Daylight Savings – Spring Forward!
WooHoo - Daylight Savings Starts Sunday, March 12, 2017 at 2:00am
The thought of something messing with a good thing is super duper stressful. If your babies and kids are good sleepers we, of course, want to keep it that way and not allow something like DAYLIGHT Savings ruin it. It doesn't take much, sometimes, to throw off a baby rhythm, and send us spiraling into an "OH NO NOW WHAT" situation. Here are Mimi's Rules for Daylight Savings.
Do not play around with bedtime on Sunday following SPRING FORWARD even though we are
losing an hour. If you’ve been putting child to bed at 6:30 still put child to bed 6:30 on Sunday night.
For children:
• For children older 2 years old you may be able to follow the adult directives of putting
them to bed earlier each night. For younger children make sure they are well napped on
Saturday and go to bed on the earlier side.
• When your child wakes up on Sunday morning (any time after 6am) make sure she gets
her internal clock. This will help you too! “Spring forward” can help some children who
are having early rising struggles (waking before 6am) which is great news!
• Schedule your next day’s meals and activities according to the new clock time.
• Your bigger challenge will be to help your child get to the new (later) bedtime without
being overtired! That means you have to make naps an absolute priority. Watch sleep
windows, have a comforting pre-nap routine and get child down for a good, restorative
nap or two (depending on age). An earlier bedtime will help if you are not able to get
decent nap/naps.
For adults:
• Go to bed 15 minutes earlier than usual tonight.
• On Friday go to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual (beginning to see the pattern?).
• On Saturday try to go to bed 45 minutes earlier than your usual bed time.
• Eliminate all caffeine before 1:30 p.m. this week in order to make it easier to go to bed
earlier.
• Avoid alcohol this weekend which negatively effects sleep.