Bedtime is Quality Time
As your children end their day with you, what would you like them to remember$%: Wouldn't it be great if their day-to-night transition were warm, loving, and easy$%: Wouldn't that be great for you too$%: It can be that way. Here's how:
Keep the Big Picture in Mind
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Remember that bedtime is an opportunity to teach your children everything about life and love. It is a lesson not so much in how to go to sleep as in how to show respect and kindness, how to set healthy boundaries, and how to manage frustration and anger. Your method of negotiating bedtime models and teaches all of this and more. The children will eventually be sleeping. The big question is how$%: How will you help them move from their waking state to their sleeping state$%: It is in the "how" that the big lessons are conveyed.
Positive over Negative
In order to convey a loving feeling around the bedtime issue, your communications to your child must be predominantly positive ones - good-feeling to the child. Use the 80-20 Rule in which 4 out of 5 of your communications are pleasant from the child's point of view (see "Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice" by Sarah Chana Radcliffe for details). Announcing bedtime is one of your "negative" or bad-feeling communications (assuming the child doesn't want to go to bed). Therefore, after you've announced it, try to say 4 good-feeling comments. Playful, humorous, complimentary remarks are good as is acknowledging the child's feelings ("you're not tired yet$%:"), talking about something interesting, offering treats and so on. During the entire bedtime process, monitor your own communications - keep your ratio to 80-20 - no matter what the child is doing. After a week or so, most children become more cooperative just from this one parental strategy.
Use Negative Consequences and Wait
Anger is toxic at any time of day, but particularly at bedtime since your angry face may be the last image floating in the child's mind as he or she drifts off to sleep. Therefore, use negative consequences instead of anger to gain your child's cooperation.
If the child has not complied with the request, do as you promised (withhold the privilege the next day or whatever else you might have selected). At this point, you are finished with the bedtime routine for the evening. Junior can now stay up till midnight or 5a.m - it is no longer your concern. If your negative consequence does not occur until the next day, then the learning cannot begin until then. DO NOT SABOTAGE the learning, by canceling the negative consequence the next day. Repeat the same bedtime procedure for 3 nights using the same negative consequence. If the child's compliance does not improve, follow the same procedure but pick a different negative consequence. Use the new consequence for 3 nights and look for improvement. If there is none, pick another negative consequence and try again. The goal is to be effective, not punitive. Find the "right priced ticket" by experimentation. This strategy provides about a week of chaos. However, it ensures a decade of peaceful bedtimes.
This procedure requires that you only ask TWICE. Asking a child to get ready for bed over and over again - 3 or more times - is virtually guaranteed to lead to parental frustration. For most parents, it is then a short road to an irritated tone of voice and from there to a raised voice. Following the 10X-Rule (ask and ask and ask again) leads to stressed-out parents and children. If anyone is going to be upset at bedtime it should be the child, not the parent. The child, after all, is allowed to be unhappy about having to go to sleep. The parent, however, continues to be loving, firm, patient and reasonable - thereby teaching the child that the way to get what we want in life is not by having a fit, but by having a plan.
Good luck!
For more information about Sarah Chana Radcliffe and Raising Your Kids without Raising Your Voice please check out her website at
Send Sarah Chana your comments at
:%$copy; Sarah Chana Radcliffe, 2006. All Rights Reserved.
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