears to be necessary for memory consolidation, attention span and motor skill development.
According to Dr Judith Owens, Director of Sleep Medicine at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C, growth hormones are primarily secreted during deep sleep.
In fact, babies are made to spend at least 50 percent of their time in deep sleep as it’s considered to be essential for adequate growth.
In line with this finding, researchers in Italy who study children with deficient levels of growth hormone have found that they sleep less deeply than average children do.
Sleep is an essential building block for your child’s mental and physical health. But if you’re finding it impossible to get your little one to sleep, you’re not alone.
3 TIPS FOR GETTING KIDS TO SLEEP
1. Swaddle them up
Swaddling has been part of caring for babies for centuries – millennia, really. It makes babies feel like they're back inside the womb or as though they are being snuggled up close.
It also protects them against their natural " The Moro reflex, or startle reflex, refers to an involuntary motor response that infants develop shortly after birth. A Moro reflex may involve the infant suddenly splaying their arms and moving their legs before bringing their arms in front of their body.
Swaddling imitates your touch, helping your baby learn to self-soothe, and is a positive sleep association and wind-down routine that helps them associate this feeling with going to bed.
As you begin swaddling your baby every nap and bedtime, they will understand what’s coming next and naturally calm down and prepare themselves to sleep.
2. Create a conducive sleep area
Your baby’s bedroom environment – be it in their bedroom, their playroom, or your bedroom – should be a room that invites relaxation and calm as this promotes healthy sleep.
While having a well-lit area is great for playtime, darken the space during naps and bedtimes to promote sleep. That’s because our bodies read dark as "asleep" and light as "awake".
Even if your eyes are closed, the body reads light in the environment, and if there is too much while you are trying to sleep, it can interfere with the production of melatonin, which is our brain’s natural sleep aid.
Besides dimming the lights and drawing the blinds, make sure that the area is free from loud noises, and close enough to you so that you can respond quickly if your children call for you.
3. It starts with a good routine
Establish a consistent bedtime routine for your child, such as bathtime, a pre-bedtime feed, cuddling and story time in bed, before sleep time. Follow the same steps around the same time every night.
A sleep routine can help to get your child into a rhythm that will eventually allow them to sleep through the night.
It’s important to establish routine times for your child’s night-time sleep and daytime naps. This helps train their body clock to release melatonin at the appropriate times, which helps them fall asleep more quickly.
Bonus: Reduce screen time
Screen time before bedtime doesn’t just keep your child up late at night by making it harder for them to fall asleep, it also heightens your child’s risk of developing insomnia, a sleep condition in which sleep disturbances are experienced over a prolonged period of time, often lasting more than a month.
An Australian study showed that at least half of the young children studied, even toddlers as young as two years old, experienced disrupted sleep when they engaged in screen time before bed.
As young children may not understand the importance of sleeping well, parents are the ones who have to show them how to make these decisions.
Through a combination of good sleep habits, such as routine sleep times, and ensuring a relaxed, safe sleep environment, you can help your child develop the healthy sleep habits they need to grow up strong and healthy.
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