Welcome to the third part of the Ask Me series at Children of the Church! Visit the first two parts about Photography and our Homeschool Schedule. The next question asked of me is how we handle sleep at our house! If you have any questions, please use the "Contact Me" section on the Children of the Church Blog!
Sleep is a very important thing for everyone and even more important for people in a home with little kids! As I explained in the post about our homeschool schedule, I am a Type - A momma who really likes order and schedule. One thing that I learned quickly as a new parent 5 plus years ago was that our kids NEED a sleep schedule.
Sleeping in our house is made even more difficult because my husband works as an Emergency Physician and works shift work. His schedule is constantly changing and he works multiple different shifts during each week, sometimes until 11pm, 2am, or 7am! Because of this, and because we homeschool (and thus are usually all home during the day) we truly need to be conscious of the level of noise in the home to allow my husband to be able to sleep. That is one reason why I am thrilled that our homeschool room and toy room are in the basement of our new house. This truly gives us some separation and helps with the noise issue!
YOUNG CHILD: (Children ages 5 to 12 years old need 10-11 hours of sleep per day)
Our oldest son, who is now 5 years old, stopped napping around age 4. He had been fighting his afternoon naps for a while and then we finally just decided to stop. Once he dropped that nap he was tired early in the evening and his typical schedule is now to sleep from 7-8pm until about 7-8am, getting on average 12 hours of sleep per day. He is a fantastic sleeper and always has been! I am already learning that a great blessing of homeschooling is allowing him to be able to sleep in on mornings when he is tired and not having the "morning rush" when he is little. I do know there will be a day when I need to teach and enforce a morning schedule no matter what.
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| I'm not sure why he is sleeping with his Tae-kwon-do uniform here! |
Our middle son, who was 3 years old in October is our early riser and we have finally training him to STOP waking up at 4:30am and now gradually we have moved his wake up time to around 6:30am. We got a sleep clock which visually shows him when he can get up and when he needs to stay in bed and this really helps!
He still takes an afternoon nap, although he thought for a while that it would be fun to stay up with his big brother in the afternoon and was fighting naps. When he was doing this I would find him mid afternoon passed out on the couch or his bed, so we are back to enforcing naps for now! He now takes one nap a day and usually goes to sleep by 1pm. Once he falls asleep he would sleep for hours (2-3hrs), but we have learned that we need to wake him up around 3pm or he would then stay up until 9-10pm at night! He shares a room with his big brother and thus also goes to bed between 7-8pm. He now gets about 10-11 hours of sleep at night and a 2 hour nap, so 12-13 hours of sleep per day).
BABY/TODDLER: (Babies need 14-20 hours of sleep per day and Toddlers 1 to 3 years old need 12 - 14 hours of sleep per day)
Our youngest son is 1 1/2 years old and is also a great sleeper! I'm not really sure how we lucked out so much with this, other than knowing that I kept a pretty tight schedule with sleep from the beginning. Our third child was our first child who I really co - slept with. He would breastfeed at night for so long that the only way that I could get sleep at night to function the next day to take care of the other children was to let him sleep with me. I know that there are lots of opinions about this, and I'm not going to be one to say it's right or wrong, simply that it is what worked best for our family and I did it as safely as possible. He and I co - slept until he was about 10 months old and then he was simply getting too wiggly at night that neither of us were sleeping well. He had always been taking his naps in his crib, so the transition to the crib at night wasn't TOO bad!
He also has recently weaned from breastfeeding completely now at 20 months old. He was our first child that I had to initiate weaning with so it was an entirely new experience for me!
MOM: (Adults should get 7 1/2 - 9 hours of sleep per day)
For myself, I am usually in bed by 10pm and then sleep until 5:30-6am (7-8 hours). I love to try to have a little time before the kids start waking up to read, pray and have a cup of coffee, but sometimes that doesn't work out. I just try to remember that these years with little kids are going to go by SO fast. I love and appreciate their morning cuddle time so much! When I have a new born baby in the house I usually get less sleep, but still try to make it a priority to get at least 6 hours of sleep per night. I have learned that I need at least 6 hours per night to be "functioning" the next day.
My sleeping tips for parents:
- Figure out what works for you (do you want your kids to stay up late so they sleep in late, do you want kids to nap at the same time, etc) and then make a schedule and stick to it!
- The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep from Harvey Karp is a great resource. When I used to work as a community health maternal/child nurse I would help LOTS of parents with how to get their children to sleep. I love all of Harvey Karp's parenting resources, and this one is a gem for kids from birth to 5 years old!
- If your toddler/preschooler is having a hard time sleeping in the morning get a sleep clock! It changed our lives!
- Keep the same routine for bedtime - We always take baths, read books in bed and say prayers and they KNOW that routine!
- Make sleep a priority! If you need to cancel or reschedule events to make sure your children nap, don't be afraid to do so. If you have a family event that continues past bedtimes and you need to adjust the time your family can participate, communicate that! Everyone will be happier when children are getting the sleep that they need!
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