Daylight Savings Time ends Nov. 1st. Are you prepared?
Follow these four easy tips from certified child and family sleep expert, Jenni June, to make the transition as easy as possible on you and your little ones!
- Make sure your child is well-rested to begin with. There is no better foundation for wellsleep than a solid, evidence-based sleep hygiene plan! “Sleep hygiene” is the medical terminology for syncing your children’s sleep with their natural biological rhythms and using simple, age-appropriate, evidence-based, sleep-science techniques that help kick-start your child’s own natural and powerful melatonin production, so that when you lay them down for naps or bedtime, their brain and body will want to do the sleeping.
- Four days prior to the time change, begin moving your child’s sleep times, wake times and feeding schedule ahead on the clock 15 minutes per day, so that your child is gradually adjusted in advance.
- Make sure your child’s bedtime isn’t too late to begin with. Missing the correct wave of sleep hormones usually causes extra early morning wake times! The end of Daylight Savings Time will only make this problem much worse.
Provide the first morning breastfeeding or bottle-feeding session in the area of the home that gets the best view of the early morning sunrise; usually that is our breakfast room or where the family takes its meals. Open the drapes and allow your child’s eye-gate to come in contact with the blue light that emits from the early dawn. This blue light sends a signal through the eye to the brain to start producing wakefulness hormones. It is the single best way to adjust not only to the beginning and end of Daylight Savings Time, but also time zone changes that may be just around the corner with your holiday travel plans.
Be sure to provide plenty of additional sunlight exposure in the morning and afternoon every day for one week following the time change, as well.
Jenni June is a certified child and family sleep expert, parent educator, CLC, host and mom of 4 amazing young adults!
She is a valuable resource for everyday and celebrity parents all over the country, including Guiliana and Bill Rancic for the Style Network! She is also Host of series, “Baby Care with Jenni June” for the BabyLeague Network
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