Ways To Create A Healthy Sleep Environment
Did you know that the bedroom environment is one of the top determining factors in how well your child will sleep at night?
In fact, healthy sleep environments are not just linked to better rest… Healthy sleep environments are also linked to stronger growth, healthier development, and increased learning and cognition.
What is a healthy sleep environment?
A healthy sleep environment is just what it sounds like. It’s an area your child sleeps in that is designed to maximize rest.
The most typical sleep environment is your child’s bedroom, but it can be other areas of the home if your child co-sleeps, in-room sleeps, or shares a room with siblings.
Either way, where you set up your child's sleep environment is far less important than how you set up the environment. So in this post, we’ll outline the elements a kid-friendly sleep environment should include and how to use them to create an area that is optimally conducive to rest.
Elements of a Healthy Sleep Environment
#1. Cribs, Beds, & Comfort Items
Perhaps the most important element of a healthy sleep environment is where your child physically sleeps.
For safety, always ensure your child is on a firm mattress or sleep surface. If your child is under one year of age, also be sure to place them on their back for sleep and rid the crib of any loose pillows or blankets to help protect against Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). If your child is a climber, you’ll also want to utilize some protective measures such as guard rails, bumpers, or crib tents.
If your child is old enough, however, you may find it beneficial to include some comfort items in their crib, such as a lovey, a pacifier, or a blanket they are emotionally attached to.
#2. Low Lights
When creating a healthy sleep environment, it’s important to include conditions that de-stimulate your child as much as possible. In order to do this, you’ll want to minimize the amount of light in the room.
You can do this by dimming the lights, using lamps and night lights, closing window curtains, and eliminating screens up to one hour before bed.
This also includes eliminating the light from your own phone you may want to use while rocking or nursing your child to sleep, and light from any tablets your child is using to play or read before bed.
The goal of a healthy sleep environment is to prepare the body and the brain for rest, so stick to physical books for bedtime read-alouds and keep the screen time limited to use during the day.
#3. Quiet or Calming Audio
While low lights provide a de-stimulating visual cue for your child around bedtime, the use of quiet or calming audio can create a de-stimulating auditory cue around bedtime as well.
While total silence is recommended for children over the age of 4-6 months (so they are able to reach deep sleep), some children benefit from calming audio before bed. This can come from you singing or humming a lullaby, chimes from a crib mobile, low music through a speaker, or even a white noise machine.
We do, however, recommend choosing audio that can be left on all night. This way, if your child wakes up in the middle of the night, they won’t startle due to a change in the environment. If the same audio that was present when they fell asleep remains present throughout the night, they will be more likely to put themselves back to sleep.
#4. Cool Room Temperature
It’s not uncommon for most people to sleep better at slightly cooler temperatures than they prefer while awake, and your children are no different. As the body begins to release melatonin, a person’s internal body temperature can drop up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
Because of this, it is recommended that the temperature in a child’s bedroom be somewhere between 68 - 72 degrees Fahrenheit. This is also the recommended temperature range for protecting a child against SIDS.
Hot-natured parents often see no issue with this, but some parents that run on the cold side have valid concerns about this temperature being too low, often because their child’s hands or feet are cold when they change into their PJs. But before you run back to the thermostat, we recommend checking the back of your child’s neck.
Even if your child’s extremities are a little chilly, the back of their neck is a better gauge of their internal temperature. If the back of their neck is cold, then feel free to bump up the temp a degree or two, but if it is warm, it’s better to leave the thermostat where it is.
#5. Comfortable Clothing
Similar to a comfortable room temperature, you’ll also want to ensure your child is wearing comfortable clothing before they head to bed.
For most children, we recommend nothing more than a pair of light PJs. When placing your child in heavy or fleece pajamas, you run the risk of your child overheating or suffering from SIDS, but when placing them down in nothing more than a diaper, you run the risk of them getting too cold as their body temperature fluctuates throughout the night.
If your child is under 4 months of age, they are still safe to be put to bed in a swaddled blanket.
However, if your child is mobile, we recommend switching to a sleep sack if they require a tighter wrap or an extra layer. This is so their blankets will not become loose, unraveled, or a SIDS risk as your child begins to roll around throughout the night.
And, when paired with the other items on this list, comfortable clothing can be the icing the on the cake to help you create a healthy and optimal sleep environment.
