With the impending clock change this weekend and countries in Europe having to put their clocks forward, as a Parent you may be wondering how this will affect your children....

The good news is if you have a baby or child who usually wakes early at 5 or 6am, it will actually feel like you have had a lie in until 7am now the clock has moved forward, despite them waking at their usual time!

The bad news is that the clock change brings lighter evenings and lighter mornings, which makes it essential for you to get your little ones room as dark as possible, by using a blackout blind and blackout curtains as soon as possible.

This will stop the light streaming in from 5am making your little one think it must be time to get up, especially as the birds are singing 'good morning!'

With toddlers, keeping the room as dark as possible will also help when putting them to bed and stop the protest of 'but it's still light outside so it's not bedtime.'

As part of your wind down routine it's a good idea to pop into their room after tea and pull down the blind and close the curtains, so that when it is time to go to bed, the bedroom is all ready and a calming environment has been created.

A wake up clock with a sun and moon face like these ones from The gro Company

Or setting a simple lamp on a timer to switch on at an acceptable wake up time, can give toddlers and older children a positive cue for the right time to get up.

For babies who are still having a late feed or overnight feed, they may happily sleep in a little until the new time one hour later and over the course of the day you can adapt their feed and nap times by 15 mins,  to get them onto the new time.

This may take you a couple of days, but again, a spring forward in time doesn't usually affect everyone too badly if they still sleep in to their usual time.

If you would like to get them straight onto the new time, then your usual 11pm late feed that many babies have, can just be given 30 minutes earlier to compensate for the spring forward in time.

I hope you found this post helpful

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