The last half-hour before bed

The activity

Choose the last half-hour before bed with your child, write it down in order and put it on the fridge. Then do it in that order most nights, slowly.

What it is for. A bedtime that runs the same way each night helps your child’s body clock and helps them relax. If the order is agreed in daylight and written down, there’s less to argue about at each step when everyone is tired.

• The first step. On a calm afternoon, list with your child what already happens before bed: a bath or a wash, pyjamas, the loo, teeth, a story, and the same few words at the door (“I’m going now. I’ll see you at breakfast.”). You probably have a routine already; the card fixes the order.

Safety. Stay with a baby or young child for the whole of bath time, even if an older child is in the bath too, and run the cold water before the hot. Phones and tablets, yours included, charge outside the bedrooms overnight.

When to get help. 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. If you have kept to the routine for a few weeks and your child still can’t get to sleep, keeps waking or is tired through the day, talk to your GP. See your GP sooner if your child snores loudly most nights, or you notice their breathing stop and start, or hear them gasp or snort in their sleep.

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

The sheet that goes with it is free to print: The last half-hour before bed.

It goes with

• The Hour Before Bed. For parents whose child’s bedtime has turned into an hour of worries, questions and meltdowns.
• Screen Time. For parents who have lost the argument about screen hours, and suspect it was never quite the right argument to have.

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.
• Co-regulation. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.