Bedtime Tools For Kids

Door Abigail W

Wat je zal leren

Over the next seven days, your children will learn the different reasons they might have a hard time falling asleep and how to use meditation and mindfulness practices to relax their mind and body and help them fall asleep. Bedtime can be so challenging for children (and adults). We live in a busy, overstimulating world that doesn’t teach us the tools to calm our minds and bodies down to help us fall asleep, and be able to fall back asleep if we wake up. Bedtime might be the first time a kid is not stimulated the entire day. It can be really challenging to go from constant stimulation of sounds, lights, screens, smells, people, and things to do, to quiet. The meditations are designed to keep your child gently engaged in the relaxing practices to help them ease into sleep. You and your children are welcome to try this course in two different ways. Your child can learn the practices during the day and try them out at night, or your child can listen to this course as they fall asleep and follow along with the practice in bed. They can also do both: learn the practices during the day and then, follow along and practice together with me at bedtime. Days 6 and 7 are best for bedtime. These last two sessions are longer sessions where I combine a few practices your child has learned in days 1 to 5. Each session will end with a loving thoughts practice, which gently fades off to allow your child to fall into sleep or to remain asleep if they have already drifted off. This course is led by Abigail Wilber, a leader in mindfulness education for children and advocate of sleep. This course was created with kids aged 5 to 12 in mind, but it is suitable for anyone interested in bedtime meditations. This course is designed to support you and your children with tools to help your child relax their mind, body, and emotions to support falling asleep at bedtime.

Abigail W

Denver, CO, USA

Abigail Wilber is an educator, public speaker, and coach. Her passion is to empower people by giving them the tools to support them to navigate the challenges of life. One of her life goals is to make mindfulness inclusive, adaptive, and relevant to all ages. Abigail was first introduced to yoga and mindfulness through an 8-week MBSR...

Les 1

Calming Breath

In this first session, we explore why it might be hard to fall asleep. Children's bodies might have a lot of energy, their minds might have a lot of thoughts, and sometimes they have big emotions that keep them awake. Slow breathing practices can help people engage their parasympathetic nervous system aka "rest and digest" to promote relaxation. Our breath is directly linked to our nervous system. This is one way kids (and adults) can settle their bodies. When kids learn how to take slow full breaths it can help calm their body and support them to fall asleep. We will do a calming breath practice where your child will learn how to breathe into their belly and chest to take a full breath in and out. They can grab their favorite soft toy to use as a "breathing buddy" for this session.

Les 2

Tense & Relax

In this session, your child will learn why sleep is important to their well-being and a new bedtime practice to support relaxing their body. When children's bodies have so much energy it can be challenging to lay in bed and fall asleep. To meet that energy we will do a progressive muscle relaxation practice called "tense and relax" to help their body settle. After tense and relax, we will do a breathing practice to promote a deeper state of relaxation. This practice is recommended for bedtime.

Les 3

Peaceful Light

Children (and adults) might feel tired, but a busy mind can keep them awake and make bedtime more of a struggle. Instead of fighting with a busy mind, children can learn how to direct their mind to help focus it on the present moment. In this session, we will practice a guided meditation by imagining and moving a "peaceful light" through our body. This keeps the mind gently engaged and promotes peaceful feelings while relaxing the body.

Les 4

Settle Into The Present

Sometimes, children can have big emotions like excitement that can make it hard to fall asleep. Their body wants to move, their mouth wants to talk, and their mind wants to think about what they are excited about. Excitement is a strong emotion and because it feels good, it is extra challenging to tell excitement to go away so they can go to sleep. In this session, we will explore the room with three senses: sight, sound, and touch to help bring kids into the present moment and settle their mind and body to help them get ready to sleep.

Les 5

Loving Thoughts

Sometimes, kids have big emotions like worry and stress that can make it hard to fall asleep. They might have worries about the day or worries about upcoming events like tests or big games, they might worry about people they love. These worries can make it challenging to fall asleep and stay asleep at night. In this session, we will practice using our mind and breath to calm our worries with a kid friendly loving-kindness practice. Your child can grab their favorite soft toy to use as a breathing buddy and companion for this session.

Les 6

Putting It All together

Today, we are putting together some of the practices your child has already learned. In this extended bedtime practice, we will use our body, mind, and breath to help relax and promote restful sleep. This extra long practice will begin with tense and relax, then move into calming breath and end with a new practice called a body scan. A body scan is where you use your mind to feel the different parts of your body without moving your body. This long practice is intended to be done at bedtime, so it's okay if your child falls asleep during it.

Les 7

Putting It All Together With Relaxing Background Sounds

Today, we will put together some of the other practices your child has learned for an extended bedtime meditation. We will start with the peaceful light meditation, move into a loving thoughts practice and end with a loving breath practice. This long practice is intended to be done at bedtime, so it's okay if your child falls asleep during it. This session includes relaxing background sounds.