Helping Children Develop Healthy Sleep Habits

Thanks to SleepBuddy for sponsoring this post.

A good night’s sleep is an important part of a healthy lifestyle for both adults and children but, while adults typically look forward to bedtime (especially those of us who are parents!), many kids don’t see their bed as such a wonderful place. Whether you are transitioning a young child from their crib to a bed, trying to keep a child in bed through the night, needing to convince your child not to wake up at the crack of dawn, or struggling to sleep-train a child of any age who is on the Autism Spectrum, sometimes a parent just needs a little help teaching healthy sleep habits. Luckily for those parents, I have discovered a little secret tool that may help called SleepBuddy.

SleepBuddy is the complete sleep system that uses a programmable sleep light, a children’s book and a reward chart with stickers to create reasonable boundaries and put healthy sleep habits in place. The sleep light makes it easier for your child to relax and fall asleep and the timed light turns off when your child can get out of bed.

The sleep light came with directions that made it easy to program. You simply set SleepBuddy’s start times and durations for nap (if needed) and nighttime, then the light (either a calming blue or amber color) goes on and off at the times you choose. The times you set are stored in memory until you change them, and can easily be changed when needed. There is also an option to override the system for just a day when you need your child to nap or go to sleep at an earlier time.

While getting out of bed after mommy or daddy left the room was a struggle throughout the boy’s younger years and falling asleep has been a struggle for Lucas over the years, the biggest ongoing sleep problem we’ve struggled with in our household is keeping the kids in bed until a decent hour. The boys have been early risers ever since they transitioned from their cribs and it’s led to a lot of zombie-like mornings for this mom. 4am wake-up calls when I didn’t go to sleep until 1am and then having to deal with toddlers? Not sure how many cups of coffee I needed to help me through each day for all those years!

Nowadays they “sleep in” until 6am or so most mornings. Sometimes though, they wake up as early as 5am so now that we started using SleepBuddy they know to stay in bed until the light goes off. Currently it’s set to go off at 6am but we plan to lengthen the time in 15 minute intervals until 7am which is the time they need to get up and get ready for school. I’m hoping it gets them sleeping later. Lucas ended up sleeping until 7:30 this morning (which is very rare) so I am thinking maybe he woke up, realized he couldn’t get up and then fell back asleep. Jacob, my oldest, and a strict rule-follower, proudly told me that he waited until the light went off before he got out of bed, even though he’d woken up earlier.

So whether you are transitioning your little one to a “big” boy or girl bed, trying to keep your child in bed later (like I am!), or need to add some more structure to the bedtime routine for your child who has Autism, I’d suggest incorporating SleepBuddy to help your child develop good sleeping habits. You can learn more about SleepBuddy here and purchase it on Amazon here.