WHAT DO CHILDREN NEED AT BEDTIME

Try this: Attend to the ‘emotional routine’ at bedtime

We think routine around bedtime is really helpful… in as far as it marks for a child her stable place in your mind as she heads off to sleep.  

Look underneath the usual trappings of bedtime routine (baths, dinnertimes, stories and so on), and we’ll see what’s really going on at an emotional level.  Let’s imagine from your child’s perspective. What kind of parent is your child in the presence of as she gets ready for sleep?

Woven into bathtime with your baby, as you attend to his discontent at being undressed, and mirror his little gestures about it, or as you delight with him in the bubbles, does he feel like he is in the presence of a generous safe harbour? As you stay kind with your tired toddler through a teary meltdown over the wrong pajamas, does she feel contained, and loved, even at her worst? As you get milk from the fridge, and rummage for the special cup, do you laugh out loud at your preschooler’s rambling jokes and does he feel like he is with a parent that really delights in how his mind works? At dinner time with your adolescent, does she catch a moment of you finally getting it (even if what you get is that she doesn’t want to talk about it right now). After a frustrating day for your non-verbal child of struggling to make himself understood, and nothing being quite right, does story time provide a little while to rest against your big safe body, share attention on one thing together, and breathe in synchrony for a minute? As you wait attentively while your little boy arranges his soft toys just so, does he imagine waking up to them in just the right place… and does he imagine waking up to you, just where he left you, too?

Sleep is a separation, and if your family’s bedtime routine, whatever it may be, helps remind your child that her usual people will be their usual selves when she returns to the waking world, then is it a helpful routine.  

Of course, if we only concentrate on bedtime routine at the surface level, then we can often have the experience that bedtime routine seems to help our child settle… until it doesn’t! And then we find ourselves exasperated and perplexed:  ‘I did everything the same! A bath for the same time as usual, milk out of her favourite cup, the usual two stories, with her usual lullaby CD and her nightlight on...’  When we probe a little, it might become apparent that ‘The Routine’ was followed reliably on the surface, at the level of behaviours and activities and timings, but perhaps, if we’re honest with ourselves, we were actually pretty distracted that night (perhaps stirred up by an argument with a partner, or an event during the day at work, or anxious about all the tasks that still await us after the children’s bedtime), perhaps we were making the milk, doing the bath as usual, but finding it harder than usual to really attend to our children or be with them in the moment. Maybe what was meant to be swaying the baby to sleep, was really just pacing, or maybe irritation was just under the surface at story time, even if our voice was sweet on the surface. So the emotional routine was out of kilter.

We know that feeling confident in our generous availability fosters our children’s independence, and this including the independence of embarking on the sleep journey.

And so next, let’s talk about what parents need at bedtime! Staying calm, and attentive, and really actively filling our children up with the love they need to confidently set off to sleep can be a tough gig after a long day. Herculean, some nights. How do you find what you need to stay generous and steady at bedtime?

You might also like:

Helping sleep resistors fall asleep, by Tracy Cassels  

Try this: use storytelling to help organise little minds, settle little souls

Narrative is soothing and organising.  As therapists we know this and we actively use this principle in therapy; when people have been through complex trauma their bad memories tend to be jumbled in mind, and often terrifying or cripplingly shameful snippets of those memories intrude unexpectedly into their consciousness.  In therapy we address this by setting out an organised life-timeline, we pin events - good and bad - in their rightful places in time and organised in relation to one another. We help people tell their story in a step-by step way, we mark the beginnings of events we work systematically through the middles of the events, and we clearly mark the endings. As we bear witness to people’s stories in this organised narrative way, we help people weave those traumatic jumbled snippets into their chronological place between other ordinary life memories. The result of all this work is not that terrible memories are erased, transformed or disappear, but that they are arranged in an organised way in the mind, can be recalled like any other memory, but  - importantly - they don’t intrude unexpectedly in a frightening or disorienting way. We think this principle works on a smaller day-to-day scale too.

Children’s storybooks are wonderful for bringing alive the kind of dilemmas and themes that resonate for children, and resolving them again in an organising way. Children’s stories often involve repetition, rhyme or other kinds of literary rhythms – this means difficulties or dilemmas they might have come up against in their lives are reflected back to them in a way that is processed, organised and hangs together as a whole. 

Try using narrative in other ways too. As you head toward bedtime, tell your child the story of her day. Don’t leave out the difficult parts of the day; weave them into their correct places in time between other events and activities. You could tell your child stories of him when he was a baby. It might reminds him that he has existed in your mind all along and it reminds him of your delight in him. Tell your child stories of a time they struggled with something. Have you noticed that small children (and grown adults too) will often ask to be told the same story over again and again, and sometimes the ones they request are stories of challenges, confusions, falls, fears, and misadventures and how they were resolved? A story told by you, or read by you offers the child a place in your mind and your narrative to find himself, to feel seen and to feel heard.     

You might also like:

Why children’s books should be a little bit sad, by Kate DiCamillo

Tips for reading with your child, by the Book Trust

Try this: A cuddly piece of you to take with them to bed

Long before psychotherapists gave it a name, parents have always known about the power of a transitional object; a special item (usually soft) chosen by the child that is infused with safety of the people they love and trust most to look after them, and thereby helps them tolerate separations. Again, remember the principle that the magic is not in the toy; it is the meaning it holds between you and your child. A blankie can hold a tangible bit of you for the child – a reminder of your softness of touch, your familiar and unique scent, or it can hold a tangible bit of him but a toy in which you have shown interest and so he is reminded of your love for him as he holds it. The special toy or blankie crucially holds the child while you are absent, for a time.

Try this: Play with anxiety, fear, separation, reunions

Being able to play with fear can help to diffuse its intensity. Babies, whose minds are in the process of understanding that when something is out of view it still exists, love to play peek-a-boo - they can experience the momentary fear of a caregiver disappearing, and the sheer delight of them returning, in a highly organised and predictable way.

Toddlers, who are wrestling a raging and confusing battle between independence and dependence, love to play hide and seek - they can play being separate or lost from the parent, with many repetitions of a parent finding and recovering them, over and over and over again.

Preschoolers and older children who often have fears of the unknown, fears of fantastical creatures, or scary villains love to roleplay and immerse themselves in imaginary games that include risk and fear, conquering baddies, or just overcoming tricky dilemmas – they can experiment with, in a symbolic and sometimes magical way, a sense of mastery over fear.

All of these games that the child plays with a sense of mastery or control or predictability over fear are to be encouraged!