No matter what approach we take with bedtime (even if you want to, ahem, teach your child learned helplessness with the “cry it out” approach : ) …… the time leading up to it, can be nurturing. Ah yes the humanistic approach: “You don’t really have a choice, but we’ll tell you that in a kind, yet subtly dismissing tone, so that you don’t know what hit you.”

Back to the Sleep Frame and the Waldorf tradition.  Consistently do the exact same “activities”  in a row before bed (the actual time of bed is secondary to the importance of the rhythm).

The pattern allows the child to receive unspoken cues  that bedtime is on its way. In time, the body associates the rhythm with “slowing down” and resting. As well, the rhythm itself is nurturing and gives the child a sense of security of expecting the “slowing down” and knowing what is next.

The sleep frame can be used to soften “sleep manipulation” and to create nurturing time  with our children before they FREESLEEP?  Did I just coin a new term?

Will you join me in freeing our children from the “shackles” of “sleep manipulation”?

Tell me about your evening rhythm or “Sleep Frame”  or lack of it (please tell me I’m not the only one!) and the quality it brings to your evening and relationship to your children?

Keep me accountable and inspire me, K? Seriously if I can dig myself out of the “sleep hole dramas” that I have created in my life, anyone can!