Family Reflections – Practical family, Daily blog

If you are a parent then you know that sleep is a highly valued commodity and its availability is scarce. The last thing a contentious parent wants to do is sacrifice the care of their children for a few winks. So what do we do to get those precious and necessary un-waking moments?

The most practical and most do-able thing that we’ve tried is to not try to get more hours of sleep when you know you can’t get them, but to maximize the hours that you know you can get.

• Avoid eating before bed. It’d be best to give your stomach at least 4 hours after a meal to get that food further along before laying down with it all sitting in your stomach. Digestion is the most energy consuming activity your body conducts internally. If you can have this out of the way before bed, your sleep can focus on rejuvenating you instead of breaking down the food. If you feel hungry drink some water or herbal tea and go for a walk. Fresh air helps promote deep sleep.
• Sleep in darkness. This aids in the transformation of your serotonin turning into melatonin. This is scientific and if you want to know more we encourage you to look it up. Here is our quick explanation of the process: it is good. Which leads us to our next point -
• Turn of the t.v. It is overstimulating your brain while you sleep, which keeps you from total relaxation. And that will rob you of the precious refreshment that you so need. Especially don’t watch t.v. from your bed. In fact, save your bed for only sleeping, intimacy, and perhaps for the next point…
• Read or journal before bed. This will help funnel your mind into a more relaxed mode. Of course the right subject material for your reading is important. Something inspirational is great. Something rip roaringly hilarious or dramatically horrifying may not be so great. Journaling to ‘let it all out’ or to ‘deflate’ is a wonderful way to put yourself to bed.
• Go to bed early. Can you get into bed earlier? We know this may be a hard one for parents, but sometimes it’s easier to go to bed earlier than it is to sleep later. You know what they say, right? – ‘An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two.’
• Lower the temperature in your bedroom. Don’t overheat yourself at night, you’ll sleep restlessly. Also, your body wants a lower internal body temp to really get to the good parts of sleep, so you can help that along with a cooler room (the upper 60s is probably the best).
• Avoid stimulating food and drink. Try to stay away from caffeine, high sugar foods, very spicy things, nicotine, and the like. They will only irritate you out of your most wanted thing – sleep! Even alcohol can cause disruptions, increasing fitfulness is certain parts of your sleep patterns. You can replace those things with relaxing drinks instead like calming herbal teas.
• Put away work well before bed. Let it go at least an hour before bed, earlier would be better. You’ve got to do yourself the favor and come away from it. Let your mind unwind. You’ll be stronger tomorrow for it.
• Establish an evening routine. If at all possible, get to bed around the same time every night and build up to that time by doing the same things every night. Something like: take a walk, drink some tea, take a shower, read a book, go to sleep. You’ll body and mind will learn the routine and fall into it nicely.

There could be some more items on this list, but we want you to take some of the most effective ones and make them work for you. Plus, it could be late right now and we want you to hit the sack. The main idea is to recognize that you’ll be way better off tomorrow if you treat your sleep well today. Burning the midnight oil is usually a poor technique for parents.

Anything vitally important that we left off the list? Have these tips worked for you?