Speaker 1Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ plus individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org slash LGBTQ. That's redcrossblood.org slash LGBTQ.
Speaker 2Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode is the second part of the hidden factors that may well be affecting your child's sleep. So, this is the episode to listen to if you have tried all of the usual sleep routines and yet your children or your child is still not going to sleep. So, I'm going to talk to you about some of the hidden factors that you may have not yet considered that may well be impacting it. So, as a recap, in the previous episode, in part one, we covered. These sort of hidden factors that may be within your child's physical environment when it comes to going to sleep, their diet, hydration, and the timing and how that might impact sleep. And we looked at physical activity and energy release. In this episode, we're going to dive deep into biological and developmental factors, which may be hiding and lurking and impacting your child's ability. And we'll be talking about neurodiversity. We're going to also look at emotional connection and modern life and how that. might also be impacting your child's sleep, as well as I'm going to do some age-specific troubleshooting. So, I'm going to talk through three different typical scenarios that I got asked based on children's specific age ranges. And hopefully, that will help you in terms of being able to look at where the hidden factors may well be. So, let's dive in. Now, so we've looked at the timing of exercise, but let's think about sensory-seeking children. We often miss this, is that some children, especially neurodivergent, need proprioception input to calm. And so, what we want to consider with these ones is, can we get them to do some heavy work before bed? So, pushing against walls, carrying heavy items, squeezing stress balls. So, what that does is they're getting that proprioception feedback, that input, and then that then helps that kind of calm, that signal for calm, ready before bed. And you may, for some neurodivergent children, considering things like weighted blankets can be super, super helpful too. So, it's not standard advice. It's not necessarily works for everybody, but it can be supremely helpful. So, thinking about that 10 minutes of heavy work before bedtime, maybe some wall push-ups, maybe getting them to carry some laundry baskets. You know, that therapy putty can be really great. It's just simply. A putty that is really hard to manipulate in their hands, which forces that real heavy duty pressure in their hands, which then can help in terms of this heavy work, creating the proprioception feedback and helping with that calm. And there is therapeutic putty that you can buy online that will also change colour. So, it's a really nice way of them seeing it grey and then it becomes pink or purple. So, they're actually getting the. The feedback, the proprioceptic feedback, but they're also getting a visual feedback too, which sort of, you know, it gets that buy-in of just keeping going because it's like, how long is it going to take before it goes pink or purple? So, that can be helpful. For some, some tight hugs or some joint compression can be really helpful if your child will tolerate it. Not all neurodiverse children will tolerate that. Or a deep pressure massage. Again, it's just that feedback that they need. So, those are some other considerations. There's more. I did tell you that this was a belts and braces approach. So, the next bit is about biological and developmental factors that we ought to know as parents. This is what we need to know about because it can make a big difference to the way that we approach things. So, the first one is that, and I've mentioned it throughout the episode, is that teens' circadian rhythm does shift. It's biology. It's not defiance. It's not being difficult. It's not pushing back. It's not being challenging. So, during puberty, melatonin production shifts to one to two hours later. So, the reality is a 15-year-old's brain isn't ready for sleep until about 11 p.m., but school starts at 8 a.m. So, go back to that, you know, the guidelines of, you know, eight to 10-hour sleep for our teens ain't going to happen. Yeah? Because if they're generally wanting to go to sleep at 11 and then they're waking up at 8 a.m., you may not get them to bed at 11 a.m. and it may be midnight. So, sleep debt with our teens does accumulate. They're not lazy. They're biologically sleep deprived. And so, we end up with this pressure of an early school start plus this late biology gives us chronic sleep deprivation. So, what can we do as parents? Well, the first thing is let's accept the biology. So, fighting it creates stress that makes sleep worse. So, what we want to do is, is just accept that that's there and look at compromises. So, maybe lights out at a reasonable time, but they can read until they're naturally sleepy. I'm really not a big fan of tech being in bedrooms. So, I would personally would not advocate for audio books. I know for some it's been a miracle for them. But again, for me, it all boils down to the more we sort of rely on tech to soothe when there are. When there are alternatives, such as a book, for example, then I think that that's a better way to go. But I accept for some an audio book will end up becoming the alternative. And what we can then do, because what we're. And I'll talk about this, but consistency is really crucial when it comes to sleep. So, what can often happen with our teens, our 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds, is that they end up being sleep deprived Monday to Friday and then they crash Saturday and Sunday. So, they end up sleeping in much later. And then that causes a problem when we're then back in on a Monday when they have to then revert back. So, I would encourage for weekends to have one lie-in day and one day that they wake at normal time because that prevents the sort of the rhythm that they have Monday to Friday being completely shifted and disrupted so that we are able to do that so that they can catch up. They're not necessarily going to catch up on all of their sleep debt, but that we don't get frustrated or cross when they're lounging. They're not necessarily going to be lounging in their bedrooms. And if homework is keeping them up and it's being supremely disruptive, then that's a conversation that you may want to begin to have with school. Obviously, it depends on all of the other factors. If your child is highly overscheduled, which we will talk about, and therefore the overscheduling is meaning that there's not enough time for homework or homework ends up being done at eight o'clock at night, then that's more of a conversation you have to be asking yourselves and be honest about. Do I need to be doing something at the end of every single day? And really, could I be looking at removing some of that? So that's what we want to look at in terms of specifically the teens. What we also want to consider are growth spurts and developmental leaps. So sleep often is disrupted during growth spurts and developmental leaps. Why? Because there are hormonal changes, there's physical discomfort, growing pains. I can remember very vividly one particular night in my childhood where I went downstairs because my legs just hurt so much. And that can be quite common for children. So it will end up disrupting their sleep, as well as the brain being reorganized. We talk about these big sort of changes in the brain organization. And so that also can impact sleep. So I guess the key message for us as parents is that it is temporary. And so we're not doing anything wrong. It's not a sudden disruption to sleep, not because we're doing anything wrong or because our child's worrying. It is just simply that they are going through either a growth spurt or developmental leap or they're going through that teen change in circadian rhythm. And so we could just be a bit kinder to ourselves. So the age that we might expect some of these changes, again, these are broad because it's all about development for your child, but generally between six and seven, between 10 and two, which is between 10 and 12, which is pre-puberty and obviously throughout their puberty. So we want to recognize the pattern that sleep is disrupted during growth. And actually what we want to do is provide extra comfort rather than being a stickler for stricter routines at this time. During those specific windows, we might consider things like Epsom salt baths for growing pains and a reassurance to ourselves as well as our children that it will pass. And so that then links very nicely into this idea about puberty hormones and the menstrual cycle. So girls, sleep is disrupted around menstruation because progesterone drops and that affects sleep quality. And for boys, testosterone surges can affect sleep patterns. And regardless of whether we've got a girl or a boy, anxiety and mood changes during puberty can affect sleep. So what can we practically do? We want to track patterns, either an app or a diary to identify hormonal links, quite often with our menstrual cycle. Girls, we want to adjust our own expectations during those periods. We're not sort of saying it's okay, but we are accepting that during these periods, there's some biological mechanisms at play that will disrupt. We might want to consider extra magnesium rich foods or potentially supplementation with GP. Advice, of course, but we might look at things like heating pads and hot water bottles and Epsom salt baths, if that is also helpful. And then let's just talk about when should we suspect that there's something medically going wrong in terms of our children's sleep. So I don't want to be concerning or alarming people, but there are some very specific things that we want to investigate. So these are not necessarily terminal, but these are things that we don't want to let slide. So if we've got a child who is snoring loudly and or pauses, there's pauses in their breath, so they might make a noise and then it's almost like they're not breathing for a moment and then they do. We want to investigate that because that could be sleep apnea. If they've got restless legs and constant moving at night, we just want to check that. If they've got extreme difficulty waking or they're falling asleep during the day, even though they've had adequate sleep at night, persistent night terrors beyond. the age of seven and bedwetting beyond the age of seven. Now, again, these are just broad guidelines. It doesn't necessarily mean that there is something specifically going on, but we want to ensure that we look at that. And what we ought to be aware of is there are certain conditions that are likely to affect sleep. So ADHD, often there's racing thoughts at night, difficulty switching off. So it's biological, not behavioral. So being aware of that. Anxiety disorders typically have these persistent worrying and the panic and the hypervigilance and racing thoughts as well. Those with autism or sensory processing can have these sensory sensitivities that we've talked about, and they often have a routine rigidity need that we want to be mindful of as well. Asthma, nighttime symptoms can disrupt sleep and eczema, itching is generally worse at night. So if you suspect. Any of these, either medical or neurodevelopmental factors, then of course, do speak to your GP. And it's helpful to keep a sleep diary for about a couple of weeks so that you can then talk very specifically about what the observations that you have found are. All right. So now let's dive a little bit more into some of the other factors that we might not have considered when it comes to sleep that relates to emotional connection and modern life. So the first is the emotional tank. Why connection matters for sleep. All right. So our children need, they have emotional needs that need to be met. And sometimes, please, please do not take this as a guilt trip. I just want you to listen to it in the way that I intend it to be, just so that you can understand a little bit. So this is not about guilt tripping parents. We have got enough things that we're dealing with. But what is really important is, is that we need to be that our children are able to drift off to sleep when they feel that their emotional needs have been met. If they feel that those emotional needs have not been met during the day, they may resist bedtime. And some of you, if this is hitting home, it is probably because you know that this is the particular issue in terms of sleep within your family. So bedtime is when our children get our full attention. Yeah, it's the bit, God, it was the bit that I looked forward to. To the most on some days, it was literally like, I just need to get through this. And then that's it. But often we find that this can be the time that our children play up the most. And this can be especially true if we have got children who have been in childcare or school all day, or where we have got multiple children, where, and we're working, so again, not guilt, this is just factual and just how it, you know, where it can often be, where our children are able to play up the most time is so precious that we can feel that we're being pulled in multiple directions. And so children may feel that their needs are not always met. Remember what the important thing to remember when the, in this particular aspect is that it's not about whether you actually have, but what your child perceives. And there's some really super easy fixes to this. So it's not about guilt. It's simply about awareness. This goes back to it's quality over quantity. 10 minutes of genuine connection is far greater than two hours of distracted presence. So that 10 minutes that we give to our child, where we are not mentally going through our to-do list, where we have put our phone away and we are just simply being with them, listening to them, playing with them, can be all that is needed to switch that correction. Think of bedtime resistance in a way as a communication that I need more of you. And that I need more is not like loads of time, but just about that, that cliched quality time. So these are some practical things. If you think that this might be the reason why your child is having difficulties at bedtime. So it's just about creating some daily connection rituals. So 10 minutes of one-to-one time before bedtime, before that bedtime routine starts. So not that 10 minutes when they've gone up, but 10 minutes before. So no screens, no siblings present, no multitasking. It's about chatting, it's reading together, hearing about their day, playing. Now, if you are in a situation where you have got three, four, five, multiple children that makes this really difficult, what you might do is rotate nights for one-to-one time. So Monday nights, it's Ruby's, Tuesday night, it's Jack's. Yep. So we're just rotating it. If we are, if it's simply impossible to give each child that 10 minutes, because our children then know and they can anticipate and they know that that's coming. And for working, for those of us that are working, and that's almost all of us, connection immediately after pickup and arriving home, rather than leaving it until bedtime. When they feel that they've had that connection and genuinely, it really doesn't have to be much, but it's that undistracted, real connection. Time can make all of the difference. I remember reading, and you may have, may well have read the book by Shonda Rhimes, The Year of Yes. And she talks very vividly about this moment where she was juggling, you know, trying to get out of the door to go to work. And she's a single parent. And her daughter had asked her to play with her. And of course, this was her year of saying yes. And she was like, oh my God, I've just got these meetings to go to and I'm too busy. I haven't got time for this. But she reminded me of that. But she reminded herself that she, you know, yes. So she said yes, put her bags down. She said she was playing with her daughter for about five minutes and her daughter then suddenly lost it. It was like the five minutes was all her daughter needed. And she couldn't believe that, you know, she'd routinely would have been too busy and would have said no. But actually that five minutes, seven minutes that her daughter had with her was so powerful and all that her daughter needed. So often it's not about how long is a piece of string. It's about how long is a piece of string. And she said, when we can give our children proper connection at a time when they have been disconnected from us, when they've been at childcare, when they've been at school all day, and they get that immediately within reason, you know what I mean? We haven't left it until bedtime. It can make such a big, big difference. So that may be part of it about that connection. It could be another dynamic is around sibling dynamics and room sharing. So we've talked about that. We've talked about that. We've talked about how room sharing can be problematic. However, what we also need to remember is that when we've got scenarios of different sleep needs, so one child is ready to go to bed at 7.30, but the other one's not tired until 9pm. But what can also happen is that if we've got lots of sibling arguments and sibling conflict during the day, it can make bedtimes feel uncomfortable or unsafe, not because they think that their sibling is going to attack them, but it's just not, if they're sharing a room with a sibling that they've been arguing with all day, it can create some issues and, you know, that sort of older siblings keeping younger ones awake. So the practical things we want to think about around staggered bedtime, so younger child goes first, an older child might be in another room quietly. We want to think about maybe room dividers or ways of creating physical separation. But also if we've got scenarios where conflict is an issue and there has been conflict, what we want to do is repair and reconnect before they go to bed rather than separating them. So we want to repair that, but when they make that reconnection, that then helps in terms of that sleep. And when possible, because this will help us actually understand whether this is really at the root cause of it, is we might want to do trial periods of separate sleep, maybe, and then we can see if there's improvements. If we see that there are improvements, then we know that part of the sleep issue is the fact that they're sharing. And then we can start putting some of those things in place. So we're just looking at different things of auditing. And then the other one is that, and we can get this, and I say this with love, is that we can have a bit of schedule chaos. And lack of consistency. So the problem is that inconsistent bedtimes wreak havoc with our circadian rhythms. So this might be split households, because our children are spending, alternating between spending time with us and our, and their other parent. It could be that they've got activities on different nights that make issues. And it could be that they, as parents, we're working shifts. And it could be that generally speaking, we do Friday, and Saturdays are super, super late nights. And by Monday, their rhythm is completely shot to pieces. And then we're trying to reset it. So these are some of the practical things that we can think about because consistency is king. So what we want to do is we want to keep the same bedtime, give or take 30 minutes. Yep. Even at weekends or one night. Yep. So you can have one night that you push the boat out. But generally speaking, if, if sleep is a challenge in your family, of course, if sleep is not an issue and your children are going to bed, then happy days, do whatever works for you in terms of the weekends. But if you've got children where sleep is a, is an issue, we need to keep that consistency. If we've got children in split households, if we have a good relationship with a co-parent and we can communicate about consistency, that would be the optimal. I do understand that that isn't the case for everybody. And that isn't always possible. So if it isn't, then do all of the things that you can do within your control. It's always going back to what can I do within my household that I can control? And then the other things are just as they are because I can't control those. Activities. We've got, if activities finish at 8pm and bedtime is 8pm, something has to give. Either the activity gets removed and shifted, or we accept that bedtime at 8pm is not going to happen. And we put safeguards in for the rest of the week in terms of being able to accepting on that particular night that sleep at 8pm is impossible. It's probably going to be more like 10pm, particularly if it's a physical activity and instead looking to then recoup in other areas so that we can then make it easier. So it's just being, it's just being aware of how those things can impact it, which leads into overscheduling. And children who have no downtime. Now, the modern trap is that our children go to school, they then do an activity, they then have their homework, they then have dinner, they then go to bed. And what we do, what's left is there's no processing time. Children arrive at bedtime, wired, not wound down. They're overstimulated. They haven't had a chance to get bored. They've not had a chance to have to pause. They've had no transition. They've had no opportunity to play. Opportunity to do the things that they need to, to empty their own personal buckets. And so it's no wonder that they're not going to sleep. This will ring true for some of you that are listening. For others, it may not. It may not. So some of the practical actions that you can do is audit the week. You know, how much unstructured downtime does your child actually get during the week? And I would imagine you'll be really surprised at how little they're getting. Because even if your child isn't doing an activity every day, but you're picking them up from school and then they're doing homework and other things, they're probably not getting a huge amount of time. So what we then want to do is build in gaps 30 minutes after school before homework. So looking at building in those gaps, then they do their activity, then another 30 minutes. Protect Sundays or one evening where nothing is scheduled and it's family downtime. And shifting our mindset so that we understand that boredom is actually valuable. It allows the nervous system to regulate and to then be in that rest and restore rather than in that always doing mode. So hopefully those are going to help you consider some of the things you might not have even thought about that really may well be part of the disruption, particularly for those of you pulling your hair out and saying, Mary Han, I've been doing all of the things that you've been suggesting, but there are just some things that are still sabotaging. Now, before we finish, and we've still got a bit that I want to cover, I just want to go through some, I don't know, some scenarios that might be the case. And obviously I'm giving some rough ages, but let's say we've got a three to five year old and we're saying my preschooler fights bedtime every night. So some of the common hidden factors I'm trying to help for those of you with children at different ages is that it could be about nap transitions. So with between the age of three and five, our children are generally transitioning away from daytime naps to just sleeping at night. But we have that challenge of them being overtired and exhausted. So we're in that real limbo land. So too long or too late in that means that they're not tired at bedtime, but no nap means that they're overtired, which can be even worse for sleep. So that could be one of the hidden factors. One of the reasons why your child is struggling to fall asleep. There could be also an element of FOMO, a bit of fear of missing out. They can hear the family's downstairs and there feels that they're left out, that they're not being able to join in and all the other things. Or we could have overtiredness. And this is paradoxically makes sleep harder because they get this cortisol spike. And I remember before I had children and people talking about children being overtired. And I remember thinking such a typical thing to think when you, before you have children, it's like, well, if they're overtired, why do they just not go to sleep? But of course, that's like the worst case scenario, isn't it? Because when they're overtired, we just can't get them to go to sleep. And so it's just thinking about, might these be some of the hidden factors? So what we might want to try, if we're in this situation, my preschooler is fighting bedtime every night. We might want to try and adjust or drop the nap or adjust the timing. We might, if we're thinking, our child is, you know, a preschooler is thinking, I'm missing out and all the rest of my family are having fun downstairs. So we might just say, look, you know, can we be quiet when the children go to bed so that they're not, they're not hearing fun, loud activities. It's not about tiptoeing or being entirely silent. It's just about being aware that that might be impacting. And then it's really important when we think about this notion of overtiredness to sort of observe our children and watch for that sleep window. And then we might just say, look, can we be quiet when the children go to bed? So that we don't tip from tired and could go to bed into overtired and can't. So we're looking for those early signs of tiredness. Then we can act immediately and get them to bed rather than waiting, which makes it much, much harder. So that's a solution and some specific guidance and troubleshooting. If you have got a three to a preschooler who's fighting bedtime, what happens if we've got a child who lies awake for hours? So some of the common hidden factors may well be unspoken worries. You know, they've got friendship issues, they've got academic pressure, social media, even if the devices are removed, they might still be thinking about it. So those that, you know, busy head and those sort of worries and that internal chatter, it could be that they lie awake for hours because they've not done enough physical activity. So their body is not physically tired. It could be some of the hidden caffeine that we've talked about, maybe after school snacks and chocolate. So have a look at those. Or it could simply be that they're lying awake for hours because they're having a big growth spurt. And that growth spurt comes with it a whole load of other changes to their sleep-wake cycle that is impacting their readiness for sleep. So what we might want to try is do some specific worrying unpacking questions and do that downstairs. So what's on your mind about tomorrow, not just are you worried? So asking questions that might encourage them to open up about things and, and have that discussion downstairs before they go up. We might want to do an audit around their physical activity, their caffeine, their screen time, their screen content, to see whether that may well be impacting, might be a common hidden factor for why our child is staying awake, you know, is awake for hours and cannot go to sleep. And maybe encouraging a bit of a sleep diary for two weeks to identify if there are any particular patterns. And then that can help us sort of identify what those might be. So that might help for those, for our children who are, you know, lying awake for hours. And then when we've got our older children, so my teen can't fall asleep until midnight. So common hidden factors are number one, biology. Let's accept that their circadian rhythm has genuinely shifted biologically. I want two hours and there is a delay in their melatonin. So that at least allows us to be a little bit more compassionate with ourselves as well as them. Social connection, you know, phone and social media is often their lifeline and removing it creates anxiety. But of course, we want to remove it because we want to make sure that they go to sleep. But recognising that that might be part of it, recognising that their academic pressure, you know, homework, revision, the, may well be impacting. And if our children are, you know, planning on going to university, all of the pressures that come with it. Maybe there might be, maybe they've got part-time jobs. Maybe they are in a romantic relationship. They've got a boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe they're having those existential questions. Do you ever remember having those? God, I remember those really vividly in my teens. Like, am I really here? And if I am really here, how do I know that I'm really here and I'm in the world and I'm not? I'm not on some screen, not screen, some sort of, that I'm not living out and people are observing me. Maybe it was just me. Maybe I'm just weird. But we do, our children go through these questions about what am I here for? And is this life, you know, am I living it really? Or these philosophical questions that may well be coming up at night time. And, or it could be that they've got caffeine from energy drinks, which are normalised by their peers. And hidden from you that may well also be impacting. So what are some of the things that we can try? Well, the first one around the circadian rhythm is just accept the biology. So compromise on in-bed time rather than that absolute you need to be asleep by. So we allow for that reading and other non-digital activities to create that sense of sleep, obviously in well lit. We want to negotiate device rules. So it's not about confiscation, but co-creating boundaries around tech use and also times that it's, that there's no more tech use and where that tech lives, which should not be in bedrooms. So, and prioritising sleep over perfection. So if homework is the issue, having conversations around communicating that with teachers so that our child or our teen is not getting caught up in this, oh my goodness me, absolutely has to be perfect. And we want to create safety for big conversations. So when they're having those existential worries, so giving them space rather than dismissing them and poo-pooing them, but creating time and space and opportunities for us to talk through that with them, particularly if it's something that's unnerving and unsettling them. So those are some little bit of troubleshooting there for some of the common issues. that we have there. So that I guess the takeaway message really is that bedtime routines themselves are essential, but they're only one piece of the jigsaw. So if you've tried all of the standard advice and sleep is still a struggle, it's time to look at for the physical environment. So temperature, light exposure, noise, bedroom associations, diet and timing. So looking at the meal timing, hidden caffeine and hydration, look at physical activity, when and how much, looking at biology. So there are age-specific circadian shifts around growth spurts and hormones. Think about emotional connection. Is their tank full before bedtime? And looking at modern life, look at the schedule chaos, the over-scheduling and the consistency. So your action plan this week, should you choose to accept it, is to do a sleep audit. Use a checklist to make sure that you have all the information you need to make sure that you have all the information that you need to make sure that you have everything that you need to make sure that you have everything that you need to change. Don't overhaul everything at once. Just look at one thing that you think may well be a hidden factor and work on that and track it for one week. Use a simple diary to note the changes and adjust if you don't get an improvement. If within one week, nothing changes, then look at doing that. Look at changing it and then shifting to a new one. So if you don't get an improvement, again, if you get some positive results with that, see if there's anything else that you might tweak because you just might find something hidden that you've not yet considered. So it's a pretty belts and braces approach with these two episodes on sleep, but I've done them because I really wanted to make sure that you had every piece of information and every consideration of some of the hidden factors because we know how important sleep is. And how different our children are when they've had a decent night's sleep. So I hope that that is helpful. As always, if you have found this episode particularly helpful, then why not share it with a friend, a colleague, a neighbour, a relative who may benefit from the same tips and advice. And if you have not yet done so, then why not take a moment to rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can see each other again. So until next time.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening to this episode of the Red Cross Blood Donation Podcast.
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