Falling Back Without a Bump – The Autumn clock-change
How to help your little one sail through the Autumn clock-change
I used to love the Autumn clock-change – a whole extra hour in bed without having to sacrifice anything else in return…bliss! Like many parents, I am now accustomed to rising with my little lark and whilst 7am certainly isn’t inhumane, the prospect of a 6am wake up on Sunday 28 October appeals rather less! However, some little ones routinely rise at 6am – cue the parental fear that the clock-change will, literally overnight, turn that 6 into a 5!
Here is my step-by-step guide to helping your little one to make the transition out of British Summer Time as smoothly as possible.
The options
Step-change
An incremental approach is usually best for babies and younger children and/or those who have generally fixed asleep and wake times.
Parents should commence this plan on the Wednesday night immediately proceeding the clock change, putting their child to bed 15 minutes later than usual – so 7pm would become 7.15pm. There should be scope for a little one to sleep for 15 minutes past their standard wake time on the Thursday morning. Whilst this may not automatically happen, if it does and can be accommodated, the plan is off to a flying start.
If at all possible, parents should adjust meal and nap-times on the Thursday so that they also sit 15 minutes later than usual.
On the Thursday night, bedtime should be pushed back by a further 15 minutes – so to 7.30pm from a starting point of 7pm. As before, parents should factor in that their little one may sleep a little later on the Friday morning. The process will run much more smoothly if the child can be allowed to wake naturally.
Again, meal and nap times should be moved in line with the “new” (albeit very temporary!) daily schedule on the Friday if at all possible.
That night and during the Saturday daytime, the process of adjusting times by a further 15 minutes should be continued. This will mean that on the night of the clock change, the little one goes down at 8pm but only 15 minutes later than the previous evening.
Managing the one hour change in these smaller steps means there is less scope for a child to become overtired. It also enables their body-clock to adjust and a one-hour time difference split over three or four days is manageable for almost all children.
All in
For less sensitive sleepers and older children for whom overtiredness isn’t so much of a risk, parents may find it works well to just push bedtime back on the Saturday night by as close to an hour as the child can manage. A child who still naps in the day can be given a helping hand by their nap on the Saturday afternoon being nudged back slightly to better balance the awake time in the morning and afternoon. However, for a little one who does still nap (some daytime sleep is typically helpful until around 3 years old), a full hour is a long time and pushing a child too far into the red of tiredness is likely to have a horrible unintended consequence – they will get up even earlier than usual the following day!
Yes, as counterintuitive as it sounds, a child who goes to sleep too late is likely to wake super-early. This is due to a hormone called cortisol which they will have secreted in order to stay awake. Cortisol is released naturally by the body to wake us for the day, with levels gradually starting to rise from around 3am. Whilst this would typically build sufficiently to rouse a little one between 6 and 7am, if there is some residual cortisol in the mix, the process kicks in too hard, too early, leading to a child who is wide-awake at 5-something (or the “new” 4-something!).
A middle-ground
The final option is to essentially split the difference and stretch a little one to a bedtime on the Saturday night that is 30 minutes later than usual. As before, in order to reach that later bedtime whilst avoiding the dreaded “second-wind” of overtiredness, Saturday’s nap(s) can also be nudged back by 15 minutes. This means the extra half hour of awake time will be split evenly across the morning and afternoon.
As a little one won’t have made it all the way to 8pm with this approach, parents should expect him to wake a little early by the new clock time on the Sunday morning. However, this will iron itself out pretty quickly over the course of the following few days. For some little ones, it can take up to a week before things feel fully settled onto the new timings but they will adapt.
Lighter mornings
One helpful aspect of the clock-change when it comes to child sleep is the darker evenings. Melatonin, the hormone which makes us feel sleepy and helps us to stay asleep, is secreted by the body in low levels of light – which is why we typically find it much easier to sleep in a dark environment. However, as the evenings darken, the mornings will, for a short time at least, be a little lighter. If this daylight is creeping into a child’s room, it is likely to drive them towards wakefulness. With this in mind, blackout blinds can be one of the best purchases a parent ever makes!
Little Sleep Stars creates gentle, bespoke sleep plans to enable babies and children up to 6 years to reach their sleep potential. The business is owned by Lauren Peacock, a former tired mummy who was never prepared to leave her own little boy to cry. Through a detailed assessment and consultation process, Lauren is able to identify what is causing an individual child to struggle to sleep well. No two children are the same and nor are any two sleep plans but with right, tailored and gentle plan in place, any child can learn to sleep well. All consultations are carried out using web-based video-conferencing, enabling Lauren to work with clients throughout the UK and even overseas. Little Sleep Stars offers a free, no obligation, 15 minute call to any family needing support with their child’s sleep so to take the first step on the path to better rest for your whole family get in touch today.
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Carla is the founder of MyBump2Baby. Carla has a huge passion for linking together small businesses and growing families. Carla’s humorous, non-filtered honesty has won the hearts of thousands of parents throughout the UK.
She has previously written for the Metro and made appearances on BBC News, BBC 5 live, LBC etc. Carla is a finalist for Blogger of the Year award with Simply Ladies inc. Carla is also the host of the popular Fifty Shades of Motherhood podcast and The MyBump2Baby Expert podcast.
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