Daylight Savings: Fall Back Edition

Remember Daylight Savings before kids when it meant you would get an extra hour of sleep and now it means a disruption to your little one’s sleep routine. It is scary to think about them potentially waking up an hour earlier than usual or throwing off their routines and typically fills parents with dread. So how can we make this annoying time change a little less painful?

First off, hold off on changing your clocks (and avoid looking at your phone if possible!). Wake up Sunday morning at your usual time and get the day started. Get the kids up, breakfast ready and then switch over the clocks. This is simply just a quick mental trick to make waking up during Daylight Savings a little less upsetting. It may still be early but at least we won’t begrudgingly look at the clock at be annoyed it says 6am instead of 7am!

Next up, how do we approach naps? Put your little one down for a nap about 30 minutes earlier than you normally would. For example, if you usually put down your baby for a nap at 9:30am, try to put them down at 9am instead. Remember it will FEEL like 10am to them! The goal is to try to reset their internal body clock to adjust to the time change.

Alright, let’s talk bed time! We are going to take them same approach as we did for naps and for the first 3 nights after time change, put your little one to bed 30 minutes earlier than normal. If they are used to a 7pm bedtime, move it up to 6:30pm. Again this is going to feel later to them. After 3 nights of an earlier bedtime, you can go right back to their normal 7pm bedtime.

If you are still stressing about Daylight Savings and how your little one is going to adjust, let’s chat! I love supporting families and their little ones through sleep challenges like Daylight Savings!