Parenting: Setting Sleep Routine for Children - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Setting Sleep Routine for Children As with all recurring problems with kids, the best thing you can do is talk about this when it’s not occurring. So, I really encourage you to have a regular family meeting to solve this type of problem. So, it’s bedtime right now. We get together, talk to the kids about the fact that here’s how bedtime looks in our family. I say it’s time for bed, there’s some stalling. I say time for bed a little louder, there’s some running upstairs. I say time for bed and I’m nagging, and I’m getting upset with you, and there’s playing with the dog. And pretty soon, you know, to get the pajamas on, to get the teeth brushed, to get the book read, to turn off the light and say goodnight, that involves all kinds of yelling and nagging and upset and sometimes even tears. So, what you say to your kids in the family meeting setting is, “This is no way for us to go to bed every night. Let’s have our family set up so that we know exactly what bedtime’s going to look like: what time we’re going to start, what the steps are, and we’re just going to do that without all that nagging that I’ve been doing to you. Would you kids like that, not to have so much nagging?” And, of course, they’re going to say, “Absolutely.” And so you help them with rehearsing bedtime on a Saturday afternoon. This is a funny thing that a lot of my clients do, and they have a wonderful time with it. They just say, “Time for bed,” and everyone goes and gets their pajamas on, brushes their teeth, gets their book, reads, says their prayers, say goodnight to each other, the whole thing. And they do that so that their bodies can feel what it feels like to have a peaceful bedtime. And once it’s been rehearsed like that, the kids understand it. They actually know how to do it by experience, and it just takes all the stress out of it. It’s so much fun.
