Make Your Kid's Bedtime Battle-Free

Most parents can trade war stories about their kid's bedtime. Christine Althoff sits in her daughter Claire's doorway every night until she falls asleep. She's been doing this for more than five years.

Until her twin sisters were born, Claire, now 7, was rocked to sleep. In an effort to get Claire to fall asleep on her own, Althoff began sitting at her bedside every night. The doorway is as far as she got in trying to work her way out of her daughter's bedroom.

"I don't like it," says Althoff, a Little Rock, Ark. attorney, "but I know that I created it."

A battle-free bedtime is the goal of every parent, says Jennifer Waldburger, co-founder of Sleepy Planet, a Los Angeles-based child sleep consultation firm. She tells WebMD many parents fall short because they don't see the bigger picture.

The key in establishing a child's bedtime routine is to delineate between what your child needs and what she wants, she says. "What she needs is some time with you and good sleep. There's a whole war between a parent's head and heart that keeps them from doing [the right things]."

The stakes are high. Insufficient sleep not only affects a child's development, behavior, and emotions, says Waldburger, it has been linked to a greater incidence of obesity.

Here are 10 tips for creating a bedtime routine and ritual that can help take the battle out of your kid's bedtime.

Make Sure Your Child's Bedtime Is Early Enough

Parents will often tell Waldburger their child doesn't seem tired at bedtime so they allow him to stay up longer. Big mistake, she says. "Once a child is overtired, a stress hormone called cortisol is released, which makes it hard to settle in and causes a child to wake up more throughout the night and wake up too early [in the morning.]"

If your child is overtired, says Nicholas Long, PhD, a child psychologist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, it may actually take her longer to fall asleep. Moving her bedtime up by 30 minutes may get your child to bed before she becomes overtired.

Keep Your Child's Bedtime Consistent

Don't stray too far from what you establish as the appropriate bedtime, says Waldburger. Consistency is crucial. That means that bedtime stays the same even on the weekends and during the summer when days are longer.

And when, as inevitably happens, your child does go to bed later than usual, try to get him up about the same time, says Long, who is also the director of the Center for Effective Parenting in Little Rock. It's important not to let your child sleep in sometimes and not others, so he doesn't start shifting his sleep pattern.