calum at bedtime
At the age of eight, Calum would sleep for between three and six hours a night. And frequently, because getting him to sleep could be such an ordeal, he slept in his parents’ bed. Whilst Calum didn’t appear to need more than a couple of hours sleep a night, this was obviously very disruptive for the rest of the family.
We talked through the current bedtime situation with his mum and dad, which strategies they’d tried before, what helped, what didn’t, and came up with a plan. Firstly, we made sure that Calum was as calm and relaxed as possible before bedtime. We used the sand timers (that we’d introduced to help us with haircuts) to let Calum know that it would be bedtime soon. Once the timer finished, we got him ready for bed. It was important at this stage not to put any difficult demands on Calum (like encouraging him to brush his own teeth), so that the whole routine was positive and relaxed. Calum was then given another ten minutes (communicated again via a sand timer) where he could watch a video in bed before “lights out”. Once the timer finished, we said good night and switched off the light.
Calum got out of a bed once or twice, which we let him do, but if he came out of his bedroom we led him back into bed. We did the same thing in the morning if Calum woke early and would also use a timer to let him know that he could get up in half an hour. Within a couple of days, Calum was happily following the routine without getting out of bed at all and began sleeping all the way through the night. And on the mornings he was still in his own bed when his mum got up, he got breakfast in bed.
