Travelling with a little one can be a daunting prospect – especially when it comes to sleep. Whether it’s a time-zone difference you will have to negotiate or sharing accommodation with friends or family who have a very different parenting style to your own, it is normal to feel anxious about navigating your child’s sleep patterns away from home. Sleep specialist Lauren Peacock shares her expertise to help your child sleep easy on holiday.
One of the best tools for sound sleep in an unfamiliar environment is a well-established bedtime routine. Studies show that having a consistent bedtime routine is associated with better sleep for young children in several ways, including: being asleep earlier, without a battle; reduced night waking; and increased sleep overall[1,2] – meaning they are more effective the more you do them. So, to prepare a little one for sleeping in a new environment, establishing a practised bedtime routine at home is a great tool.
If you already have a great pre-bed routine, it’s still worth considering whether you can add further multisensory sleep cues, such as a pillow spray, that you can easily transfer to a new environment. Take any comfort items your child uses at home and even, if possible, the sheets straight off their bed, which will bring with them the familiar smell of ‘home’.
‘Jet-lag’ can occur when we travel across multiple time-zones, leading to a misalignment between our circadian rhythm (body-clock) and the local time at our destination[3] – essentially, we physically travel faster than our internal clock can adjust. Babies and young children can experience jet-lag – although not all will do so – and even those that do will adjust, typically within a couple of days.
Travel days aren’t the ones to worry about the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ time for sleep, so go with the flow and let your little one sleep as they please. Once you arrive, consider whether you need to adjust your child’s body-clock at all. If it’s only a few hours different to home, you might prefer to keep your child on their usual pattern, albeit that this will mean everything happens later, according to the clock. This option is handy for short trips.
If you do have an adjustment to make, adopt local time, or as close to it as you can, as soon as possible after arriving in your destination. If it’s a huge leap and you’d be trying to put your child down for the night at what would be lunchtime at home, you most likely can’t get there in one fell swoop – and putting your little one down too early may lead to them treating bedtime as a nap, waking after an hour or two and then being awake much later into the evening! So, aim for the biggest gains in the right direction that you can, while still noting your child’s cues.
A key anchoring point for the new pattern is your child’s wake up time on the first morning away. Start the day at the time you want the day to start while you are away, even if that means waking your little one. Get outside in the natural daylight for breakfast, or straight after, as exposure to broad spectrum daylight is a key circadian regulator,[4] naturally kickstarting the new routine. Alongside environmental influences such as light, keeping as regular as you can will help a child adjust.
It can be tempting to allow your little one to ’catch up’ on lost sleep with super-long naps. However, sleeping too much in the day could hinder rather than help the adjustment to local time, so keep naps roughly consistent with how long they last at home.
While your child adjusts, it is likely they will wake at random times of the night. Being understanding and patient while holding the boundary that it’s night-time is important. For night-time wakefulness, reading to your child when they are in bed strikes a balance between what is physically possible for them while also supporting their adjustment to the new time, whereas allowing screen or tablet use at 2am will probably ultimately extend the pain for you all.
Holidaying with friends and family can be wonderful – and the extra pairs of hands can make all the difference to how relaxing a holiday with small children feels. But it can also bring uninvited advice and pressure. Always remember, and truly believe, that you are your baby’s expert – no one knows your baby like you do, so trust your own instincts as to what your child needs. Helpful phrases to deflect unwanted advice include: “Thanks for that, but I prefer to do it this way,” and: “Oh, thanks for letting me know, I’ll look into that, but for now, I’m happy doing it this way.” Then take some deep breaths and remind yourself that people generally do the best with the information they have at the time. Advice is usually well-meaning, but just because something is right for someone else, doesn’t mean it’s right for you. And that’s okay!
Lauren Peacock is an experienced gentle sleep specialist, founder of Little Sleep Stars and a mother-of-one. Working with families all over the world, Lauren helps parents to transform their sleep situations through bespoke family-centred support.
References
[1]. Mindell, J. A. et al (2009) A Nightly Bedtime Routine: Impact on Sleep in Young Children and Maternal Mood in Sleep¸ 32(5), p. 599-606.
[2]. Mindell J. A. et al (2015) Bedtime routines for young children: a dose-dependent association with sleep outcomes in sleep, 38(5), p. 717–722.
[3]. Choy, M. & Salbu, R. L (2011) Jet Lag: Current and Potential Therapies in Pharmacy & Therapeutics, 36(4), p. 221-224.
[4] Bedrosian, T. A. & Nelson R. J. (2017) Timing of light exposure affects mood and brain circuits in Translational Psychiatry, Jan 31:7(1): e1017.
[5] Wehrens et al (2017) in Current Biology, June 27(12), p. 1768-1775.