How to Help Your Child Sleep Again
I totally agree with the words in Hara Estroff Marano’s article, How To Get Great Sleep, about trouble sleep:
“Everyone has a troubled night sometimes, or even a run of them, which happens to the average person about once a year. It’s part of being human, subject to stress and worry. ”
Children, like adults, would also have trouble sleep from time to time. I remember that when my daughter was five, and my husband and I were sitting and talking in our living room, she went out from her bedroom crying and telling us that she’s just waken up and couldn’t fall sleep again. That was the first time she has had troubled night. Children who don’t know how to handle and cope with trouble sleep will have fear at night and other psychological problems. We, as parents can help them to solve their sleeping problem.
Here are the ideas that I tried before, to help my children get back to sleep. You might like to try to see if they work for your child as well when needed:
- Give your child a cup of warm milk. The milk would make his/her body feel ease and fall asleep again easily.
- Give your child comfort and tell him/her that it’s ok. It is very normal for us to wake up at night and can’t sleep again.
- For some occasions, your child might want you to do the bedtime routine again. You do the judgement whether your child needs it or not.
- If children wake up in night repeatedly for several times, it would be better to do something to break the pattern. For example, I asked my daughter to have a warm bath just before going to bed rather than taking bath after school as usual.
- Check the day time routine out if there are any stressful things happened. Do something to remove the stress source.
- As we are a christian family, my husband and I would pray for my daughter when she has got trouble sleep. It worked for her many times. Gradually she knows what to do when she can’t fall asleep. Just pray. So if you have a religion, you can do something that is relevant to your faith. It would also help your child to overcome the sleeping problem.