6 Tips To Help Your Child Sleep While Travelling
Travelling with your baby or toddler and wondering how to help them sleep well during these times?
Here are 6 tips to help your child sleep while travelling:
1. Keep Routine The Same:
Routines are very important and beneficial when it comes to sleep. By having a bedtime and nap-time routine, it helps the body anticipate and prepare for sleep. Keeping the order the same when you are not at home helps the body to know that sleep is approaching and allows the body to relax, prepare for sleep and start producing/releasing melatonin.
2. Bring Comfort Items:
Bring things for your child that will help them to feel secure and have some familiarity. This can be their sleep sack, stuffed animal, blanket, their own crib sheet, sound machine or a special book. Hold their comfort item, crib sheet or sleep sack so it smells like you prior to their nap to help them feel even more secure when they go to sleep.
3. Keep The Schedule The Same 80% Of The Time:
Although sticking to the schedule is nice, and will help your child adapt well to a new place, having flexibility is okay too. As long as you are following your schedule 80% of the time, your child will adjust, and go back to their schedule normally afterwards. This means having car naps, shorter naps, or skipping their nap (if they are a bit older) if you are not home now and then is okay. This will allow you to enjoy fun events or do things with your child.
4. Move Up Bedtime If Naps Were Shorter:
This can apply any time, if your child has short naps. Whether they had a shorter car nap, got down a bit later because you were out or didn’t sleep well in a new environment, move up their bedtime. This helps to make up for the lost sleep in the day and to make sure the wake window before bed isn’t too long, to prevent an early morning wake up. Bedtime can be moved up 10-30 minutes. If it was a really bad day, it can be moved up as early as 45 minutes to an hour. Watch your child’s tired cues and see what works best for them and adjust for the future as needed. Make sure to keep their wake up time in the morning the same. If they wake up early, try your best to keep them in their room until normal walk up time or go in and hold them (in the dark) until that desired wake up time. This will help to get their naps back on track.
5. Mimic The Same Room Environment:
Bring travel blackout blinds, cardboard and black garbage bags, or use a SlumberPod (you can use my discount code: Sleepserenityconsulting). By making the room pitch-black, it will help them to not only sleep better, but also help them fall asleep more easily as they are not looking around at an unfamiliar room. This will also help them to nap longer and fall back to sleep more easily. Bring a fan if needed to help keep the room a bit cooler if you are not able to control the temperature and/or dress them according to the temperature.
If your baby or toddler has not slept in a pack’n play before, you can practice this at home, in their room, to help them adjust.
6. Car Naps:
If you are doing a car nap, go into the car 10-15 minutes prior to the nap to prevent them from getting over tired. This helps them to get used to the ride and get ready to sleep. You can bring a portable sound machine (or white noise on your phone) and you can bring a blanket to put on the window to block the light and limit stimulation. Although this is not an issue for all children, and sometimes the sun can actually cause them to close their eyes and help them fall asleep. If the car nap was short, move up the next nap or bedtime.
Low Expectations, Enjoy Your Time
Travelling isn’t the time to over analyze and have perfect sleep. Try and go with the flow, expect that their sleep won’t be ideal all the time, and make adjustments as needed. Enjoy that time with your family and worry about getting them back on track when you get home.
Time Change:
If you are traveling further away where you are dealing with a time change or going on an airplane, do your best to try and create a plan before hand. This can help you feel less anxious and feel like you have some chance of staying on track, even though it may not always go as planned.
If you are doing a smaller time change, try to slowly shift the schedule by 10-15 minutes a day, by either waking them up later, or waking them earlier to adjust for this time change. Try to do this a week before your trip to help them to adjust.
If you are doing a longer time difference, then you can either add in another nap, shorten naps to do an earlier bedtime, or shorten night sleep to adjust to these flights and time changes.
Know that it is okay to hold your baby during these times for their naps or to help them sleep to get them on their new schedule and to get over their jet leg. It takes some time for them to adjust but it will not affect their ability to fall asleep on their own once they get onto their schedule. Watch your child’s tired cues and put them down early as-needed. When they are jet-legged they may not be able to stay awake as long as they normally would.
If you are struggling with your child’s sleep after travelling, reach out, I can help you!