If bedtime means dread-time in your house, listen to this relaxed session of Sensory Chat where four international therapists chat over practical tips on helping your little one move towards a sleepy state. What is down-regulation? How can you use the sensory experiences of light, temperature, touch and taste to help get your toddler ready for sleep? Why does making the transition to bedtime longer and slower help, even when it’s probably the last thing you want to do! Listen to this final episode in the current series of Sensory Chat to find out how reframing your view of your child’s bedtime process can improve both your experiences of it. Transcript Lelanie Welcome to sensory chat, in today's episode we're going to be looking at the end of the day, getting ready for bed. What is the process involved in that and how that can be quite challenging for little ones with sensory difficulties. This is for parents, but will also be useful for teachers and healthcare professionals to listen to. Amy So when we're thinking about the state that your brain and your nervous system needs to be in, in order to be able to rest, in order to be able to fall asleep. There's a process of sort of calming down and it's not just sort of chilling out, but that kind of whole body, whole brain calming down, that we call that process of regulation and down-regulation. So I'm wondering if maybe we could just start talking a little bit about what down-regulation means. Angela, is that something that you would be happy to kick us off with? Angela Sure. So down-regulation is, I guess, working towards this sleepy state, you know, we need to be in a sleepy state to be able to then fall asleep. I guess how far we are away from that sleepy state can change each day, you know. And so this can be a real challenge around bedtime because you know, children, you know, may present as quite excited. And so then we perhaps need to work a little bit harder, or for longer, to reach this sleepy state. Amy So definitely in ASI, one of the ways we describe that is trying to get down to baseline for bedtime. And when we mean that, we mean quite a lot of work that goes into managing the chemicals in your brain. So your neurotransmitters and the hormones that are going to allow you to calm yourself down. So we know that neurotransmitters and hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, those pep you up, give you energy to keep you going, but we're talking here about the opposite. So the parts of your nervous system that allow you to chill out and calm down, Lelanie, what are some of the things, what are some of the kind of sensory strategies generally that are useful for helping people to down-regulate, helping people to calm? Lelanie So one of the things that I think about a lot is around evening time, children are exhausted, and they often get this extra burst of energy running around the house. And then you have excited parents coming from work, tossing children up in the air, which sometimes doesn't help the frazzled parent who is at home with the child that time of day. It's about, for me, it's about slowing down, being calm, getting calm down. I actually think in Europe and it's very hard in the summer because you have the sun shining until 11 o'clock at night in some places, thinking about my colleagues in Scandinavia where it's sunshine so that's really hard. You want to sort of create the atmosphere as well to set the scene because a two year old doesn't have that instinctive cue, it can't make the connection, I’m tired, I need to slow down. So you need to structure it for them. If you're somewhere bright and sunny, think about curtains that are lined and blacked out or in the winter start dimming lights and just turn the TV volume down, maybe change to a calming program. I know there are BBC programs that used to be on like ‘In the night garden’, which is super annoying, but the tune is very calm and relaxing and thinking about something that is low in excitement and arousal, just to bring that calm vibe. Also in terms of eating, maybe don't eat too late at night and have lots of bright toys or excitable things around and just start packing things away slowly to almost decrease the temptation to still keep going. Amy So I'm hearing that one of the things that probably would be helpful that parents might, might be able to kind of emphasize more, is making that transition into bedtime longer and slower. So starting earlier with sort of just starting to change the pace down, to change the light levels that are around. It's very interesting to me, I’ve done quite a bit of research on, kind of what happens to your brain in terms of the light levels for sleeping. So one of the things that we know is some of the hormones that help you, it’s two different hormones, so one hormone helps you to fall asleep and a different hormone helps you to have the urge to go to bed and rest. So what you're hoping for is you're going to have high ...
