Up to 40% of children will experience sleep problems, such as difficulty with falling or staying asleep, (Mindell et al, 2006 cited in Williamson et al, 2020).   Carrying on with the theme from my last post I would now like to discuss how sleep problems can affect a child's well-being. Research that consisted of a longitudinal study of children in Australia has demonstrated how having sleep problems in early childhood can cause multiple impairments in a child's well-being at age 10-11 years old, (Williamson et al, 2020). The study examined five different sleep trajectories. They found that the children that had limited sleep problems in infancy or preschool only showed small impairments with internalising symptoms such as anxiety or low mood. However, children who demonstrated persistent sleep problems and sleep problems in middle childhood had moderate impairments in their ability to self-control. Goldstein and Walker, 2014, cited in Williamson et al, 2020, showed

  Over the six years, I have been a parent the one thing I have relied on is the bedtime routine. Luckily my kids so far have been the type to still sleep well even if they are out of their usual routine. However, every night I put my kids to bed reminds me how beneficial it is to set up consistency at bedtime from the start. Jamie's Routine When Jamie was a baby all the books I read mentioned some sort of a bedtime routine. There are some parents who would rather not have any routines and allow the family dynamic to be child-led as much as possible and that's ok too, if it works for your family don't change it. At the start, the routine was bath time, breastfeeding while reading a story and then he would fall asleep on the breast and I would gently place him into the bedside crib until the next feed was due. As he got older and moved into his own room and onto formula the plan was to give him the bottle, read the story and then learn to self settle. This didn't happen.