Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim Jon Paine. We're going to be starting a short series of these audios on a question that so often comes up and that is around sleep and sleep for young children, but we'll also be pushing that out in age groups to sleep for tweenages and teenagers as well. We're going to begin today with the environment, the sleeping environment that a child has around them.
When we think about sleep for children, my mind first of all and very often goes to the bedroom, the sleeping environment that a child has around them. Now simplicity parenting of course is well known for its decluttering, so let's start there, but we can expand out from this a little bit, particularly in reference to sleep. Clearing out the clutter in a bedroom is very, very important because if there's a lot of clutter and a lot of visual stimulation in the room, a child's nervous system stays in that kind of exploratory state.
And if a child's looking around, exploring, looking at this, looking at that, having their attention drawn here, drawn there, then what they're doing is it's saying to the nervous system you're in sharp focus rather than diffused focus. So one of the first things to do is look around the bedroom and diffuse as much as possible what a child could focus on. For example, toys can go in baskets and then the baskets can be covered with a cloth so that the baskets of toys get put to sleep as well.
You know for little children, the cloth, some parents actually take the cloth and just put the toys to bed. My children used to actually put their dollies to bed. We had little baskets and they would put their dollies to bed first and then they would climb into bed and put themselves to bed, but they were very careful about all the right blankets and such.
That's for very little children. But just making the visual plane of the room very soothing and very diffuse. For example, if there's bookshelves, lots and lots of books and things on them, then hopefully not too many, but you might want to put a little piece of dowel, a rod across that, very simple to organize with a little curtain.
So at night time, again, the curtain is not only drawn on the windows, but the curtain is drawn across things like bookshelves as well. Some parents have commented that the curtains that they like using are slightly see-through curtains, like muslin cloth or such things, so that the child can see through. Their books are still there, their toys are still there, they still have the comfort of actually seeing through that thin gauze-like curtain, but it's filtered.
That's certainly what my wife and I did in the bedroom for our children. It wasn't a hard curtain, it was more of a filter really to the eyes. Likewise, things on bedside tables, just to make that as clear and as clean as possible, so visually not a lot of clutter there.
Also, bedding, if we can make bedding as simple as possible, so there's not very exciting. I know there's cute stuff, dinosaur bedding and kitty bedding and all that kind of thing, and I don't want to go over the top with this and say, yes, that should be banned from any bedroom, but I've found a pattern here of soothing bed clothing to be helpful for children, again, just to soften and diffuse the visual plane in the room. Also, toys, beloved toys like stuffies and stuffed toys and such that a child wants to load their bed up with.
I personally don't have a problem with having toys in a bed, but just three favorites, you know, one, two or three, and they're the nighttime favorites and not loads and loads and loads of bedtime toys. Then there's the question of nightlights as well. If at all possible, if a child does need a nightlight, then have it out in the hallway and preferably not in the bedroom itself.
If it needs to be in the bedroom, if you're really a fan of nightlights for children, obviously make it as soft as possible, put something in front of it, a cloth over it so that over time you can put, just layer it up a little bit. First of all, just with a thin piece of gauze, then two, then three, and over the weeks, try to wean children off nightlights. One of the other ways one can do it is to have a candle in the room, obviously with matches that come out with you at the after bedtime, this is for younger children, but light the candle, have nighttime prayers or verse or thank yous or just reviewing of the day, whatever your ritual is, but then the candle gets blown out, so there's a time for light and there's a time not.
But you can also, one of the keys to this I found helpful is to look around the room and have a child do a little inventory of the room. You know, here is my bedside table, here is my bookshelf, here is my basket for my toys, here is the closet, and so on, and there is the door. And just sit with them, do a little scan of the room, and then the candle is blown out, so that they've got the geography of the room set, and it makes an impression on the child's, again, the sort of visual sense that they've laid out where the room is, they remember it, because the very little ones, they can wake up quite disoriented.
So that's another way to make the environment visually more soothing. Now in terms of sounds, there are a number of different sounds that can be used. Obviously we would all like just to close the door and close the sound down for a child, but many of them feel that's being cut off, and they don't like it.
What a number of parents have done is again got a heavier piece of dowel, mounted it over the door, and then got a rather heavy woolen blanket, and that blanket over days and weeks and months can just become more and more closed, until you train a child up, you coach them to actually have that curtaining, that heavy curtaining, over the door completely. So the door's not closed, some light can get in beneath the curtain, but it does muffle the sounds, those lovely familiar sounds of home. Now this is another little piece of auditory soothing for a child, is when a child's going to sleep, let them know exactly where you'll be and what you'll be doing, and be deliberate about it if you can, so that you don't need to stay in the room, but with the curtain drawn over the door, do something familiar.
It might be that you're washing the dishes, I mean something very, very basic. It might be that there's another familiar activity that they know, just tidying up the room next door, if it's a lounge room, you're tidying up, and they hear you moving about, you let them know exactly what you're doing. Do that as much as possible, the same every night, so as soon as the child is put to bed, the curtain over the door is drawn, the visual field is simplified, then do the same little tidy up routine.
We'll talk more about rhythms and routines later, but that also comes into this auditory factor. Then there's the olfaction, the aromas and smells. A number of parents have at bath time put soothing essential oils in a bath, like lavender and rose, they're very well known.
Ylang Ylang is another, one of those deeper tones. Ylang Ylang, I think it's spelled Y-L-A-N-G, some of you might know it. One has to be a little careful with essential oils and make sure they're properly diffused or mixed with some soap in your hand as they're put in.
Other parents will also have aromas whereby they take some neutral base moisturizer and will put some rose or lavender actually in the moisturizer, and a child will then put it on their hands. Then as they go to sleep, it's really lovely to see the child bringing their hands up to their face to smell that nighttime smell of the rose oil. Very, very soothing indeed.
What you're doing by addressing the visual, the auditory, and the olfaction is quietening and soothing. Then there's the sense of touch, and that's where a favored toy comes into play. Something that is a nighttime toy, but you also might want to give a child a little thing that represents you.
It could be a t-shirt that represents you, it could be one of their favorite t-shirts that they like that you wear, and you can give them some little garment that represents you, some little thing that represents you. You might give them, one mother actually gave a child some smoother pebbles that they found, actually they were larger than pebbles, they were like hand-sized rocks that they'd found on a beach vacation. There was a bowl of them, and the mother had in her own room, and she would take out some favorite ones and give it to the child, so the child would feel it as they go to sleep.
Other parents have given their children some beeswax in their hand, so it just warms, and the child can manipulate the beeswax, but have something to hold onto that's not you. Something of you that stays in the room that is also tactile is one primary way to soothe the senses. You can also have, if a child is struggling to go to sleep, a little practice called a new pitcher.
So if a child is struggling to go to sleep, you can coach them to turn the pillow over, and that is like a reset. We're starting again, and you turn and say to the child, have you turned your pillow over? Or have you rolled over? Something that is a little bit of a reset, that they can feel, they turn their pillow over, and that is like a bodily cue that I'm resetting. I couldn't sleep, but now I turn that over, and now I'm starting again.
I'm resetting, rather than getting stuck. These are all things in the physical environment of a child that start to soothe a child when they're in their room. One last thing before closing is that I also have found it very helpful for a child to have a soothing, visual, tactile, auditory, olfaction environment at least 45 minutes to an hour before going up to bed.
So that you actually, it's not just the room, the bedroom that starts becoming a quieter space, that the physical environment, perhaps it's the lounge room, where half an hour, 45 minutes to an hour before a child goes to bed, the lounge room, if at all possible, sometimes it's not right, but if at all possible, for that to start to be tidied, visually a little simpler, that perhaps an oil dispenser is lit, a candle that heats some lavender oil that starts to be dispersed. So a child starts to associate smells, because it's a very strong association, isn't it, with smells, so that the aroma, for example, of the lavender is not just when they go to their bedroom, it's associated with preparing for bedtime. This is a, we often underestimate that power of aromas.
So that, again, visual fields, auditory fields, noise has started to come to quieten down, TV, radio, of course, any kinds of screens, that all, we'll come to that later, but that all is quietened down. So noise starts to quieten down half an hour, 45 minutes before sleep, and there's just a generally, you walk on to a more soothing environment. And in that way, when you come into the bedroom, and there's this feeling of, I've already started my out-breath, but now the out-breath is a really large one.
Eat for little children, even in the bathroom at bath time, just have that as a little bit more of a soothing place. Some parents have really commented that when they got all the bath time toys out of there, and just had one, or two, just a boat, or, you know, classic sort of little duck, or whatever, but not lots and lots and lots of things. Likewise, the bathroom counter is as clear as possible with clutter.
Visually, in the bathroom, it also starts quietening down as well. So there's this walk on, and then the bedroom is this ultimate place of calm. And in that way, we're securing the child's physical environment.
Now in coming podcasts, we'll also be talking about other aspects, particularly we're talking about establishing very predictable rhythms. In our next podcast, we'll move on then to how to prepare a child through the day, actually, for sleep. And we'll then move into how to filter out adult information in terms of how to bring about good sleep as well.
So a lot to look forward to, I hope, in these next podcasts. Okay, that's it for now. I sure hope that's helpful.
Bye-bye.
