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Home › Articles › Sleep Issues › 6 Sleep-promoting Activities for Baby

6 Sleep-promoting Activities for Baby

Expert and Parent-approved Ways to Make Bedtime Easier

By Shannon McKelden

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Getting little ones to sleep at night can be one of the biggest chores of a parent's day. When everyone's tired, it's sometimes hard to make the transition go smoothly. But there are sleep-promoting activities that can make things easier on everyone.

Routine

One thing all the experts (and parents) agree on is that routine is of the utmost importance when it comes to bedtime. It's also been proven to be important in helping children sleep better.

"We just completed two studies that found that a bedtime routine, in and of itself, helps infants and toddlers fall asleep faster, be awake less during the night, and sleep for longer stretches," says Dr. Jodi A. Mindell, associate director of the sleep center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and author of Sleeping Through the Night: How Infants, Toddlers and Their Parents Can Get a Good Night's Sleep (HarperCollins, 2005). "The results dramatically showed that just instituting a bedtime routine led to major improvements in infants' and toddlers' sleep."

Parents agree that routine works. Sarah Evans of Portland, Ore., has a routine for her 1-year-old son that incorporates many ideas mentioned in this article. "We take a shower together, give our son a baby massage with some orange-scented lotion, read Good Night Moon in French and then breastfeed until he conks out," Evans says. "Then we put him in his crib and cover him with his lovey – a fuzzy blue blankie."

Dr. Carl Johnson, professor of psychology at Central Michigan University and infant/toddler sleep expert, believes bedtime routines are beneficial, especially for toddlers. "[Routine] helps the child learn that the world is regular and predictable (like the sun rising and setting every morning and night) and that life is not scary and chaotic," says Dr. Johnson.


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