Tips for helping babies and toddlers adjust to Daylight Saving Time

Photo credit: Dakota Corbin

Fall back baby!

This small change can mess with the entire families sleep schedule, and can be very scary if you already have an early riser! If you are already exhausted because your little one likes to rise with the sun at 5:30, imagine 4:30… no way! So how can we make this easier on our babies and ourselves?

Daylight Saving Time is Sunday November 1, 2020 at 2:00 am. Clocks “fall” back one hour.

For the three days following the time change you will need to adjust nap and night timing. If your little one usually takes a morning nap around 9:30 am, adjust this to 9:00 am. This will feel like 10 am for the three days after the time change. Do the same for the afternoon nap.

Put your child to bed half an hour earlier for the night as well. If he goes to bed at 7:30 pm normally, put him down at 7 (remember this will feel like 8). And it will take about a week for your child’s body to get used to this. If your child is tired earlier try stretching the time before bed with a nice long bath. Most children are happy to play in the bath a while!

>> How to manage sleep with a sick baby

If you have children over the age of two, you can put a digital clock in the room and put a piece of tape over the minutes, so that they can see if it is 6 o’clock or 7 o’clock, but they cannot see the minutes, which often confuses toddlers. Just set the clock forward half an hour so that at 6:30 it says 7:00 and let them get up a little earlier than normal, knowing that, by the end of the week, they will be back on track and sleep until their normal wakeup time.

>> Daylight Saving Tips from Cheeky Chops

A baby can’t tell time, so instead wait 15 minutes each day. So if your baby wakes at 7:00 am normally and starts calling out at 6 am (new time), wait till 6:15 the first day then go and get her, 6:30 the next, then 6;45 and on night 4:00 go and get her at 7:00 new time.