Spring Daylight Savings Time

Welcome to Podcast Wednesday! The days are getting longer, the light is getting brighter and you know what that means… Daylight savings time is upon us! I know this is dreaded by so many of you, but let me tell ya- it doesn’t have to rock your world. This episode is designed to give you tangible tips on how to navigate this time change without it being all-consuming. We have gotten through so much worse than this one hour time change you guys, we can handle this!

I am going to keep this short and sweet, because we do not need to overthink Daylight Savings Time. So often we get more nervous about what it’s going to be than what it actually is. Let’s dive in!

Any time we are looking at sleep we are looking at our two sleep drives: circadian rhythm and sleep pressure.

 Sleep pressure is about being the right amount of tired when a kid goes down, it is that magic window where your kiddo is the perfect amount of tired. The thing with Daylight Savings is we are messing with that 24-hour clock. We are going to jump ahead and lose an hour in our day, so the sleep routine you have now that works for you is going to be shifted.

The key here is to wake your child up when the clock says the desired wake time. Say your desired wake time is 6:30 in the morning when the clock jumps ahead and says 6:30 it will feel like 5:30 in your kiddo’s body. You have a half-hour cushion here- you can wake them up at 7 or 6:30. Your kiddo will start by being a little snoozy at wake up, but you are only a half-hour off so you can make up that half-hour of missed sleep during the day.

If you want to be proactive about this, you can put them to bed an hour or half an hour early the night before Daylight Savings. This may look like capping their last nap of the day, so they have the right amount of wake time before their new bedtime. It will depend on your kiddos age and sleep stage.

Also, we are going to control the environment when it comes to light. We want to expose kiddos to sunlight (or manufactured light!) until half an hour before bedtime, then you can wind down. On the other end, in the morning when we wake our kiddos up we want them to be in the dark up until their desired wake time. So, when it is the desired wake time you can turn on the lights to announce that it is awake time in order to help your kiddo's body realign their circadian rhythm.

The next step is tweaking sleep pressure. If your kiddo has not been waking up at the time you want, do nothing. If you have always wanted them to sleep in until 6 and they are usually up at 5, then Daylight Savings is your best friend. The key here is to make sure that their sleep pressure is solid during this first day so that they can go to bed at their new time without turning Daylight Savings time into a multiple-day sleep adjustment process.

Freebie Alert!! I created a free sleep guide for you all that outlines a sample schedule for you all focusing on sleep pressure.

Head on over to seedandsew.org/sleep and snag that freebie to help guide you on this sleep pressure journey. And if you haven’t yet, head on over to our @Seed.Sleep Instagram where sleep consultant Rachel will be navigating daylight savings time in real-time for y’all. She will be around to answer any sleep questions you might have during this transition and to offer support. Slide her a DM and she’ll be more than happy to support you during this Daylight Savings navigation! Happy snoozing!