Reading in the same room

The activity

For the last twenty minutes before bed, everyone reads in one room, you included. Keep reading aloud to your child for longer than you think they need it.

What it is for. In our experience, slowing bedtime down helps more at the end of the day than starting a new routine. Reading beside your child, or to them, slows the last half hour with you in the room.

• The first step. Slow down where you already are. Take the last twenty minutes before your child’s bedtime, in the room you are in, with the light you already have.

Safety. A printed book, not a screen: screens off about an hour before bed. Small torches often take button batteries, which are dangerous if swallowed; with young children in the house, use ones whose compartment screws shut.

When to get help. If bedtime has stopped working for weeks, not just a few nights, or your child’s sleep has changed along with a low or worried mood, talk to your GP. If your child has hurt themselves, or talks about not wanting to be alive, stay calm, thank them if they have told you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day: help them ask the surgery for an urgent appointment, and if it is closed, use the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page. If your child tells you that someone is hurting them, stay calm, thank them for telling you, don’t promise to keep it secret, and act that day, using those routes; if the person hurting your child lives in your home or your child’s other home, go straight to children’s social care or the police. If your child is badly hurt, or may have taken too much of a medicine, get medical help straight away, even if they seem well.

The other four steps, and your part in it, are in the library.

It goes with

• The Hour Before Bed. For parents whose child’s bedtime has turned into an hour of worries, questions and meltdowns.
• What Screen Time Actually Is. For parents who feel they have lost the argument about screens.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full.

Free on this subject

• Sleep. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.
• Screen time. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.