The Case for Early Bedtimes
One of the biggest struggles my clients face in sleep training is the early bedtime. I can understand why — most of my clients live in Toronto, a city that runs quite late. Most parents are not home from work until at least 6 or 6:30, so it can be tough to have their child in bed at that same time. But an early bedtime is such a huge piece of the sleep puzzle! At least during sleep training, it’s almost impossible to get our children on track without it. Even after sleep training, an early bedtime has numerable benefits.
More Restorative Sleep
Sleep begets sleep! If your child has been struggling to fall asleep or is waking up throughout the night, an earlier bedtime can help. Think about it: if you’ve been putting your baby to sleep at 8 pm, they take 45 minutes to fall asleep and wake up at 6 am, they’ve gotten 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep (not including any night wakes!). If you put your baby to sleep at 6 pm, they take 20 minutes to fall asleep, and still wake up at 6 am, they’ve now gotten 11 hours and 40 minutes of sleep. They’ll wake up well rested, and they’ll be able to accept sleep much better throughout the day in the form of naps.
Also, sleep that happens earlier in the night tends to be more restorative then sleep that happens later in the night, and in the early morning. In other words, early bedtimes help prevent an overtired baby.
Sleeping In
I think a lot of parents are worried that putting their baby to sleep early means that he/she will wake early as well. A logical assumption! Early bedtime is a little counter intuitive. The truth is, if your baby is going into sleep at night overtired, they are far more likely to be waking up early. One of the main culprits behind early wakes is an overtired child. So, take the example above. If baby is falling asleep at 8:40 vs 6:20, that baby is far more likely to wake up at 6 am or earlier. Remember, a well rested baby accepts sleep better — sleep begets sleep!
Preventing Sleep Struggles
If baby is overtired at bedtime, they will wake up overtired, and they will go into their naps overtired. Being in that overtired cycle makes it very difficult to accept sleep. That’s when we start to see struggles with naps, and struggles with bedtime. In fact, in this study, a later bedtime was found to be associated with taking a much longer time to fall asleep, which as we know, means less restorative night sleep.
An early bedtime goes such a long way to healthy sleep. Parents have told me they struggle with an early bedtime, because it means they get less time with their child at night, or perhaps mom is home with baby, and dad gets home late. But you can spend quality time with them in the morning! The beauty of an early bedtime is that baby will be happy, energetic, and well rested in the morning, rather then grumpy and fussy. It’s a bit of a shift in our mental model, since it does run contrary to our adult lives, but just add it to the list of tough parenting decisions we need to make that prioritize what’s best for baby.
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