How To Help Your Child Navigate Bedtime Successfully | #TRIBE Talk Ep. 35

In this episode of TRIBE Talk, we explore why bedtime can be one of the most challenging parts of the day for some children. While bedtime struggles are often viewed as a behavioural issue, they can frequently be linked to anxiety, attachment needs, emotional regulation difficulties, and past experiences of trauma. As the distractions of the day reduce, worries, fears, and big emotions can become more difficult for children to manage.

Using a trauma-informed lens, we discuss what may sit beneath bedtime resistance, repeated requests, avoidance, emotional outbursts, and difficulties settling to sleep. This episode provides practical strategies to help children feel safe, regulated, and supported at bedtime while reducing stress for the adults caring for them.

Check out our other podcasts:
How To Help Teens With Exam Stress: https://youtu.be/85PKxqqzWTc

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So does bedtime in your house start with good intentions but end up with tears, negotiations, and everyone feeling completely exhausted. Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to Tribe Talk. You're here with Rachel Evans and Laura Neal, and yes, we are talking about bedtime challenges.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Some common things we hear from parents are one more drink, one more story, I just need to check something with you, and before you know it, bedtime is extended by two hours, three hours sometimes. I've heard parents say that they're up half the night with these types of tactics. So this is exactly what we're going to be talking about today is how do we get over those bedtime challenges?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

So I think bedtime challenges are the most commonly talked about topic amongst parents and carers, and it being really difficult to manage. So children that um might be experiencing a bit of anxiety around around nighttime or uncertainty, feelings of um not feeling safe. Um, and then we're seeing lots of these delay tactics, different bedtime challenges that that that um that that crop up, and more often than not, it isn't bedtime isn't just about the sleep for for these children, especially for children who've experienced trauma, where going to bed or bedtime signals l a whole host of other things, that separation from a from their parent or carer, um loss of of feeling control in feeling control, um, and lots of anxiety that's that's showing up for them as well. So there's lots of different challenges that that can come up for for children, and especially those children that are experienced as well, experienced trauma. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Um so and I think anxiety is a huge one as well, isn't it? It's a time when uh children can get far more anxious going to bed and with that separation, as you said.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yeah, so some of the challenges then Laura that we kind of come up against, should we start listing some? Yeah. Yeah. I I think for most parents it's supposed to lay tactics. Like you've opened the the podcast today talking about like one more drink and one more story, yeah. But like a little bit more like settling time for me, please. Um, and it's also to lay tactics that that make it, especially parents that are you know, we're all we're all busy, want to get on with their night time routine doing like your household, catch up on household stuff. That's really tricky to manage.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

It is, and I think as a parent, it can leave you feeling like what do I do in this situation? You want to be supportive of your child, but you also know that going through a two-hour bedtime routine is not going to be helpful for anybody, it's not helpful for you as a parent. Um, you're probably not getting the things done that you need to do in the evening, whether that's washing, cleaning, getting ready for the next day, having some downtime, um, which if you've got a child who um struggles with bedtime, you probably don't get any downtime. Um, so it you know it brings up so many challenges, and um it is something that we have to really try and get right. And parents can just be um I think just thinking about well, am I getting this right? What else can I do? This seems to be going so wrong, um, but nothing changes, and you kind of get into this cycle, and then you get into a sleep-deprived cycle, which is never a good one to be in.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah, and to be honest, that's what I was just thinking about as well. Just thinking of the parents and cares that we work with, children that experience trauma. Um you might have spent all day dealing with challenging behaviours and already feeling exhausted, and you know in that moment, I'm gonna have to present this demand now, this bedtime. What am I gonna be met with? Because I'm already feeling exhausted and I've got to manage now another another fallout, so you're already running on empty, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

And then it's the dread of bedtime again, the dread of bedtime, and probably it can be from a parent's perspective as well, pushing bedtime back a bit, or they're just watching TV, they're fine at the moment. I won't mention it's bedtime yet because you know you're gonna go into that cycle. Um, and sometimes I think hoping that they fall asleep and you can pick them up and depends on the age, obviously. But these things, you know, we have um parents who come to us for support where their um children are teenagers, so you're talking uh 12, 13, 14, and this type of thing is is maybe not the oh, can I have another story? But there's all these delay tactics uh which just look different at that age.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yeah, so late at night game, um, not switching off their devices when they when they should, and then that's obviously having a knock-on effect to the following day, increased tiredness and won't get up for school.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yep, yeah, it creates more challenge, yeah, it does create a lot of difficulties. But um, I think one of the things we would say is you're not alone in this. There's so many parents who experience these difficulties, and I think particularly when you um get into a more difficult cycle, it is harder to get out of it, but it is possible. Um, and always remembering, I think, that it is possible to get out of that cycle. We just need to put the correct things in place um for your child to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Yeah, definitely. There's there is some real benefit of you know, when when you make that decision to, you know, I need to really focus on bedtime, it's becoming a real issue. Um, I need to I'm gonna target this and I'm gonna really focus on it. So it makes a a a difference. And I think once everybody's getting their sleep, it eases the pressure a little bit. Yeah. Um I was thinking as well as you were talking, some other challenges that that crop up with with parents and and carers and what they kind of report to us in in consultations. Children get out of bed multiple times in the night, looking for that reassurance, looking for that check-in because they can't maybe manage um you know that amount of time by themselves, um, children not knowing how to s to self-settle and put themselves to sleep without other other supports, isn't there, such as um someone sat next to them, um, or comforters and and things like that. Um do you have any on on your mind as well as come up?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Yeah, just as you were talking then, I was thinking of this are these are the questions we ask because it can present in so many different different ways. Um so you can have a child who uses delay tactics to not go to bed, or can I watch just a little bit more TV, or um when they're in bed, it can be can I have um uh a little bit more of a story, or can I have another story? Can we have three stories tonight instead of the normal two? Yeah, or can I have a glass of water? I really need to go to the toilet is another one. Um so you you you're getting that kind of pushback all the time, but then a completely different issue is children who go to bed absolutely fine, but then they get up all the time, and then a different issue from that again is um children who go to bed and fall asleep, but then they wake up and they're up multiple times in the night, um, which can be extremely draining if it goes into the early hours if um you know on parents. Um so I think it as you were talking, and I was just thinking of that. This is why we ask those questions early on in our types of in our assessments that we do. So we're we'll ask, um, when is this happening? Our our favourite question, what does it look like? Yeah, um, how often is it happening? Because it might actually be just once a week. Um, and then we're thinking about oh, well, how do we pin this to um a specific situation that's happening? Because if it's only once a week, is it consistently once a week? Is it on a particular day? Um, is it when something's going on in school? Um, so there's there's a lot of thinking around what is actually happening and what might be fueling that as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah, and you make a good point about like the the context. So when we're doing our assessment, we would be um considering, you know, especially for children who've experienced trauma, what what trauma have they experienced to feed into that assessment of the situation? But um equally, um, children who haven't experienced trauma but are um finding bedtime really difficult. What is the context around that? Like you said, is there something that's going on for them right now? It could be something in school, are they being bullied or are they particularly anxious about a certain situation or going to school? Is it a particular lesson? So those questions are really useful in our assessment to really understand what is going on in the here and now because we need to pinpoint the right area to work on essentially.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Um so I I again, as you're talking, I'm thinking about so many more things. One of the things I was just thinking about then is what if you um what if a parent thinks of all of these different situations, and actually what they come back to is when it's happening every night, it's always the same pattern where they're pushing bedtime back and back and back. Um, there is no triggers because it's it's just the same every night. I say it's bedtime and they're pushing for additional stories, and then they're saying they need the toilet, and then they're saying um they need a glass of water, um, and there's just continual things. Um, what would you say in that situation where there's no identifiable external forces?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah, that's actually come up for us recently in one of our residential homes that we're that we're supporting. Um, and again, we're we're just continually, well, at the minute, we're assessing what is at what is actually going on for this young person because it is something that's happening um all of the time. Now, for this for this young person, there is a little bit of context there, there's a lot of changes happening in his life right now, um, where there is conversations around transitioning out, there's some children that have already moved out. Um, contact is a little bit tricky at the moment, so he's talking about a lot of worries that he's holding, so there is a lot of context there. Um, but you know, it still comes back to that assessment. If if there's um not a lot of external factors that are going on, we need to look at what bedtime actually looks like in the you know in those instances, isn't it? From the start of when you pres when bedtime typically starts, yeah, and you present that demand to you know the bedtime into the evening. What does all that look like?

SPEAKER_01 10:34

What does it look like?

SPEAKER_00 10:35

And those questions would be focused around that.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yeah, and that's exactly what I was thinking, Rachel, is um it's what does what does that look like? What does that routine look like? Because children can actually they can adapt and respond to routines that have gone awry over time, I would say. So if they're in a habit of um pushing boundaries with bedtime, that can just continue with no real reason because they're in such a routine of doing that.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

I I talk about this quite a lot in my consultations, but children are really good at shaping our behaviour. So we will experience a little bit of shift in our behaviour. So you brought it up earlier about let's just um allow them to watch TV or game for an extra ten minutes. It'll make them, it'll make them settle, it'll make them be sleepy, let's hope that they fall asleep. Yeah. Um so but that is children shaping our behaviour because we want we want to avoid the fallout, don't we? As as parents and carers. Like, you know, we don't want to deal with like another hour battle of bedtime, I just want them to go to sleep. Um so I do talk about that a lot. They're very good at shaping our behaviour because we want to avoid avoid these things from happening. Um, but yeah, it's it's just really important to understand. Like we talk about bedtime challenges as a as a whole, but for everyone listening, I bet um you're experiencing different types of bedtime challenges, and the reasons as to why that's going on would would be slightly different. So again, it just comes back to like what you said, that assessment is really important.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah, and obviously, we're based on trauma-informed care and trauma-informed parenting, but it doesn't actually have to be linked to any type of trauma, it can be linked to other things that are going on in their lives, or it can be linked to actually that routine has slipped and we haven't got that in place anymore, and we need to get back to that bedtime routine and um looking at what specifically does bedtime look like, and is there anything that we need to tighten up on in terms of the bedtime routine?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Yeah, I think more often than not, it is you know, for parents, uh life is busy trying to juggle everything, and then when you it might not be bedtime, it might be other challenges like that crop, but but something when you really sit down and think, okay, what does my routine look like around bedtime? Have this drifted? Do I need to tweak it? It yes, probably.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Um I can tell you now my routine around bedtime is terrible at the moment. I definitely need to tweak it.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, yeah, don't talk about my bedtime. But um, yeah, like you have those conversations in you with with yourself, with your partner, husband, wife, around what I need to focus on this now. So what what does the routine currently currently look like? Am I being consistent? Because I bet there's quite a lot that that people can change, yeah, um, or parents can change to to make a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Yeah. So should we have a look at some of those um first steps really? That if there's a bedtime challenge, what are the first things we're looking at? Yes. Okay, so what's the first thing, Rachel, that if a parent is thinking, um, or no, not thinking, no, because parents know. My our bedtime routine is not working, um, we're having real difficulties at bedtime. What's the first thing that you'd advise they look at?

SPEAKER_00 13:57

What is your routine currently looking like? That's my first question that I would ask. So I would want a parent to walk me through what that looks like. Yeah. Um, and just to give you some examples, sometimes parents will say, Oh, it depends. Like sometimes I'll start it at seven, but then eight, and sometimes you'll have a snack before bed, and usually you can pick up something, there might be some inconsistencies with that with that routine. Um, but I'd rather know that first.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah, so I think in terms of tips, um, particularly for I say younger children, but I'd say any child up until around the age of 11, 12, when they've maybe got more, a little bit more freedom around their, you know, their own bedtime and um what they input into that, is it one of the questions I would want to know is is that routine consistent? So you just said, oh, sometimes it starts a different time, sometimes we have a snack, sometimes we don't. Now that's fine if you don't have any bedtime difficulties, but if you do have any bedtime difficulties, the first thing I'd be looking at is how do we tighten up on that routine around bedtime? Like, what is our routine? What does it look like? What's our consistent pattern? Um, because that is so important in leading children up to that sleep phase is having that consistent pattern that signals bedtime. So in behavioural science we'll call it a descrip discriminative stimulus, but what are those stimuli that signal this is bedtime, this is sleep time.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah, I was gonna add to that actually, Laura, about you when you were saying about older children, and for them, we would want to be teaching them how to organise you know their own bedtime routine um or having something in place, like you said, that will signal sleep, um, but they have something in place if they don't wake up the next morning exhausted, yeah and like all out of sorts, ready for school. It you know, it's like what we would do as adults, isn't it? We'd have our our bedtime routine. I'll set an alarm for the morning to give me enough time to get ready, to to get out of the house on time and get to work on time. That's what we we'd want to be teaching some more of those like independent self-management skills to our older children. Yeah. Um because they're life skills.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

But to be able to use those skills, they have to have had that routine in their earlier years as well. So making sure that we've got that consistency. So that would be number one that we'd be looking at is what does the routine look like? Is it consistent? Um, is are the timings right with that routine? So, what what time is it that the bedtime routine starts? So if it's starting at 4 pm, it's probably a little bit early for any child. Is the timing appropriate for their age? Because um, are they going to be tired at that point? So asking those types of questions, and for some families they might have longer routines, they might be routines that include bath time, include stories. For other families, um they won't, and none of those are right or wrong, it's about working out what's right for your family, yeah. Uh, and then sticking to that.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, routine around bedtime is really important, and even having that consistent instruction as well, and and even like the lead up to being put into bed, what does that look like, you know? Yeah, um, and because children learn that routine and they know that okay, I my mum has asked me to if bedtime routine is starting, it's time to go up the stairs and get to bed. Is it then bath time? Because then bath time will then signal, oh I got story time next, and then story time is okay, I need to go to sleep now. So all these things just signal for the next step in that routine, and that's why it's so important to have something that um instead of you placing every single demand, you've got the actual routine doing that for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

So we've looked at the routine, everything is in place, everything is consistent. What's the second thing that you'd look at?

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Well, I suppose it's what is that behavioural challenge then? So what is hap around bedtime? Yeah. Um so what is so difficult about bedtime and analysing that or assessing that specific situation? So is it there's challenging behaviour around bedtime? Is it there's loads of delay tactics? Um, are they getting up frequently throughout the night? So when a parent says to me, I'm really struggling at bedtime with my child, I'd want to know what that actually looks like.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Um to get into the bottom of that.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Because that that will then um dictate what your next steps are. So um for for step number two essentially, it it then branches out. So everybody needs that consistent routine um for bedtime, but then we're branching out into what is the specific difficulty that's happening. Yeah. Um, if it's delay tactics, why are they why are there delay tactics? Are they worried about being on their own? Can they not fall asleep on their own? Are they not tired enough? Yeah. It leads you to those questions. If it's getting up in the middle of the night, why is it that they're getting up in the middle of the night? You need a little bit more information to be able to um put anything in place to to help with that.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

And I suppose next then I would be looking at the environment. So what does the bedroom look like? And alongside that as well, what is your child currently relying on to go to sleep? Um, especially with little ones, you know, if they've got dummies or um like a comforter or white noise or whatever's going on, you'd want to know what's going on in that environment. Is it too busy for sleep to even occur? Yeah. Um if if there are issues with dropping off to sleep or staying sleep for the for the entire night. So um there's lots of research, isn't there, around the sleep environment being um like that sets the occasion for sleep, so it even comes down to what's in the room, temperature of the room, noises. Some some people rely on white noise or blah blah blah, some be little ones, but you we want to know more information about that.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

And not all of those things are controllable, so you can't control noise sometimes. Um thinking about things in the room, you might have a luxury of being able to move toys out into a different room, but you might not have that luxury, and then if there are toys in the room, are they distracting them and that's why they can't fall asleep? Yeah. Is the room really cluttered and busy? Um, how do we, if if all of those items need to be in that room, how do we set that up so it's calmer? Um, and it's really clear that those toys aren't available now to play, they'll be available in the morning, but they're not available now.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yeah, it's like is it anything right now that's distracting your child from being able to go to sleep or delaying sleep in in some way? So again, there's lots of questions we're asking at this point, but it's about understanding the the the sleep challenge, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

That reminds me of um a little boy who was helping with sleep challenges before, and he had he loved trains and he had a load of train sets set up in his room. Um so he wasn't sleeping because he wanted to play with the trains, so it was a huge distraction for him, uh, and he couldn't get to sleep because he was continuously just wanting to play with the trains, and the only solution in that scenario was to remove the trains from the room so they were completely separate to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah. Again, which is is hard, isn't it? Because on the other the advice on the other s other side of the fence would be, you know, we want to make bedrooms like individualise the children and have you know things that they like. They love. Yeah. Um so if you are in a situation like that, I think I would say this is only for short term as well as well. So you know we're intervening on sleep challenges and it'd be a short term thing that we're working on, and you might be able to introduce things like that later on down the line.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

And also, if if sleep isn't a problem, then trains being in the room wouldn't have been a problem, or if it was nothing to do with the trains being there, it so it's identifying where is the problem coming from um and making adaptations based on what you find.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

So yeah they are some of the things that we they're the fundamentals of our assessment when we try and get to get to the bottom of sleep challenges. So if you're experiencing sleep challenges with your child we would definitely recommend like looking at looking at those um three areas see if you can get to the bottom of that challenge because once we know that information we're then ready to implement some some interventions whether we're trying to make things a little bit more consistent we're looking at our routines might be ways that we need to like consistently respond in in the moment and parents need to be on the same page so once we know that information we we can then start implementing some advice to make challenges bedtime challenges a lot um easier to manage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

So we have a question Rachel from a parent um who says why does my child seem to do everything possible to avoid bedtime even when they're clearly exhausted yeah I think the word exhausted isn't it they just become um I think that this one speaks to me for my little bike yeah because he's clearly exhausted um and he just turns just really silly um and is just like not listening.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

I would say in in that in that situation it's those avoid avoidance kind of tactics and um trying to maybe keep you there for a bit longer maybe not having the skills to be able to self-settle so again I would be going back to what is going on at that time um what does that sleep challenge really look like are they using those delay tactics or are they um are they really struggling? Does bedtime take a long time so like by the time you say you know it's time to go to bed but by the time they go to sleep um I can definitely speak from my ex from experience because in my house it's about an hour right now and it's we're really working on reducing that um but yeah it's it's just if if that onset of of sleep is kind of delayed as well if what's happening are they not able to self-settle and we really want to get to the bottom of what is that that that that's that sleep challenge so we're able to teach that child the the skills that then they need to be able to manage bedtime a little bit more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

So I think our key takeaway from today's podcast is for whatever bedtime challenge you might be experiencing the first step we would always recommend is to look at that routine around bedtime. Is it consistent? Consistency is really really important um when we're thinking about resolving any bedtime challenges. Once you've got that consistency of routine in place that's where you can jump off and start asking the question what is specifically going on here and asking those questions analysing that situation will give you more clarity on what might help in that situation.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

I'd also be thinking about what we're doing as parents as as well so like we said earlier have our behaviour kind of drifted because of this bedtime routine so is there anything that we can tighten up on to provide a little bit more consistency without bedtime which will complement what you just said Laura about routines that everyone in the house is is is following you know that um so um parents are following that that same routine presenting the the the instruction at the you know in um in the same way following that routine and being really consistent so our behaviours not drifting because children will find the loopholes indeed they will so that's the end of our podcast today thank you for listening and if you found it helpful then subscribe to Tribe Talk for more trauma and from care in practice