Episode 98-Daylight Savings and how to Spring Forward

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night and build healthy sleep habits for Life. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sweep together. In this lesson, we’re talking all about spring daylight savings, my favorite day of the year. So the nice part about Daylight Savings aside from the fact that you lose an hour of sleep, I happily will take it because the sun is up a lot later at night. And that means that warm weather is on its way, which I’m always most excited for. So how do you manage daylight savings in the spring while balancing ensuring that your child doesn’t have total sleep derailment? First things first, take a deep breath. I see a lot of different blogs and Facebook posts about daylight savings. And parents get very nervous that things are all of a sudden going to go awry for months and months and months. Until fall back comes and everything goes back to normal. Well, don’t worry about it. In this session, I’m going to talk to you all about how you structure your day so that you can adjust to daylight savings in the spring in a matter of just a couple days. The first thing that I’ll tell you is there are two schools of thought around the adjustment for daylight savings, there’s going to be the team pre daylight savings, who adjusts everything before the big day happens so that when the big day happens, everything is aligned, then you have actual team daylight savings, meaning that they don’t do anything until that Sunday, when it’s daylight savings time. And that is the team that I’m on. One, I don’t feel it’s necessary to cause undue stress for several days leading up to daylight savings, it can cause increasing xiety In parents, really just trying to plan for something that hasn’t even happened yet. Let it happen, it’s much easier to conform and let it happen, especially because your body clock is aligned with the sun. So what you’re going to do is the morning of daylight savings, your little one is now going to be springing forward. So let’s assume that they used to get up at seven o’clock in the morning. It is now according to the clock 8am. And what you don’t want to do as a parent is permanently adjust their entire schedule to an eight to eight type of schedule. And if you keep the schedule aligned exactly as it is now, but just adjust for daylight savings.

That’s exactly what you’re going to do. So what I encourage parents to do is the morning of daylight savings on Sunday, go around the entire house and adjust the clocks. From there, you’re going to start to adjust naps by splitting the difference. So for example, if your little one wakes up at seven, it’s now eight o’clock. And let’s assume that they take their first nap at 930. On a normal day, you’re not going to want to have them take their first nap at 1030. On the new adjusted day, you’re going to dial things back by about 30 minutes, meaning that if they wake on the new adjusted day at eight o’clock, they’re going to take their first nap at 10 o’clock where you will lay them down to settle independently for sleep in the afternoon, if they’re used to taking a nap at two o’clock, that now according to daylight savings is three o’clock. So you want to dial that back again by 30 minutes, and have the second nap of the day at 230. For example, if your child is normally in bed at seven o’clock, it’s now going to be according to the clock, eight o’clock. And we need to dial that back as well so that over the course of a couple days, we can get back to our original schedule of a seven o’clock bedtime and a seven o’clock wake up. So to do that bedtime is going to be at 730, not eight o’clock, which the clock is going to tell you. So what it looks like is for the next three to four days, you keep with this new adjusted schedule, essentially splitting the difference between what the original time was and what the new time is, in order to balance out and slowly adjust the body clock. What happens is after three to four days, you want to go back to your original time. So you’re going to go back to a bedtime of seven o’clock naps at 930 and two o’clock, for example. And then bedtime at seven wake up at seven. So that’s going to put you back into that traditional seven to seven structure. Your little one will adjust and align give it a few days and you’ll be in great shape with the new time and a lot more More sunshine, be sure to take a look at the resources section where we have this all laid out with sample naps and alignment structures based on your child’s age, whether they’re a newborn and infant, a toddler, or a little one in school. Hold on one more thing before you go. As a valued listener of the kids sleep show, I want to help you build a great sleeper not just in the times you’re listening to the show, but all day every day, every week of the year. I have a new Facebook group called slumber made simple. It’s a place to gather with other parents looking for sleep support, laughs and the latest in sleep research, to build a family that is rested and at their best day in and day out. If you want to be part of the community where you can get free sleep support, weekly training sessions, unbelievable content and so much more. Head on over to tiny transitions.com forward slash community that’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community or head over to Facebook and search slumber Made Simple. drop me a note and let me know when you join. I can’t wait to see you there.