How long does bedtime take in your house?
According to a survey of 2,000 parents by Better Bathrooms, the average bedtime routine for toddlers takes 90 minutes. Am I alone in thinking that sounds like a pretty swift bedtime routine?!
The survey sought to find out how much time mums and dads spend on the bedtime routine of any children under the age of three.
Respondents said 22 minutes of the bedtime routine is spent reading a story, and the research found that the longest, most time-consuming part of the whole bedtime routine process was a tie between story and bath time; parents agreed that the seemingly simple matter of dunking their little terrors into a bath full of water to sluice off the dirt they'd coated themselves in during the course of the day took, well, ages. First there's trying to persuade them to get in, then there's trying to persuade them to come out, after they start playing with their rubber duckies, plastic action figures, Elsa dolls etc.
And 55% of parents say they have missed out on their own dinner because of the time spent putting their child to bed. It's also often a two-person job; 45% of parents say that it takes BOTH parents to get their child off to sleep, working like a well-oiled, if slightly ratty tag team. Is it any wonder, therefore, that 15% of men, and 10% of women have stayed late at the office just to avoid this fractious, somewhat tedious task?
Perhaps ill-advisedly, 14% of all parents regularly (most if not every night) let their child sleep in their bed; presumably, fed up with trying to wrangle it into its own cot or bunk, they give up and just let it do what it likes. Yes, guilty as charged. So sue me.
"Every parent knows how challenging it can be to get your kids to sleep when they don't want to," says Colin Stevens, CEO of Better Bathrooms. "Bath time is an NHS recommended way of helping kids get to sleep and by the time it's over, you might just want to pop in the tub and relax yourself!"
Nice idea but, alas, the thought of cleaning the bath and ridding it of a thousand bath toys before I can sink into it somehow always puts me off.
What's the bedtime routine like in your house? We'd love to hear about it. Leave us a comment here or come and join the conversation over on our Facebook page.
90Mins i would lose the wikl to live 10 mins is a long time to get hin to sleep give him a bottle leave his dummy beside him tell him i love him good night and go
My little one doesn't have a bed time. When we take her to bed we stay with her & it can take hours before she sleeps, thats if she sleeps. Keeping her in bed is a major challenge. Sometimes she crashes mid play so we carry her to bed. Most nights she either doesnt sleep until the early hours or sleeps and wakes up multiple times at ungodly hours.
Just before the school holidays she did fall asleep at 9pm (we were like Omg! It's amazing!) But short lived as she got up at 2am (so we were all up), she didn't go back to sleep, she went to school had a great day and then got home and crashed at 3pm and woke up at 10pm ready to play. Not much quality sleep in our house.
My daughter now six, was a dream putting to bed...and in a toddler bed age 16 months. Never heard a peep from her after putting her to bed. My son nearly two is a different story.! Never seems tired! shouts from his room (still in cot as he's most definitely never stay in a toddler bed) has bath stories, lullaby music...nothing winds him down for bed. He literally takes hours to go to sleep!!