Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to look at the theme of sleep and securing sleep, sleep rituals and particularly what we can do around difficulties with sleep, getting children to sleep, having them stay asleep and also touch a little bit on nightmares and even night terrors. So big theme, earlier in these podcasts, way back, oh gosh, I guess it was two, three, maybe four years ago, there was a little sleep series which covered more the foundations of sleep.
So you can look back, I think it's number 63 through 67, something like that. If you want to look back on more of those baseline issues. But let's push on.
You know, getting children of all ages to sleep is not easy sometimes. Sometimes it's fine, of course, but I wanted to talk, pick up a little bit from those podcasts years ago on, first of all, just to cover the bases with rituals. The rituals that we have, getting a child to sleep and paving the way, all the little stepping stones, the little micro rhythms, all those little things that we do for young children, for bigger children around the age of eight, nine, ten and even beyond, actually.
These are the things that we do, if we can, in exactly the same way every single night. We do this, we do this, we do this. And start sort of that way back.
Start that at supper time, frankly. We do this, we do this, we do this. This is how we have supper.
This is how we clean up for supper. Often bedtime rituals start a little bit too late and you need to back it up because the adrenaline and cortisol in a child's system can take a surprisingly long time to reduce enough for sleep. You need to back up the quiet, calm, predictable little stepping stone rhythms even more if you've had a busy day.
So you would back that up into pre-dinner times. If it's been a fairly calm day, then you've got a little bit more leeway. That's the first thing I wanted to mention.
The second thing has to do with once a child is in bed or getting ready for bed, there's a couple of things you can do. For very little children, the environment is particularly important, but also weight is important. Weight on their little bodies.
Now the best weight, of course, is a mummy or a daddy or a guardian sitting nearby with their hand, you know, with our hands just gently rubbing a child's little chest and tummy or their back if they're laying on their tummy. Or just our hand quietly, quietly pulsing, not patting. Patting is very awakening.
Just rubbing quietly, just moving our hand in a very slow, small way. Very soothing. You can have weight.
A lot of parents these days use weighted blankets. Some mums and dads I know have a heavy baby. You know, there's these dollies you can get.
I love them actually, the heavy babies for younger children. They are a child-sized baby, so in proportion, but they're heavy. They're filled with grain and sand and they feel like a baby.
And I've seen children fall asleep with heavy baby on their tummy or beside them on their chest or shoulder. That's another little thing to pay attention to. Now once a child's in bed, you can also start to reduce lighting, start to reduce noise.
It might be a candle. It might be rather than turning on a white noise machine, which I guess if you live in a city is okay, but I'm not a big fan of those, but I do understand. But it's just humming that same little song, that same sleepy song.
It's interesting for children right up through 8, 9, 10, 11 years old. They also benefit from that humming. It brings a child much more into that sleepy time brain.
Then, if a child needs it, one of the things that I'm a big fan of is not laying on a child's bed next to them. And now we're starting to get into the problem area, if there's problems. If there's problems, it's good not to lay.
I personally feel a child's bed is their bed. You can make it cozy. You can put little silks hung from the ceiling above it, drop the ceiling down a little bit with soft cloths, some pillows around, not too many, but make it all cozy nest for them.
But I like to have a big old comfy chair. If you've got at all any space, a recliner is even better, but not laying on the bed with a child. Otherwise, it ends up like a hostage-taking situation.
So that side of things is being in mommy or daddy or grandpa or aunt's chair beside the child. And you still can reach out, still put your hand, stroke their hair, give their shoulder a little squeezy. But you've got this, your space, they've got their space.
It's a beginning of the spatial separation. Then there's a technique of fading, fading or waving sometimes it's called. I call it waving.
You wave out into the room and you move around and you tidy. And you just tidy the room very slowly and quietly. I've mentioned this once or twice before, but in this context at nighttime, you're waving out, you're tidying up, and then you come back and you sit down.
And the child's still awake. And then you spend a minute or two there. And then you wave out again.
And this time you tidy in the bathroom, if it's nearby or in a nearby room. And you let the child know if they need to, hopefully not, but if they need words, then I'm just going to go and tidy the bathroom, I'll be back in just a moment. And you move slowly out of the room, tidy up, one or two minutes, you come back.
And then you move out again and tidy up the kitchen. That's a little further away and a child, if the house is set up this way, they can hear you bumping about tidying up in the kitchen. And then you come back.
So what you're doing is like an inverse of attachment. When a child goes to a new environment, a strange environment, they might wave out a little bit and then come back in the playground, let's say. And they go out a little further and then they come back and then eventually they're fully away from you, engaged in play.
Now in this situation, you're doing the same thing, but inverse, you're waving out, waving back until the child's engaged in sleep. That's another piece you can do. Now before we go too far down that road, I also wanted to mention or review and put it in this context, something that you can do if a child has a wake up or is anxious.
Before you start the waving, moving out, moving back, if that's needed, when a child has their little gratitudes at the end of the day, their little prayers, whatever, the nighttime ritual, they can hold a little rose quartz in their hand. My children had a rose quartz. Many children do.
Some children have it even on a necklace. It's the heart stone. Some children call it their heart stone.
And you put your hands over theirs and they hold their heart stone. And you say, it depends on your worldview, but it might be just a picturing of someone who loves us. My grandpa loves me and I love him.
For a very young child, my aunt loves me and I love her. And there's a picturing of all the people who love us, but we're pouring our love into that heart stone, into that quartz crystal. And it might be, as I said, on a necklace, it might be in a special little box beside the bed and you're pouring your love and care and safety.
It might be a prayer that you say at the end of the night. But the thing about this is making this a part of the ritual. If a child's having trouble letting go, and particularly if there's a wake up, they can hold their heart stone.
And even if you need to move in and they call you back, you put the heart stone in their hand. Don't lay down beside them, not unless it's absolutely necessary. They've woken up, they've had a bit of a scary dream or a very scary dream.
They hold their heart stone and they ritualize all the people who love them. And they know there's love and security. They've got the scary image of the dream to take care of on one hand, but then they've got the security of all the people who love them and the other.
And again, if it's your worldview of the angels and of the spiritual world and God who loves me, depends what you're comfortable with. But there's this love and security as embodied in a ritual, because children ritualize beautifully. It's very alive for them.
That's the heart stone. You can also back this up by having mommy or daddy or guardians pillow underneath, pillow slip underneath their pillow slip. So there's the aroma of mommy or daddy.
There's the aroma of grandpa, whoever is the guardian who is looking after the child on a permanent basis. There's the aroma. Now olfaction is a very powerful, soothing agent.
And often children want us to lay beside them because of the aroma, the olfaction. So you can also pop a little pillow slip underneath theirs, or even above it if you like. So there's the aroma of mommy or daddy or whoever's hair there.
That's also very, very securing. If a child is having these nightmares, night terrors even, you can soothe them with gentle little hand hugs on their shoulders. Many of us intuitively do this.
Bring them back into their bodies a little bit, because they've gone out of their body into sleep, and it's been very, very scary, and they're not sure where their body is. So now we need to bring, basically we're doing a start over. You come back into your body, then we'll hum, we'll light the candle, if this is a very scary dream, and you recapitulate all those little steps in a much smoother way now, not so long, but you'll spend three or four minutes.
But the first thing is to bring a child back into their body. Some little squeezies on their arms, some squeezes and rubs on their shoulder, up under the base of the skull and the neck, even down through their legs and knees. Just give them some squeeze.
Give them some squeezies. Give them just a gentle massage. You might also use the very same cream with that lavender or rose or aroma that they associate with safety.
You can just pop a little bit on your hands and just give them a squeeze. Start at the body, then bring them back into the rhythm of their night time. So the physical, and then the etheric or chi or life forces.
Bring them back into that realm through the rhythms, and sit in your recliner, and if need be, just put your hand out, and if need be, if it's a very bad night terror, you might just kick on back in your recliner, put the quilt over you, and just spend a little bit of time before they move to that third stage. There's the physical stage of getting them to my body. There's the chi or energetic stage where I'm now back into my rhythm.
And then the third stage is now I release into sleep. This third and fourth stage. Now I let go.
I need someone with me, and then I let go, the third and fourth stage. In this stage, it might be you need to spend a little bit of extra time there, but not hours and hours, but you need to be comfortable yourself. So sit in your recliner, kick back, put the quilt over you, and just assure a child, and then you start doing one or two, not too many, little tidy ups, little tuck ins.
Move away, move back, you're exactly recapitulating what you do every night. And then you're bringing, obviously, familiarity to a child, which is exactly what they need, because they've had the scary dream, they've had the scary wake up. Exactly the same thing applies if a child gets out of bed and comes in to you.
I know it's a drag, but rather than just, oh, just let them come in. I prefer to have a child, you just pick them up, give them a cozy, squeezy, take them back to their bed. And again, you start at the physical for a minute or two, the massage, bring them back into their body in a very gentle way, not a wake up way.
Then get them back into the rhythms, which is done by just very familiar things, a little child, you might give them their heavy baby, whatever it is, the candle, just you very gently, but fairly quickly go through those rhythms. Sit in your recliner, hum that funny little nighttime song that they love, do a little tidy and leave the room. And that should be much briefer than the original setup.
The more we do things in exactly the same way every night, the more we have to draw on when there's scary dreams, nightmares, even terrors, the night terrors might take a little bit longer, of course. But the more we've got to draw on, if there are nightmares and even night terrors, it becomes even more important to have nighttime rituals be able to be replicated and replicated briefly. Okay.
That's a lot, isn't it? I sure hope that's helpful. Okay. Bye bye for now.
Bye bye.
