Hello, and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim Jon Paine. We're in this series on sleep, and today we're going to be looking at our third part, and that is around decompression and scheduling, and all that a child is carrying through the day that builds towards the night. You know, people used to ask me when my kids were little, what time do you start putting your children to bed? And my answer was always, oh, six o'clock.
And they'd say, oh, six. And I'd say, yeah, yeah, a.m. I would start, really, for me, the preparation for bedtime starts at 6 a.m. when they're waking up for a new day. The quality of sleep is so dependent, as we all know, on the quality of the day.
So a very significant part of how a child will go to sleep depends on how high velocity the day has been. And if there is a day that has had built-in decompression points, that there are times where there are down times, creative times, times for a child just to sit and stare out the window, lay in a tree, lay in the grass, looking at the clouds, play with their toys if they're little. For a teenager, just lay on the bed, listening to their music, or better still, just lay on the bed, flipping through a magazine.
All these decompression points are a huge part of introducing these safety release valves through the day, so that when nighttime comes, the child isn't laying in bed there with images of the day swirling, with so much digestion of the day to have to do all there before they try and go to sleep. The digestion of the day, and of the sensory, and of all that stimulation that has come through the day, is helped significantly by introducing these decompression points through the waking time before you're then asking a child to sleep. So have a think about where are the decompression points in the day? What are my kids decompression points? And they're different for every family, of course, but do you have them? Do you have times where in the morning time there's just a little bit of quiet, that's if the children are home? If they're at school, do you have a decompression time when they come home? So they don't have to jump right into homework, or just give them a little, if they're older, you know, just a little bit of downtime, creative time.
If they're younger children, do they get times where they can just simply play with their cars, their blocks, their dolls, when they get home from kindergarten or from the grade schools? What do they like to do? Because different children will decompress in different ways. And again, have a think about what are the decompression things that my child loves to do, and how can I build those in as much as possible, to as many days as possible, in as rhythmical a way as possible? Do you see it? So that the decompression is, let's say a child comes home from school, and they have this, they let off steam by being in the yard, playing on their bike, because that may seem like being active, but actually just riding the bike around, exploring the yard in that way. Or maybe they are out in the yard, just poking around, building a fort.
Maybe they're just laying down on the swing, staring into space. Decompression doesn't always have to be completely still and inactive. It's more, more the key for me is, is it creative? And it's not just letting off steam and being super, sort of super motoric and running around, but neither is it sitting completely stock still.
Those two things, in a sense, don't matter. What it is, is when a child goes into a creative space, into that deep creative play, when they almost like go down into this other biosphere, you know, within their play, within their being, that, just have a think about where is that for my child? How can I make that as rhythmical as possible? How can I be even more mindful and conscious of that, of to set that up and to ring, to ring fence it, you know, like to really value it. We know our kids will spontaneously go into these decompression times, but it's, we often don't value them enough.
If we can really push back, like if a play date, a series of play dates starts crashing in upon a decompression time, when you know your child just needs to sit and draw or get on with that construction project that they were doing, or if it's an older child, just be, you know, out in the driveway throwing some hoops. Whatever it is, make it a little bit sacred. I don't want to overstate it, but it has to be a really good reason to break into that space.
It's as important as, as, as anything else, as, as dinner time or any of those other things. The decompression times are, are super important. Now, let's move forward now into, into bedtime and talk about decompression and, and what that means at that point.
We've talked about the, the, the benefit of a simple environment, really simplifying decluttering the environment. We've talked about clarifying rhythms and rituals, but in terms of scheduling, uh, as it's coming up to, to bedtime, try, I found it really helpful to try as much as possible in, as we're headed up, you know, up to the bathroom or whatever to, to, um, in a sense, have this be as a time that is as set within the schedule as possible and not allow it to be pushed around overly much. Really do have that earmarked and within, you know, 15 or 20 minutes or so max, that is when, um, bath time, shower time, bedtime is going to happen.
That there are, there are pretty much set times for this within reason and without becoming, um, overly, um, rigid about it. Also, um, be, I find it's helpful to be, uh, aware that at that time of night there, if you've got a younger child and there are older children in the house and dad or mom doing something else, to try and make the rest of the family a bit more aware that this is the, if it's a younger child, for example, that this is their bedtime and that the house itself starts to wind down because it's very difficult for a child to decompress and wind down. If there's, if there's a wind up happening, uh, within their ear shot, within their eye shot, think they can see it, they can hear it.
It's very hard for them to separate and fall back into the arms of their angels, as I heard one mother say. Um, if the, if there's other aspects of the house that are still, uh, schedule-wise, uh, on kind of a, uh, on an upswing, try as much as possible to be quietening down what's going on around them as, as they're quietening down. It's, it's, uh, I was, I've been, I've worked with a couple of families that come to mind in particular more recently, that when I mentioned this to them, it was like, oh my goodness.
Yeah, because, um, it's really clear as the child goes up there, the older brother is playing, doing this, and then the other one's doing that. And, and when they got together and really said, okay, guys, this can still happen. You're older, of course, but you need to do that in your rooms.
This was one older brother, actually, door closed, earplugs in, it needs to not be creating a rumpus for your younger brother, but it also needs to be done privately. He can't be thinking, and you can't be talking about what it is you're going to be doing. That is just private to you, and don't fill the space with that.
Just go about it quietly. And, you know, bless this big boy's heart, he, he really got it, agreed to it, and the, and the whole, uh, bedtime rhythm became just that little bit more easier, because the child could then decompress, knowing that the, the home, the, the house itself was also quietening down. Everything was starting just to wind down a little bit.
He wasn't the only one being asked to wind down. So, just rounding off now, this big picture around, around scheduling is something that, uh, is, um, also very important that we, when we're scheduling our children up in the day with, with play dates, um, with, uh, sports clubs, activities, one of the ways to be thinking about it is to, as strange as this sounds, is to already be thinking about sleep. I, and I've recommended this to, to a number of parents over the years, is when, before you hit the go button on that extra play date on that activity, or whatever it is, think about, run it through the filter of, is this going to make it really hard for my child to sleep? And if the answer to that is yes, then usually you have your answer to that activity, which is no.
It's, it's a sort of a beginning with the end in mind. You're thinking of the end of the day, so you're dialing it back and making judgments, uh, about what to do in a child's waking life according to what you want their sleep life to be. I hope that doesn't sound too strange.
I've had some strange looks when I've suggested this, but it's a super helpful filter or a yardstick perhaps to put alongside judging how much to schedule up a child in the day. And you, many parents have said that they, uh, have used this and, uh, are very pleased with the result because it does mean that sleep and the, uh, and the, and, uh, the ability just to unwind is, is significantly easier because there's simply less to unwind. Now, this brings me to the last point is that if a child has had a busy day, and it's unavoidable sometimes, so there's been a, a big thing happen at school or a class play where it was lots of excitement, they are going to need more decompression.
Uh, when they get home, there needs to be longer periods of downtime, quiet time, and you, you have to almost balance out the stimulation of the day, uh, with greater calm at home. Now, if it's been a pretty, uh, calm day at school or outside the home, then, you know, okay, we can, we maybe don't need to have that, you know, extra time, uh, drawing, uh, extra time building forts outside. We can call the children in a little bit earlier because they're, they're in pretty good shape.
But as is often the case, if the day has been hectic, then it's just sensible to make more time for that, all that, that wound up part of the day, which is fine, right? It's exciting. It's okay. That happens.
It's great. But the child is going to need more time to unwind at four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock before bedtime comes. Otherwise you've just got a problem on your hand and you, and you get into this sort of becomes an edge to it and a frustration to it because you're at the bedtime, child's refusing to sleep, um, is whining, whinging, calling out, uh, doing all sorts of, you know, diversionary tactics.
But, you know, bless their little hearts, what they're, they're still just on a roll from the day. So, if we can dial that back into the afternoon, early afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, knowing that there's going to be more decompression needed, then when the moment comes, you know, when the light goes off and now it's bedtime, we'll have a child not be in that, of course, you know, in that wound up state. All right.
That's a lot. I hope that was helpful. Bye-bye for now.
