When do the clocks go back? What can I do to make sure it doesn't effect my families routine? How can I make sure my children still sleep well?
These are some of the things parents are likely to have on their mind, as summer comes to an end and the autumn chill takes hold, longer nights and shorter days are inevitable. With the clocks jumping back an hour its easy to see how families with young children may be effected by the sudden jolt.
We have put together a list of things you can do as parents to help make the transition a little smoother. But first...
When do the clocks go back?
This year the clocks are set to go back Sunday 29th October at 2am (going back to 1am) meaning if your lucky, or don’t have kids you will be able to have a nice lie-in Sunday morning.
For parents, this means if you don’t take action before then you will be greeted with an unpleasant wake up call sometime between 5 to 7 in the morning depending on when you usually get up.
Why do the Clocks go Back?
Long story short, we put the clocks back to make better use of natural daylight in the morning. This is because during the winter solstice we get less than 8 hours of sunlight!
So, if we didn’t put our clocks back, sunrise would be somewhere around 9AM and sunset at around 5PM. Because we put our clocks back, the morning commute becomes a bit more bearable with sunlight creeping in as we leave the house, however it does mean its dark by the time we start heading home for the day.
What can you do to make the transition easier?
Slowly change bedtime over the course of a week before
Instead of jumping a whole hour in one go, its better to ease your child’s body clock into the new time zone.
For this, pushing bedtime back by 10 minutes each day leading up to Saturday night will mean they will already have the correct schedule for Sunday morning.
Adjust other routines
Its one thing to change bedtime. However, other daily routines will need to be changed to line up correctly, things like mealtime, naps and maybe even bath time need to be slowly shifted so that your little one is used to the new times.
Do something active in the evenings
Maybe over the weekend, make sure each evening you end the day with a fun and tiring activity, let your kids burn through some energy, this should help them get to sleep quicker and hopefully for longer, waking up slightly later than usual as the clocks go back.
Teach them why/explain the extra hour in bed
This is only applicable to parents of older kids. As being able to tell them why we get an extra hour at bedtime might be a fun learning activity for them where you can then come up with something to do together, like story-time to make the hour go quicker the night before.
Thank you for reading our tips on making sure your schedule isn’t affected to much when the clocks go back. With longer nights also means colder weather, so why not have a look at some of our autumn and winter wear for your little ones!
Wellies, Wellie socks, Dressing gowns and more!
