Spring Forward!

The part of the year that a lot of parents get a little anxious about – day light savings time! “Spring forward”, which usually happens around March is not too bad. Most children will wake up an hour later than their normal wake up, especially if you make no changes to their schedule leading up to the day the clocks change. Below are a few tips to help your children with day light savings, “spring forward”, happening on March 11th, 2018 in Canada:

1) This is a blessing for some! When your child wakes up in the morning, you may notice that they wake up an hour later. For example, if your child’s normal wake up is 6am, they may wake up at 7am on the morning of the time change. If you are OK with the new wake time, move everything an hour later such as, naps, meals/feedings and bedtime. This way their schedule will remain the same. As children’s internal clock is especially strong, you need to continue to stick to the new schedule for a few days for it to stay the same and not revert back to their old schedule.

2) If you want to continue their normal schedule as it works with the time you need to get them ready for school/daycare or other obligations such as work, etc. then you will need to shift your child’s entire schedule to prepare for the time change. For example, you can shift everything by 10 minutes each day to reach the full hour before the time change occurs. You will need to change naps, meals/feedings as well as bedtime by 10 minutes. If your child is not that sensitive, you can increase the 10 minutes to 15 or 20 minutes to reach that hour each day. Depends on how your child handles it. This does not need to happen prior to daylight savings, but can happen the week of.

If you have any questions regarding day light savings time or require any support, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Anita Patel
Certified Pediatric Sleep Consultant
info@hushbabyhush.com
(416) 885-2235
www.hushbabyhush.com

March 5, 2018