The Challenge
So you have had a busy day. You are tired, your child is tired and now you have the (let’s be honest - often dreaded) task of settling your child to bed.
Bedtime can be a time when, even if your child has had a good day, all the worries from their day seem to surface, and their ‘Monkey Mind’ gets very active and their thoughts can be quite negative. Your child may say things like “I have no friends”, “no one like me”, “I did really bad in my maths test today”, “I was terrible at football practice this evening”, “everyone hates me”, “I had a terrible day”, “I am useless” etc. etc. etc.....
You see, our brains are programmed to look for danger (or what we perceive as ‘danger’) and we worry. When your child is tired, this can become magnified. And as humans, even if we have had a good day, at night-time the monkey often has what I call a ‘party in our head’ or is centre stage with the spotlight on it, and we seem to remember all that went wrong in the day and tend to focus on this.
The Solution
I want to share a bedtime routine with you I have been practicing nightly with my now 12 and 14-year-old children over the last 6 years, and I have shared this little routine with hundreds of families over the years to help them help change their child’s narrative at bedtime. It is my favourite routine and one which I genuinely look forward to every night. It is effective in lots of ways and is backed by Positive Psychology research to help bedtime to become a place where your child can relax, change their focus, release ‘happy hormones’ and a time when you can hear lovely snippets or stores from your child’s day that you may not hear otherwise. And what’s even better - it doesn't take long! You can spend a couple of minutes or as long as you wish with your child on this routine - you decide!
Firstly - We both take a few slow deep belly breaths together. Then I ask them:
What was the best thing that happened to you today?
What made you laugh today? (and if they say they didn't laugh, ask them what makes them laugh).
What are you grateful/thankful for today?
What can you do to make tomorrow a great day?
(As mentioned above, you can take as long or as short a time on each question. If I am not too tired, I often tell them about the highlights of my day too!)
And finally, we take another deep breath and when I am leaving the room; I remind them to close their eyes and think of somewhere or something that makes them happy. To imagine they are actually there, and can see and hear and smell everything as if they were transported to that place.
You see, you can’t have a happy thought and a sad thought at the same time. Yes, the monkey will try to get the spotlight again and try to be the loudest voice in your child’s mind, but if you remind them they have the power to choose where the spotlight goes and choose what they want to think about at bedtime, it can be very empowering for children.
Please Note
This is not to say that you don't allow your child to express their worries at bedtime. I have specific advice regarding bedtime worries and anxiety, which this post doesn’t address. However, a suggestion which I recommend frequently to parents, in particular if it is a reoccurring bedtime worry, is:
· to agree to a time the next day to talk about that worry and work through it, as it is hard to find reasonable solutions when we are all tired.
· to remind them that this is their monkey in their mind which they are giving centre stage, so it’s time to move the spotlight and shine the light on nicer thoughts from the day and think of what went well. Because remember, even on our worst days, good things do happen.
Conclusion
This is a very powerful mindset for children to learn and develop, particularly when going to bed at night. It:
· helps reduce negative thinking (and reprogrammed the brain),
· improves the quality of your child's sleep and dreams,
· has been shown to positively impact how you feel when you wake up in the morning; and
· is a lovely way to hear good things that have happened in your child’s day.
So why not give it a go and see what happens? And if you want to know more, please get in touch.
Attached
Below is a PDF reminder of the steps that you can print off for use at home. My children have it stuck to their bedside lockers as a reminder.
