bedtime pass Archives - Dr Keira Moore, BCBA-D

The Bedtime Pass: A get out of jail free card to solve your bedtime woes

As a parent, you've likely experienced countless nights when bedtime feels more like a never-ending encore of curtain calls, peppered with endless requests and questions from your little ones. The struggle of getting your child to stay in bed and sleep through the night can be a nightmare. If you're nodding your head in agreement, you're not alone. Fortunately, there's a behavior analytic technique that we use in sleep treatment that could bring some peace and quiet back to your evenings – the Bedtime Pass. In this post, we'll explore how the Bedtime Pass works, what the research says about it, and who can benefit the most from using it. What is the Bedtime Pass? Picture this: You've finished the bedtime stories, tucked your child in, and just when you’ve settled in to enjoy a little peace and quiet at the end of the night, you hear tiny footsteps. "I need water." "Can you check under the bed?" "One more story, please?" These bedtime encores can be frustrating and take up the little precious time you have for yourself at night. Even worse, middle-of-the-night wanderings can lead to a sleepless night for everyone. The Bedtime Pass can be an effective solution for [...]

I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed!!

Competing Activities at Bedtime Over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at the four main causes of most sleep problems and how to fix them. We’ve talked about how to make sure you are tired at bedtime, setting up regular bedtime routines, and finding healthy sleep dependencies. The fourth big cause of many sleep problems for both adults and children is competing activities. This one might seem a little too obvious, but sleep isn’t the most fun or exciting thing in the world (especially for kids), so of course, if there are other more fun things to do at bedtime, we are likely to choose fun over sleep. For most adults, we at least recognize the importance of a good night’s sleep and understand the impact of our choices if we don’t get to bed on time, but many children don’t yet have the reasoning and planning skills required to make good decisions at bedtime, which makes choosing fun over sleep all the more tempting. Setting Limits at Bedtime One of the best ways to help your child at bedtime is to set clear and reasonable limits, make sure those limits are transparent, and stick to them. Make sure your child [...]