Sleep. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages…

OK — so there are not aliens involved in getting your kids to sleep, but sometimes, a full night’s rest may seem worlds away.

When I became a parent, I was told to expect not to sleep a lot. When my second child came earlier this year, I was told to sleep even less. For the first few months, those predictions came true. I recall waking several times to a baby thrashing around with my head resting ‘comfortably’ on the edge of a bassinet. (I should have paid better attention at swaddling class, I know!)

I was lucky, though. By month four, they both settled into a routine. But what happens when they don’t?

Well, there’s plenty of help out there! A colleague told me that she had just started with a sleeping coach and the NY Times Motherlode blog had a post earlier this month on gadgets to help parents sleep. They’ve also had two other posts on sleep just this past month! A search of Scholastic’s own Parents site shows 76 articles on sleep and bedtime. That’s a lot!

One thing stands out in almost all of the resources I have seen…set a pre-bedtime routine. As I said in an earlier post, in my house, we make books part of that routine! In the article Good Night!, the author says “Just as reading a favorite story again and again gives your child a treasured sense of control over his world, a well-structured bedtime will help him come to expect and look forward to settling into sleep.”

There are so many fantastic bedtime books that can help kids (and parents!) get that good night’s sleep. Some of my favorites are Where the Wild Things Are, The Kissing Hand and of course, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?

What are your tricks for a good night’s sleep?