Preparing for the Winter Clock Change with In the Night Garden

#AD – This post is in collaboration with In the Night Garden / Wildbrain

Spring Forward, Fall Back. The clock change is fast approaching.

Whilst the upcoming clock change in March treats us parents to an even shorter nights sleep (last year it was on Mother’s Day none the less!) it at least gives us a glint of home that Spring with its longer days and lighter nights will soon be on its way! The October clock change offers us, in theory at least, the chance for a well deserved extra hour in bed. However, in my experience that is often far from the reality. Many parents, myself included, find the clock change (both when they move forward AND back) to be incredibly challenging, interfering with bedtime routines, resulting in over tired toddlers who struggle to stay up an hour later than normal, followed by the icing on the cake – an incredibly early wake up.

According to research by In The Night Garden, almost a 1/3 of parents found their child woke up an hour earlier on the days after the clock change, leaving parents actually feeling more tired and sleep deprived than usual! So much for the extra hour eh?!

There are however some practical steps you can take in advance to prepare your child for the winter solstice.

Mandy Gurney, founder of Millpond Children’s Sleep Clinic has worked with In the Night Garden to recommend her top tips to prepare your children for the clock change when they go back at 2am on October 27th.

We’ve made a video of these tips in action below or read on to learn more.

1. Reset your child’s body clock

If as a family you are creatures of habit like we are, your child will probably be used to going to bed at a particular time.

In this house it tends to be around 7.30pm. To try and suddenly shift back this bedtime by an hour out of the blue and it is likely to come as a bit of a shock to the system, resulting in an over tired, emotional and grouchy toddler. For us personally when Neve gets overtired, it becomes almost impossible to get her to sleep, with her becoming semi delirious and hyper and a far cry from the calm and peaceful child we were aiming for!

In order to reset your child’s body clock, it is recommended therefore that you start to slowly adjust your child’s bedtime in the weeks approaching the clock change. Starting around 2 weeks before (so that’s anytime really from now onwards), adjust your child’s bedtime to be 15 minutes later than normal. Repeat this new bedtime for 3 or 4 nights and then sneak it back again by another 15 minutes.

By continuing to do this every few days, you will have gradually pushed your child’s bedtime back to a whole hour later than the original. This means on the night before the clocks change, Neve will be going to bed at 8.30pm rather than 7.30pm, having slowly adjusted during the approaching days.

It is important to remember here that meal times and nap times also need to be adjusted too, as these go hand in hand. Ensure you sit down for meals slightly later too, effectively pushing back all the key events during the day.

2. Focus on the Light

If you are struggling to keep your child up that little bit later, which lets face it after a busy day at nursery or playgroup can be challenging, try and encourage them to play outside for a little while in the afternoon where possible. Neve is a real outdoors child, so it wont take much encouragement to get her out in the garden kicking in leaves or collecting acorns whatever the weather.

The exposure to some natural daylight and vitamin D will reduce the amount of melatonin (the sleep inducing hormone) that children produce, and help them stay up just that bit later than normal.

When it does then get closer to bedtime, dim the lights and draw the curtains, sending signals to your child that it’s almost time for bed, helping trigger the melatonin production too.

3. A calming bedtime routine

In the Night Garden is a great way to help establish a calming bedtime routine with your child, and is shown nightly as part of Bedtime Hour on CBeebies at 6.20pm. We have found that sitting and watching an episode of In the Night Garden together whilst snuggled up on the sofa is a great way to send mental triggers to Neve that its almost time for sleep and that the start of our normal bedtime routine will soon follow.

In the Night Garden has been part of the girls bedtime routine since they were tiny babies, with Erin in particular having been mesmerised by the sounds, music and nursery rhymes since she was just a few weeks old.

Whatever the rest of your bedtime routine, the important thing is to try and be consistent so that children learn the steps that are involved. We personally don’t have a bath every single night (as Neve has very sensitive skin) but we always get into her pyjamas and read a book together before bed.

Something like the In the Night Garden Bedtime Book, written by sleep expert Mandy Gurney is ideal – filled with soft almost lullaby style words guiding you through each character drifting off to sleep and encouraging your little ones to do the same. With a relaxation exercise at the end, this is an ideal way to ensure Neve’s mind is calm and settled before bed.

After a busy day in the office or when there is housework or jobs to be done, it can be really tempting to let your child watch a story or play with the iPad or tablet before bed, but this really isn’t recommended too close to bedtime. As mentioned above, melatonin production is triggered when it starts to get dark, and blue screen or the glare of a device, even if an educational game or online book, can actually have the opposite effect.

4. Wake Up Times

Whilst your little ones adjust to their new bedtime, you may find your child wants to wake up earlier too, and it can be hard to explain to little ones that “It’s not morning yet!!” (this in fact has been my mantra for quite some time, clock change or otherwise!)

For toddlers in particular, sleep training clocks can be great for this. Sleeping training clocks offer a comforting and familiar visual to guide to sleep and wake times and offer the ability to set a pre-determined time for wake ups. If your child wakes up before this, the colour of the light will advise them that they need to go back to sleep.

Using the timer on these and adjusting it regularly as you approach the night of the clock change, can gradually teach your child about the appropriate time to wake up!

Having familiar friends in their bedroom can also help comfort and reassure them, helping them settle back down to sleep should they wake up earlier than they should.

5. Morning Routine

Finally, don’t forget whilst adjusting their bedtime, that you should adjust their morning milk and breakfast too, helping all the steps in their daily routine to align. Whilst they will wake up and want their food straight away, adjusting it as much as you can will make life much easier for everyone in the long run!

One thing is for certain, the nights are drawing in, the temperature is dipping and before we know it Father Christmas will be coming to pay us a visit. I personally love the Winter months, and find nothing more comforting than snuggling up inside in the warm when it’s raining and blowing a gale outside.

I hope you find these tips helpful and let me know how you get on with the adjusted bedtime! If you want to follow how we are getting on, I will be doing some stories over on my Instagram during the weeks before the clock change to share how its working for us too!