Protecting sleep throughout childhood

Healthy childhood bedtimes are relaxed, no-fuss, and a time for cuddles

Healthy sleep is relaxed and no-fuss, starting from birth. Healthy sleep for our children doesn't require rigid routines or rules. This might seem very different from what you've heard, and I hope that as you work through The Possums Sleep Program it will all start to make sense.

The Possums Sleep Program is designed for parents of babies and toddlers, but families often ask about childhood sleep into the future, too.

A child's sleep goes best when there is an abundance of physical closeness between parents and their children at bedtimes, with as much enjoyment and delight as you can possibly rally (even on those nights when your weary brain is on repeat with "please go to sleep, small child, please go to sleep").

Sometimes in our busy world we forget that our children, even older ones, have a biological need for daily doses of cuddles and contact with their parents' bodies. Bedtime is a great way of making sure your child receives an ample dose of physical affection and focussed attention from someone special whom they deeply love and trust, every day.

For many families of toddlers and older children, physical closeness at bedtime comes with storytelling, whether it's swapping stories about the day, reading stories together, or a parent making up a story to tell their child. For some families, physical closeness at bedtime includes singing or listening to music.

I used to lie snuggled up with my own children, one on each side of me, and make up stories for them once I got tired of holding up books. My daughter has always lain down beside her children and sung them to sleep, from when they were babies. You'll have your own way of doing it. The main thing is that you relax as best you can and enjoy it!

There are three ways of protecting sleep throughout childhood

What matters is that you know how to

1. Work flexibly with your child's two biological sleep regulators (the body clock and sleep pressure)

2. Make bedtimes a precious space in the day for relaxation, physical closeness and enjoyment of your child, so that the sleep pressure can do its job

3. Have your child start the day at the same time (set as early as possible) as soon as any sleep problems emerge.

Many families decide to have a more or less have regular get up time for everyone during the week, as a preventative measure. You might hold this get up time lightly on the weekends (when you yourself might enjoy a sleep-in). Bedtimes are then under the control of the rising sleep pressure.

It's true that patterns tend to emerge, and by the time your child is at school, regular bedtimes with regular get up times typically work best. The trick is to hold bedtimes lightly, adapting as your child develops and changes or when special evening events or social opportunities come around for your family.

An important piece of research which examined normal sleep patterns of infants and children showed that little ones up until two years of age take on average 19 minutes to fall asleep in the evenings after going to bed, and children between the ages of three and 12 years take on average 17 minutes to fall asleep at bedtime. This is very reassuring for parents to know! Once we have our child's sleep regulators working in a healthy way, bedtime stories and cuddles actually don't go on forever ...

If bedtimes are full of enjoyment and cuddles, you might find that your little one actually loves to go to bed in the evenings. You might find that your child is asking you for bedtime, but you delay because you want his sleep pressure to be nice and high before you go and lie down on his bed together! It's often hard for parents in our society to believe that this can happen (that children might want to go to bed)! We can't believe it because children are often being asked to sleep when their sleep pressure isn't high enough, so that bedtime becomes a long and drawn out and stressful business.

Families remember childhood bedtimes forever, if they were a time of happiness and physical closeness - a time of cuddles as you share or read stories, laughing (or commiserating) together about things that happened during the day. I would wish for you the kind of bedtimes which you all look forward to. A time of day when you snuggle up with, and delight in, this precious little human who might so often drive you crazy, but who is right now wanting to be in your arms and the absolute centre of your attention.

This pattern of physical closeness and enjoyment of bedtime, timed so that the sleep pressure is high and your little one falls asleep reasonably quickly, is the best way to protect family sleep right throughout childhood.

I support recommendations that parents don't allow screen devices (TVs, video games, computers, tablets, mobile phones) in their children's bedrooms, nor allow interaction with screen media in the hour before bedtime (and also of course during the night). In addition to the disruptive effects of blue light on sleep, the emotional rollercoaster of digital social connection or violent and scary movies dial children and adolescents up, interfering with healthy sleep.

Cultures in the global majority even have a name for this approach to childhood sleep!

In the Czech Republic, a nurturing approach to childhood sleep which uses the closeness of cuddles, other kinds of physical contact, and loving parental interaction is culturally normal. In this culture, the process of peacefully supporting a little one into sleep has been called Uspavani for at least two hundred years.

Japanese parents also have special terms for the physical and emotional closeness they have with their child at bed-time, such as Nekashitsuke, which describes rituals such as reading books, telling stories, and singing songs to calm down the child and help him fall asleep.

The rules-based and routinised approach to childhood sleep so typical of Western societies is actually not typical of most of human history or most human cultures!

Recommended resources

How to ease out of your older child's bedroom at bedtimes

Selected references

Galland BC, Taylor BJ, Elder DE, Herbison P. Normal sleep patterns in infants and children: a systematic review of observational studies. Sleep Medicine Reviews. 2012;16:213-222.

Tinkova ML, Ball H. Lost in translation - the influence of language on infant sleep research. Sleep Health. 2021;8:96-100.

Williams KE, Berthelsen D, Walker S, Nicholson JM. A developmental cascade model of behavioral sleep problems and emotional and attentional self-regulation across early childhood. Behavioral Sleep Medicine. 2017;15(1):1-21.