One of the key challenges the majority of new parents face is how to get their little ones to sleep soundly throughout the night, as getting up to check on them throughout the night can totally wreck your own sleep schedule.
Jennifer Robinson, otherwise known as 'The Happy Sleep Coach' has some tricks up her sleeve to help new parents get their kids to bed, which focus predominantly around one word; routine, which she says kids "thrive off".
Mum-of-two Jennifer normally works with children aged between 18 weeks and seven years old, and says she encourages her clients to follow a simple 'seven-to-seven' sleep schedule; from 7pm to 7am.
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"So a 7pm bedtime and a 7am wake up is what we would aim for," Jennifer told The Mirror.
This doesn't mean the routine is unyielding however, part of being a parent is also being able to adapt: "If you find your child is waking before six or seven o'clock in the morning then we would bring the bedtime forward to counteract that.
"We generally say 12 hours awake and 12 hours asleep for a child who is nine months old and that carries on all the way until they are at least seven years old. Before nine months bedtimes can vary significantly as it would depend on the baby's daytime sleep and how late their last nap was."
Most children also need their sleep supplemented by naps. Jennifer says there are other situations in which she would suggest moving bedtimes either forward or back, in order to make sure you don't enforce an overtired cycle, where the child is highly-stimulated in the day and, through loss of a daytime nap, are more tired than usual:
"Children get so tired, especially when starting nursery and school as the new environments are so stimulating for them, but how tired they are will also depend on how much sleep they've had during the day from naps.
"A lot of children start dropping naps when they go to nursery at the age of three and we often start seeing night wakes or early rising at that point.
"The loss of the nap, coupled with the super stimulating environment they're in during the day, running around getting very tired, can see children getting themselves into an overtired cycle.
"A sign of this may be that your child is falling asleep really easily in the car on the way home as they're so tired."
In this situation, Jennifer says the best idea would be to bring the bedtime forward, for example from 7pm to 6pm.
She went on to say that a lot of parents erroneously think that if their child wakes up before 7am then it is a sign that they have overslept, and thus need a later bedtime. This, she says is wrong, adding that it's actually the opposite, and they need to go to bed later.
"While the aim is seven until seven and that's what I tell my clients, some children just don't sleep until 7am every day, but as long as they are getting their fill of sleep overnight and the right amount of sleep for their age, it's ok.
"Most parents don't want their kids going to bed at eight or nine o'clock at night, as they might want to eat after they're asleep and have some 'me time'. It might sound selfish, but parents need to be the best versions of themselves to be the best parents they can be and if they're tired and haven't had time to wash their hair or make dinner, they're not going to be in the right frame of mind."
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