When children cannot switch off at night
| Falling asleep, Rumination, Ages 9 to 12
The light is off, the door is ajar, and from the bedroom comes, for the fourth time: “I can’t fall asleep.” No fever, no thirst. The head simply keeps running.
Among children of primary and early secondary school age this is common, and the reason for it is unspectacular.
Why it starts in the evening
During the day the head is occupied. Lessons, homework, friends, screens, the walk to training: all of it takes up attention.
In the evening that occupation falls away. Whatever was not thought through during the day comes up now: the argument at break, the unanswered question of whether someone will really be waiting at after-school club tomorrow.
Then there is an amplifier. A child lying in the dark who notices that they are once again not falling asleep starts to think about not falling asleep. That second layer often keeps them awake longer than the thought that started it.
What helps during the day
A fixed worry time. Ten minutes early in the evening, always at the same time, always in the same place. Not in bed and not in the dark. The child says what is coming up, an adult listens and jots down the gist. What matters is the regularity, not the outcome. Many children put a subject down afterwards, because it has been given a place.
Make tomorrow concrete. Part of the carousel is made of loose ends. Who is picking me up, what goes in the kit bag. Five minutes talking the day through and putting the things out already removes exactly that part.
Paper and pencil beside the bed. So that a thought turning up at half past nine does not have to be guarded in the head until morning. For younger children a scribble is enough.
What helps in the moment
Do not talk it away. “That’s not so bad” ends the conversation but not the thinking. What holds up better is to name it and postpone it to tomorrow. “Sounds like trouble with Jonas. We’ll talk about it after breakfast.”
Give the thing a name. Children can do more with an image than with an explanation. If it is called “the carousel” or “the station that keeps broadcasting at night”, distance appears. The child then has something it has, rather than something it is.
A replacement thought rather than a ban. “Don’t think about it” does not work, because in order not to think of something you first have to think of it. What does work is something concrete and dull that takes up attention: walking the route to school backwards and taking in every house on the way, or opening every door in your grandparents’ flat in your head. Full of detail and free of tension.
A long breath out. Breathe in for four, out for six or eight. Children join in more readily when an adult sits beside them counting quietly and explains nothing further.
Loosen the body from the bottom up. Clench the toes hard, count to ten, let go. Then the calves, then the fists. It reliably distracts, because it is a task and not a resolution.
What tends to make it worse
Questioning at half past nine. The intention is good, the result is a wide-awake head and a conversation nobody has the patience for at that hour.
The screen as a way of settling down. It shortens the time until forgetting and lengthens the time until sleep.
Rules that change. Anyone who lets half an hour be negotiated on some evenings turns going to bed into the argument itself.
Pushing bedtime back for good. That creates more problems the next morning than it solves in the evening.
When it is more than a phase
A few restless weeks after changing school, after moving house or after illness in the family are part of life. It is worth paying attention when it goes on for many weeks almost every evening and the daytime suffers with it: stomach aches in the morning, withdrawing from things that used to be fun. At that point it belongs in a doctor’s surgery rather than a parenting forum. It has stopped being a question of upbringing.
The thought behind the thought
One point that often goes missing in practice: children take their thoughts for facts. “I’m bad at maths” does not feel like an opinion to a nine-year-old but like a property, about as changeable as shoe size. As long as that is the case there is nothing to settle in the evening, only something to endure.
Here an image helps more than a conversation about thoughts. The children’s novel “Mind Garden” uses the garden as a picture for the idea that not every seed landing in your head has to come up.
To close
One change at a time, and each one for at least two weeks. Bedtime routines rarely work on the first evening, and if several things are new at once, nobody can tell afterwards which of them helped.
This piece is by Dr. Wahed Hemati, author of the children’s novel Mind Garden: As You Think, So You Grow for children aged 9 and up.