![Image of book cover showing a sleepy pebble in the sea](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Sleepy-Pebble-front-cover.jpeg?resize=730%2C1024&ssl=1)
Long days and warm nights can make it hard for children to sleep during the summer months, but there are ways to help children relax at bedtime, whatever the season. Christy Kirkpatrick talks to leading sleep expert Professor Alice Gregory about how we can help our children drift into the land of nod.
Summer is on its way, and my children are looking forward to ice creams and barbeques, school fairs and trips to the park. There’s lots about the summer that I’m looking forward to as well but one thing I’m not looking forward to is trying to get my children to sleep when it’s still light outside…and warm inside. Even if they’ve had a busy, active day, on hot summer’s evenings, they can find it hard to settle down and become sleepy at bedtime.
From talking to other parents and carers, I know that our family isn’t unique in finding bedtimes tricky during the summer months. We needn’t despair, though, because according to Professor Alice Gregory, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London and a leading sleep expert, there are ways to help children relax at bedtime, whatever the season.
What, then, can we do to ensure bedtime goes smoothly? ‘Despite the light outside, you might want to consider using blackout blinds to ensure the bedroom is dark,’ Professor Gregory tells me. ‘When it gets dark, our bodies release the “darkness hormone” melatonin, which gives our bodies a cue that it is time to go to sleep. When it is hot outside, it is also worth thinking about how best to keep the inside environment cool. For example, keeping the blinds shut during the heat of the day might be useful and if it is safe to do so, opening a window when it cools down outside might help to reduce the inside air temperature. Our core body temperature naturally drops before bedtime and a comfortably cool environment is conducive for good sleep.’
We should also keep bedtime and wake time consistent. ‘Our body temperature, melatonin secretion and alertness levels naturally change throughout the day and night, which means that at certain times of the day we are more prepared for sleep than at others. By ensuring that bedtime and wake times are consistent each day, we help our body know when sleep is coming and to prepare accordingly.’
How do we know what time those bedtimes and wake times should be? ‘Guidelines from the National Sleep Foundation suggest that most children aged between 3 and 5 years should get between 10 and 13 hours of sleep per 24 hours, whereas those between 6 and 13 should get between 9 and 11 hours. A good way to ensure that your child gets the sleep required is to consider the time they need to wake up in the morning and count back to bedtime.’ Bedtime shouldn’t be too early, though; ‘we should only go to bed when we are tired.’
Professor Gregory also advises avoiding electronics in the bedroom. Electronic devices can emit ‘blue light’ which, it has been proposed, is disruptive to our bodies’ ability to secrete the hormone melatonin. Even when that is not the case, devices can emit noise or lead to excitement which can disrupt sleep – and bedtime can be ‘displaced’ as time can be spent using technology when we could be sleeping instead.
![Sleepy pebble in the sea and a page showing first part of story and sleepy pebble](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Sleepy-pebble-p1-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C723&ssl=1)
Bedtime stories can help children to become sleepy at bedtime, and Professor Gregory and I joined forces to write The Sleepy Pebble and Other Stories: Calming Tales to Read at Bedtime, which contains five stories that might help children to wind down at the end of the day. Imagery, muscle relaxation and mindfulness can help children to relax, and these techniques are embedded in calm, peaceful stories that are based in the natural world. Children can choose one of the stories in the book each night, to be read as the last story at bedtime, and parents and carers are encouraged to read the stories slowly and quietly, and in a calm and soothing voice. There is advice about how to use the book, tips about how to make bedtime more relaxing, and a question-and-answer section. The book contains beautiful illustrations by Bath-based Eleanor Hardiman. The book is useful all year round, but might be particularly helpful if the light, warm summer evenings are making bedtime more challenging than usual.
Keeping your voice calm and soothing – and staying calm generally
– can help bedtime to become a time of day for children to look forward to,
whatever the season. ‘For adults, going to bed is often a treat,’ Professor
Gregory points out. ‘It would be wonderful if children felt the same.’
![Willow tree with happy page and first page of text](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/The-tree-who-stayed-up-too-late.jpg?resize=1024%2C680&ssl=1)
Alice Gregory is Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the author of Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave (Bloomsbury, 2018) and co-author (with Christy Kirkpatrick, a freelance writer and ghost-writer) of The Sleepy Pebble and Other Stories: Calming Tales to Read at Bedtime (Flying Eye Books, 2019). To find out more, visit Bloomsbury and No Brow.
Read a book review of Sleepy Pebble.