Bedtime And Behavior Problems

     There is nothing more obvious than a tired child. Even in early infancy, a child who is suddenly crabby, rubbing his eyes and who can’t be comforted clearly needs sleep. When this happens, parents can have a little quiet time with the child reading, rocking or singing but when the eyes are drooping shut, it’s time to go into the crib. The crib doesn’t feel like being held in Mom’s arms, so Junior will wake up a little when he is laid down, but that’s when our job as parents is to let him go to sleep – avoid picking him back up or doing anything other than quiet reassurance and steady withdrawal from the room.

     Newborns and infants set their own schedule for everything – eating, sleeping, and playtime. But, by 6 months, it is good for parents to start setting a bedtime and creating a bedtime ritual. This starts with an announcement – “We’ll be going to bed in a little while”- that can be followed with, “Let’s pick up our toys” or “Time for your bath”.  This is accompanied by decreased activity – no roughhousing for younger kids and no video games or violent/scary movies for older kids for at least an hour before bedtime. Then it’s time to put on pajamas, go into the bedroom, read a book and sing a song and then lights out – all at the same time every night.

     There is a fad now that says you can allow your kids to set their own bedtime. This is unfair to both kids and parents. The kids need routines – life is disordered and uncertain enough as it is. And parents need a certain “off duty” period they can count so that they can remember why they became parents in the first place.

     And now there is another reason to set and maintain routine bedtimes. A study of 10,230 children was published in 2013 in the journal Pediatrics. This study looked at the same children at 3, 5 and 7 years of age. The researchers asked the question: Are bedtime schedules associated with behavioral difficulties? They looked at children who had regular set bedtimes and children who had irregular bedtimes. They asked the parents and the children’s teachers to evaluate how much behavioral difficulty the children were having both at home and in school.

     They found that children who had non-regular bedtimes had more behavioral problems at each age studied. Even more importantly, they found that the children with irregular bedtimes had increasingly more behavior problems as they got older – in other words, the longer they had been exposed to irregular bedtimes, the more they developed behavior problems. They also found that when the children changed from irregular bedtimes to regular bedtimes, their behavior improved significantly and children who changed from regular to irregular bedtimes had a worsening of their behavior scores.

     A good night’s sleep is important for a child’s well-being and a good night’s sleep begins with a regular bedtime.