Does this bed time battle sound familiar?

So there I was again at the end of a long working day chasing my child upstairs, downstairs into the bathroom and out of the bathroom as he refused to clean his teeth, refused to have a wash, and refused to put his pyjamas on. Shouting and kicking and wriggling out of my grasp.

I was feeling exhausted and hungry and utterly irritated by his refusal to comply with my reasonable requests. Why wouldn’t he listen, why wouldn’t he do as I asked him? It felt like groundhog day, another evening much the same as the previous evening and probably to be repeated the following evening and so on and so on into the future.

As he was clamping his mouth closed and I was trying to coax it open with the toothbrush (there is nothing more stubborn than a three-year-old at bed time), I found myself thinking how did I get here, I can’t go on like this!

I was counting down the hours and minutes that I had left of my evening. The time I had left to do everything I needed to do and just have some time to eat dinner before I had to go to bed myself. I was starting to resent the fact that this was eating into my time, and I was becoming anxious that I wouldn’t get an evening to myself yet again.

As a Clinical Psychologist I knew that this was a common scenario and I knew that bed times can be a challenging time for three-year-olds. I also knew that it was normal and that he was starting to feel and fight against the separation from me that bed time represented.

But I was exhausted, resentful and close to losing my patience. There was a real conflict in our needs. He needed to feel close to me and I needed him to go to sleep so that I could get everything done that needed to be done.

I knew that I had to do something about my child’s bed time and if you’re reading this you’re probably thinking the same thing. I knew that there must be a better way to begin my evening, here’s what I did and what I invite you to try too.

What you can do to make bed time calmer

So you might already have a bedtime routine but if you are reading this I’m guessing it isn’t working for you. I also had a routine that wasn’t working for me so I get it. Creating a mindful bed time routine was what changed things around for me.

My first suggestion is to stop thinking about the bed time routine as a list of jobs you need to get through before you can say goodnight and go off to start your next job. I believe your child can sense when you are thinking about them as a job, I believe mine do and they don’t like it!

Instead begin to think of the bed time routine as an activity in itself, a chance for you and your child to reconnect and decompress before sleep. This is even more important if you have been separated from you child during the day.

7 steps to create your mindful bed time routine.

1. Start earlier: Do yourself a favour and give yourself more time, what you lose at the start of the routine you’ll gain at the end when your child is happier to say goodnight. This will take the pressure off, allowing you to relax and your child to feel calm.
2. Slow it down: Children hate to be rushed, and everyone know that they do nothing quickly. The only exception being running off in the supermarket when you are trying to juggle the shopping! So slow down the routine and allow them to do some things for themselves. This might be choosing between 2 different sets of pyjamas, or washing their own face with a flannel so that you can then just finish off the bits they miss.
3. Be playful: Remember that the bed time routine is now an activity and not a job, try to have fun and make up some playful games. We have a tooth brushing game in our house that has won over my serial tooth brush refuser. She now really looks forward to that part of the routine, and she even gets me the toothbrush — big win! When I started to struggle to get them to leave their toys to go upstairs and begin the bedtime routine, I introduced a “last one upstairs is a rotten tomato” game. I’m not sure how calming this was really but it got them up the stairs happily.
4. Keep in the moment: Resist the urge to keep focusing on what you still have to do. Allow yourself to enjoy at least one aspect of the routine and really tune into it. You can practice focusing on your breathing or you can practice paying attention to the sensory elements of the task. So if you are giving your child a bath you can pay attention to the sound of the running water, the warmth of the water and the smell of the soap. You can encourage your child to do the same. Don’t think about what you need to do next just really connect and enjoy this moment with your child.
5. Keep the connection going: Sometimes small children need to know that you are still there for them throughout the night and you can do this in different ways. One idea is to focus less on the goodnight and more on what will happen in the morning. Another idea you can try, and worked for my son, is telling them that you will come and say goodnight to them when you go to bed yourself. Make sure you do though! I would leave him my wheat bag and he would bring it back to me in the morning.
6. Understand and appreciate your differing needs: Your’s to get the job done and the pile of jobs you have to do next, and their need to spend time with you and be reassured that you love them before the bed time separation. Attend to any of your urgent needs before you start the routine. Don’t think that you’ll go to the loo or have a drink once your child is fast asleep in bed, that will just make you even more frustrated and focused on the end goal. You’ll feel even more uncomfortable and depleted at a time when you really need all your patience and positivity. So do what you can for yourself before you start. I always get changed out of my work clothes and into my more comfortable clothes before I begin my children bed time routine. It helps to put me into a different zone and helps me to enjoy the process more.
7. Finally keep calm: Easy to say and harder to do I know. When you start to feel the irritation and the annoyance rising, when you are about to shout or yell, when you feel like you just can’t deal with them anymore, pause and breathe. Check out this video for an easy grounding exercise for just these occasions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDm2c5FDLNI

More tips.

If you found this helpful and would like more tips on keeping calm when your child is not, you can download my free ebook here: https://rachel-dunn.newzenler.com/f/tantrum-ebook/tantrums

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