Fall 2021 Daylight Saving Time

0:00:00    Alyssa

You listening to Voices of Your Village. This is episode 197. This is a quick episode about Daylight Saving Time that happens this weekend. It's around the corner. And this episode's going to guide you through what it looks like, how to support your tiny human. And if you want this in PDF version, we created a free guide for you. If you head to seedandsew.org/falldst like daylight saving time, you can snag that free guide, and we walk you through two different plans, one what to do to support them upfront preemptively, and the other plan, If you are like me, wait and see how the chips fall on Sunday and then troubleshoot after. One of these is not better than the other. They're just two different ways to approach it. So head on over to seedandsew.org/falldst to snag that guide. All right, folks, let's dive in. 

00:01:03    Alyssa

Welcome to Voices of Your Village, a place where parents, caregivers, teachers and experts come to support one another on this wild ride of raising tiny humans. We combined decades of experience with the latest research to create the modern parenting village. Let's dive into honest conversation about real parenting challenges, so it doesn't have to be this hard. I'm your host, Alyssa Blask Campbell.  

00:01:33    Alyssa

You guys, There's one thing that I can say that every parent is like, oh, my God. Stop. Is that here again? And guess what, guys? It's here again. It's daylight savings time, and we get to navigate kiddos, sleep changes. All right. So here's the deal. There are two things we're really paying attention to for Daylight Savings Time, light and sleep pressure. Light, exposure to light regulates your circadian rhythm, and it tells your body when it's time to be awake. And when it's time to be asleep, it helps our bodies with melatonin production, which helps us fall asleep and stay asleep. And so lights going to play a big role here. We want to make sure that kiddos are exposed to light when we want them to be awake and not exposed to light. And we don't want them to be awake. You might be like, Alyssa. This is crazy, because I can't keep my kid in there room for an hour in the dark. And like, no, that would be wild and really hard to do. But we can talk about ways to navigate this so that they are in the dark for longer periods of time in the morning, as we get closer to the desired wake time, Because here's the deal for the fall daylight savings time. What's going to happen Is that say, you get you want your kid awake at 6 am, say that's your target wake time. Their body clock is going to be seven o'clock in the morning. So if your kiddo usually wakes up around 6:00, when they get up at what feels like six o'clock in their body, they'll clock In your room is going to say, 5:00 am, And you're going to be like, oh no, nobody wants to get up at 5 am. So the ultimate goal here is that on the Saturday night before daylight savings that we have kiddos going to bed an hour later than usual. So if they usually go to bed at 7:00 pm And sleep till 6 am You want them to go to bed at 8:00 pm And sleep until what in their body will feel like 7 am, But on the clock will be 6 am, And then you're set up for the rest of the day, and you're good to go. And you can operate as normal. 

00:04:00    Alyssa

However, you cannot simply put your kid to bed an hour later, without adjusting naps or anything else, because this is going to mess with their sleep pressure. They're going to end up going down, overtired. How many of you have ever been like, oh, we're going to go to this family party, And then we're just going to power through for an extra hour. It'll be fine. And then you end up with like a melting child. Everything's a disaster. They fight bedtime because they're overtired. They wake up in the middle of the night because their sleep pressures off, and you're like, oh my God, what do we do? We cannot simply move bedtime an hour later, without adjusting naps. So you have a couple options here. You can either look back and say, like, okay, we're going to go back a couple days and move naps and bedtime and morning wake time a little bit later each day, or you can play the day of with naps. So it might be like, oh, we're going to, if your kiddo takes two naps, you might be adjusting each nap by like half an hour later, just pushing the envelope a little bit, And then maybe they're going to end up waking up a half an hour earlier the next Sunday after daylight savings time, and then you'll just have a half an hour to adjust. You can do it that way. Some people fall into the camp of like plan B, where they're like, while just see what happens and adjust from there. That's fine, too. But you will likely have adjustments then on Sunday, and then going back into the week on Monday. One thing that's huge here, whether you're adjusting ahead of time or you're going to make adjustments later, the way to make adjustments is to keep kiddos in the dark when you want them to be asleep. Even if they're not asleep, It might mean you're like rocking and snuggling, or you have a low like warm light would be okay. And like reading books in there in the morning, or doing milk in there in the morning, but trying to keep kiddos in the dark when you want them to be asleep. 

00:06:07    Alyssa

Now, as we switch here, and we're going to have, especially in the Northeast, if all of a sudden, we like lose daylight during this, a key part is going to be turning lights on in your house and exposing kids to light in the evening time when we want them to be awake, We don't want the body to be like, oh, I haven't been exposed to light, or there's really low lighting in the house. And so now I'm going to kick start my melatonin production earlier than we actually want kiddos to go down to bed. So making sure that in the afternoon evening times we’re keeping them exposed to light when we want them awake. And then in the morning time we aren't exposing them to light until we want them awake. If you do nothing, and you put your kiddo down at the 7:00 pm on Saturday, hoping to see them at 6 am the next day, it's not their fault, or they didn't do anything wrong if they wake up and the clock says 5 am. If that's the case, then you're going to adjust nap time. If your kid awakes it 5:00 am, And usually they take a nap from 11:30 to 1:30, I would shoot for putting them down for a nap at 11 They're probably going to be tired By 10:30. I would push them to that 11 o'clock mark and see how that goes over. And then you might adjust bedtime a little bit too, its guys, it's very similar to if you're just like traveling and you're going to be moving to different time zones, Etc. It's a this is a very doable thing. I think we make a giant deal out of daylight savings. But really, it can be small tweaks in timing and adjustments there. So don't you worry my friend. We've got your back through this, and we'll support you along the way. All right, good luck!

00:08:01    Alyssa

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