Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting Diary with me, Kim-John Payne. This is the fourth and last part in our series on sleep and helping children prepare for sleep and sleeping itself. Today we're going to be looking at the question of information overwhelm and how we can quieten and soothe, really, the kinds and amount of information a child has to synthesize before they can actually fall asleep.
This is not at all an easy question because we're living in a time where our kids are just being deluged with the amount of information that they are receiving. And so what do we do about that? Because if they're laying in bed at night and there's all these just myriad competing images, undigested information that they've had to absorb through the day, it makes sleep very, very difficult indeed, because that kind of digestion that we've been talking about is really tough when they're having to go through so much. Some children have described this as lots of, my images.
And we know that feeling ourselves, right, as adults. If we've had a day where we've had just a ton of information and stuff come at us, it's almost like we're having, when we lay down at night, it's still just on this loop. And it's almost like flashbacks, you know, you're having that conversation replay itself and that piece of information replay itself.
And oh my goodness, did I do that? You know, do I have to get up? And there's all this kind of information overwhelm that we know for ourselves. But imagine what that's like for a child, right? Many of us have forgotten that because it was a long time ago. But for a child, that is doubly more difficult because, you know, they've got this bedtime thing.
For us, we can just get up, turn the light on, read a book, walk around the house, go back, just deal with that email, write it. You know, we've got the freedom to do all that kind of stuff, which is sometimes not ideal, actually, that we do that. So we're told by the sleep experts.
But nevertheless, we're not pinned to the bed. Now children are. They're told it's bedtime.
And if we're going to tell children it's bedtime, you go to bed, you stay in bed, you go to sleep. It's only fair that we give them a chance of being able to do that. And a part of that, if we back this up, again, a lot of that is about their day.
We all know the mounting evidence now from very reliable peer-reviewed studies that any kind of blue light, any kind of screen, an hour or two, and now some people are saying three or four hours, but that kind of blue light exposure of tablets, computers, screens, and televisions are included in that too, in many of the research pieces, is very disruptive to a child's biorhythms and a child being able to actually go into that sort of deeper sleep, fall asleep, but also go into sleep. So a very obvious one that many of us are on to is no screens. No screens any time after dinner.
Even if we do have screens before dinner, try to really dial it back. Now, for teenagers, this becomes a point of negotiation that they do their screen-based homework, which unfortunately, more and more schools are making homework and schoolwork really linked to screens. And often when I get a chance in a high school, I actually beg the point that by setting homework and hours of it that is screen-based, that take a child way into the evening, means that unwittingly what high school educators are doing is becoming a part of the problem in the sense that the teenager now is becoming sleep-deprived, therefore the cognitive abilities are becoming increasingly impaired.
And just at a time when a teacher is expecting a teenager to be absorbing a lot of content, they're actually, by asking kids to be on computer screens into the evening, it's actually cutting right across the bow, in other words, undoing their own intent. And so some high school teachers have been willing to say to students, front load all your screen time, get your information all set out, print it out, make notes of it, and get that screen turned off by 7 p.m. or whatever time seems reasonable to them. But if they're expecting their student to be able to refresh in sleep and wake up with frontal lobe activity, neocortex, all the things needed for an active day of learning, then they also need to back things up so the teenagers are getting off screens and get help to actually plan front-loading their time so that the screen can then be closed and done away with for the evening.
And that's something that some high school educators have been willing to listen to and hear and go along with. If a high school educator doesn't, then we as parents can, and we can teach our kids to front-load screen time and print out, make notes. We can do that too, but how much better is it if the school are cooperating with us? That's great if that can happen.
And it's worth speaking, if you've got older kids or even now younger kids, unfortunately, who are being set screen-based homework, to speak with the school and really make this case. You might even want to circulate some of the research into this, because it's very conclusive now and well-known. This is not in any way controversial.
And be able to join with educators to actually have screen-free evenings, at the very least. You know, the latter part of an evening must, in my opinion, be screen-free for every child and every teen. And we can get together on that one and cooperate and be strong in that way.
Now, other aspects of information is to really be careful about what we're talking about in the afternoons and evenings, especially at mealtimes, after mealtimes, so that our conversation is not overwhelming a child, that we actually allow conversation to just quieten down a little bit. In other words, what perhaps is, if you're in a two-parent home, wait until the children are in bed to start those conversations about your day and things that you've got to do for tomorrow. And just let the home become a low conversation zone as a child is preparing for bedtime.
Because even though you're not talking at times to them, they are absorbing just the level of conversation that is going on around the house. Just start to, if you can, quieten that on down. Of course, radios and televisions, even if they are on, sometimes, again, if I may say off.
Kids cannot be hearing all this kind of information, trying to digest it. Meanwhile, we're telling them to go to sleep. It's just, you know, it's just not quite fair on a child if we're setting them up like that as well.
You can have alternate information that is really helpful for a child. Now, what I mean by alternate information is something that I learned from a mom and a dad, oh gosh, goes way back now, perhaps a decade or more. What they did, which I thought was really so helpful, is that they had a child who wasn't sleeping.
So what they would do in order just to help the child go up to bed, because the child was refusing or pushing back hard, even going, you know, upstairs, bathroom, bedtime and all that, because it represented to him difficulties. He couldn't sleep and so on. So they couldn't even get that moving along.
And what they did was read a little bit of the first part of a chapter of a story. So before supper, they would back this on up and they would read the first little part, maybe only 15 minutes or so, not long, but they would read a little part, tell the part of that story. Then at supper time and clear up from supper, they would be chatting about the story that would come up amongst other subjects, but that would come up about the adventure that that boy or girl was having in the story, and they'd be looking forward to hearing what it was, how that was going to go, knowing full well that that story would come when the child was in bed.
Do you see? So you're doing two things here. You're setting up a slipstream of the child literally wanting to get into bed, okay, so you'll hit him off in that direction, but also you're creating alternative information which is not about the world, it's not about all this other stuff, it's actually about a picture that's appropriate for childhood. And I thought this was a really interesting strategy from these parents and asked them how it went, and they said that it worked a treat because it had the child and them connecting up over the story, and it, as I mentioned, would actually have their child go to bed.
But for me, part of the key to that was that they were creating an alternate picture, as I mentioned, this other inner image that a child was carrying. And that is a general point for me, for at least 60 to 90 minutes before a child is being asked to sleep, as much information, I want to say all information, but as much information as possible, should be child-friendly. Now, obviously it should be child-friendly all through the day, but our conversation starts to quieten down, that's one thing, and then the things that we say are going to be soothing to a child, are going to help that child be able to, yes, decompress again, and not be new information.
You don't want to be talking to a child a lot in the evening, a little bit is fine, but you don't want to be talking to the child a lot about what's coming up next week, and this is happening here, and that happened there, and this is what... Now, a little bit of that is actually very helpful, just a little bit of looking forward to the next day, but a lot of fragmented conversation about a brother's sports events, about a sister, what she's doing with her friends after school, and that kind of conversation within reason, just needs to quieten down. When I've mentioned that to some families, and asked them just to keep an eye on that, just, you know, like have a normal day, a normal evening, and then just watch what is being discussed. Parents have come back and said to me, goodness, that was quite surprising, we were still on a roll, we were really talking about this, and that, and it was all like super noisy, and busy, and fragmented types of conversation, and we were then shushing the child up the stairs, and getting him into bed, and really didn't realize how much information, how active, and animated all that was.
I'm not suggesting that we go into this sort of trance-like state in the evening, you know, family life has to go on, but if we can be a little more careful to have less conversation, and the conversation be very consciously child-friendly, pictorial, just the little things that we that we say around a child in the evening, again running through that filter of, is this going to help my child relax, and move into sleep, then we're giving we're giving the child a real chance to be able to decompress, as we've talked about, but also be able to limit the amount of information that they're having to synthesize, and try and pull together, because that's what a child will do, right, it's their natural instinct, there'll be this, and that, and this, and that conversation, sure enough, but a natural human instinct, particularly in childhood, is to try and thread all that stuff together, and as much as possible, if we can do that, it's a good thing. Now finally, I mentioned in an earlier session, that we, in the evening, my family used to do this rose and thorn ceremony, now a little part of this is looking forward, but it's done pictorially, and just to remind us again, what it's about, is what, sitting with a child in the evening, and or two or three, and saying, you know, and this could happen at bedtime, or it could happen at suppertime, but what was something that was really good that happened today? Now, not every child is going to always, every night, have something to say, but what was, what was a rose? What happened today, which was really nice? What was something that was awkward today, that we didn't like? And just allow a child to unpack the day a little bit, just let them review, let them unpack, and we can do the same too, but about our family life, not about stuff that has got nothing to do with kids. And then, what is something that is potentially difficult tomorrow? And then finally, what is something that we're looking forward to? As much as possible, if we can do this briefly, and pictorially, so for example, we might say to a child, yeah, that's right, it's, you're going to be picked up by Josh's dad tomorrow, and that's really hard, because, you know, it's, it's, you have to go to Joshua's house, and sometimes that's been no fun.
I know, that's right, and he'll be, that's right, he'll be in that red pickup, and you just create a little bit of a picture of it, and then, and then move on, you know, move on, and what's a good thing about tomorrow? That allows a child both to review the day, very briefly preview, all within, I mean, really, this shouldn't take more than 10, 15, 20 seconds. A child might prattle on a little bit longer, and that's fine too, at times, but this is not a big space for filling words and more information. It's just setting things quietly to rights, synthesizing all the information, and letting it rest.
So, I sure hope that's been helpful. Again, very best wishes for tonight's bedtime. Okay, bye-bye for now.
