Bedtime routines usually fall apart for one of two reasons: There's no real structure, or there is a routine but it collapses the moment your kid pushes back.

Commands and threats might get short-term compliance, but they don't actually teach anything. The fix is the Limit Setting Formula: tell your kid what they can have or do, and under what condition. Then hold it (even through the meltdown that follows).

And when bedtime runs long because of a meltdown or stalling, follow up the next day with restitution or a natural consequence for the time and energy it cost you.

If your family is struggling with bedtime, it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with you or your kid. It means that you're missing a parenting skill or need some more information. Some of parenting is intuitive, but there are also a lot of skills that you have to build along the way.

You’ll Learn:

• The 2 totally solvable problems that are making bedtime chaotic
• Why commands and threats backfire at bedtime (and what to do instead)
• How to use the Limit Setting Formula to set a bedtime limit
• What to do (and not do) right after you state the limit
• How to follow up the next day with consequences and restitution

In this episode, I’ll show you how to build a bedtime routine that actually feels doable and how to use clear limits and consequences when bedtime goes sideways. Over time, your child will internalize this new routine, so you can stop repeating, reminding, and yelling every night.

Read the full show notes here.

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Related Episodes:

• Episode 65: Sleep Struggles: Helping Kids Master Self-Soothing Skills
• Episode 5: Rethinking Consequences
• Episode 4: Setting Limits That Work

Free Resources:

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In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Toolkit here

Connect With Darlynn:

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
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• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama.

I'm your host. I'm Darlan Childress, and I'm a life and parenting coach. And

over the last few weeks, I've been doing kind of a back-to-school series.

And last week I talked about your morning routine and how to

get those drop-offs to be calmer. So today I wanna close that

loop and talk about the other frustrating time in the day,

which is bedtime. So bedtime is one of those routines that

feels like it should be simple, right? Pajamas, brush teeth, read a book,

quick snuggles, lights out. But then it always seems like

40, you're like, okay, time for bed. And you've said it 4 times

and someone's crying about a stuffed animal and you're standing in the hallway and

you're like, how did this become the hardest part of my day? And I had

a client recently talk about it and she calls it the gauntlet, which I loved.

The way I used to think about it is like, I'm diving under for bedtime.

So there is a reality that bedtime is challenging. And I don't want

to discount that or give you false hope. But I do want to help

you do 2 things today. I want to help you build a bedtime

routine that actually feels doable, kind of like we did for the morning routine

for last episode. And I want to help you figure out like what to

include and how to set it up. And then the second thing that I want

to talk about is how to handle

bedtime using the limit setting formula in the Connected Parenting

Process and how to manage bedtime when it

goes sideways, or like how to set those limits up so that your

children start to learn the routine and it becomes internalized for

them and how to actually do that so that you don't

have to have repeating, reminding, frustration, yelling,

chaos every night. And the way that we do that is with

limit setting and then following through on those consequences when we set the

limits. So I know your goal is to have a bedtime

routine. That runs by itself most nights, right?

Not every night. It's not going to be perfect every night, but you want your

routine to be predictable. You want your kid to kind of

know what to expect every day so that you don't have to put

so much effort into that bedtime routine, that your

child knows what's coming, you know what's coming, it's reliable, and you're not

reinventing the wheel every night at 7:00 PM. I'm not going to

tell you the right way to get your kids to sleep. I've talked to hundreds

of moms and they have wildly different versions. Of how they get their kids

to bed. So maybe you lie down with your kid every night until they

fall asleep. Maybe you've got a big family bed. Maybe you don't lay down with

your kids and you just put them into bed. You don't read books and you

just walk away. If you have a routine that's working for you and it's not

chaotic, I'm not here to judge you. I do know it's really good to have

a time where you have a connected moment with your kid before they go to

sleep. You make some eye contact, do that eyeballs, as well as

reading stories. And reading books and having them read aloud to you is also

really good for their brain and their development. But if that doesn't happen at that

time of day for you, that's fine. The goal here with

bedtime is that you create that predictable, peaceful routine

and that your child learns to fall asleep on their own, that they can

tolerate that transition from play to bed

and then be on their own to fall asleep, that they learn how to self-soothe.

And learn how to fall asleep on their own. That's one of the skills that

kids really need to have in order to like live their lives, right? Falling

asleep. So if we can teach our kids those skills when they're young and how

to self-soothe and how to calm their nervous system and get their body ready for

bed, then you will have a lot easier time long-term with

them falling asleep on their own. So if you're struggling with bedtime, this

is the episode for you. First, I do want to talk a little bit about

the 2 reasons that bedtime routines fall apart. And as I describe

these to you, I want you to be thinking like, is this me? Is she

talking about me? So one reason is that there's no

actual structure. Like it's different ending every night. You don't start the

bedtime routine at the same time of day. You don't always follow the same

pattern. Your kids don't really know what to expect. You let

them watch TV sometimes. Sometimes you don't. You have them take a bath. Sometimes you

don't. You have a bedtime snack. Sometimes you don't. You

get them water. You don't. Like if it's kind of inconsistent, it's

going to be hard for you and your kids and they're going to fight more.

So having a predictable routine is going to give you

more calm. And I know it feels like you want to be in the

flow. And if that is flowy for you and your

routine is working for you and you don't have bedtime chaos, just skip this

episode. It's not for you. But if you do feel like you don't

have a good rhythm Then this is going to be helpful for you to how

to build in that routine so that it's predictable and not

so chaotic. Now, the other thing that I see most of the time is

that there is a routine. Like you have, I would say dinner, bath, and bed,

right? So you have like your kids eat dinner, then they go take a bath

and then they get their pajamas on. They brush their teeth. You read a story,

you lay down with them for a couple of minutes, and then you want to

walk out of the room. That's sort of the predictable routine, right?

That many of us have. But what happens to a lot of

parents is they have the routine, but then it, as soon as there's

pushback or it starts to fall apart, like you say,

okay, I'm going to do 2 books and then it's going to be lights out.

And then they start to protest and they're like, what about 3 books? And then

you read a third and then they're like, what about 4 books? And then you,

you're like in a negotiation because they don't really

believe in your boundary. That you have a

set of routines or rules, but you don't really have

a system of consequence or ways to follow up on those rules.

And that's when you get into trouble. If either of these describes

you, that doesn't mean that anything is wrong with you or your kid.

It means that you're missing a parenting skill and you might

have some information that you don't know. And that's what I notice a lot in

my parenting practice. Is that parents will come to me on that consult. And

as I'm talking to them, I realize like they're great parents. They just don't know

how to set limits. Or they're great parents. They just don't know how

to emotionally coach their kids. So a lot of parenting

is intuitive, sure. But there's also skills, relational

skills, communication skills, boundary work that comes in. So this

episode is going to help you build that limit-setting

skill. Which is part of the connected parenting process.

The connected parenting process is calm, connect, limit

set, correct. Those are the 4 pillars of the connected parenting

process. And in this episode, I'm breaking down limit set and

correct in when it comes to bedtime routine. So I think

you're gonna love this because you're gonna learn how to set a bedtime routine, how

to use limits, and how to follow through with consequences. And the

consequences that I teach are pain-free. Shame-free,

but do help your children learn to think for themselves. So when you have a

skill gap in parenting, the good news is that you can easily

learn new skills. It means there's nothing wrong with you. You just have

information gaps. That skill gap is what we're addressing

today. So I want to say this honestly, I kind of started to allude to

this already, but bedtime is the hardest place to

hold a limit because it's the end of the day. And you have the least

capacity right when you need the most patience to hold that boundary.

So keep in mind as we go along, I don't want you to think I'm

bad at this. I actually want you just to realize that like bedtime is hard

because I'm tired. It's also hard for kids

because they don't want to go to sleep. They

biologically and physiologically do not want to separate from

you. They have a little bit of anxiety about being in a dark room,

the end of play, the end of all the things that are good in their

lives, right? Daytime and, and play

and you and the connection with another human. So they

are kind of struggling. You have competing goals

at bedtime, which makes it really challenging because you want your

kids to get to sleep and they want to stay up. So

there's a conflict within the moment, a

tension in parenting. So I just want you to know that it is challenging,

especially when you're tired at the end of the day after go, go, go. But

I'm going to teach you how to hold that limit and handle that

resistance without giving in or getting mad.

So the good news is that the more you hold these bedtime limits and the

more you do these routines, the easier it will

become. You will get better at the skill and your child will get better

at realizing that it's in their best interest to listen to you and to follow

the routine. Let me talk a little bit about limits, because

people often think that a limit is saying

the command, right? Like, get your pajamas on or

brush your teeth or lay down right now.

Those are not limits. Those are commands.

And a command, when you give a command to your child, you

are kind of giving all of the control

over to them and their immature nervous

system, their immature brain. Children

make decisions based on whether something feels good or

doesn't feel good. So they're making decisions usually

based on the limbic center of their brain. And what we

want is to teach our kids to make decisions based on

logic or cause and effect, right? Using that executive

functioning part of their brain, which is hard for little kids under

6. And even anyone who's tired has trouble. We make a lot of

emotional decisions. Ourselves because we get tired or our nervous

system gets sick and we end up, you know, eating extra cookies

or scrolling on our phone for extra time, or, you

know, watching that one more episode of that show and not going to bed. We

are making decisions in that moment from our limbic center, from what

feels good. So when you give your kid a command, you're

kind of hoping that it will feel good to them to do

the thing you're telling them to do. So when you say put your pajamas on,

you're like, kind of need to like hold your breath or cross your fingers and

like, okay, I hope they do it right. When you give that command, you're

setting yourself up for a kid that is making those decisions

based on whether it feels good to do what you've asked or not.

And then what happens if it doesn't feel good? Which, why would you wanna put

your pajamas on when you're doing Lego or playing house or, you know, playing

with your dolls or something like that? Why would you wanna do that? That does

not feel good. So then as a parent, you escalate your

first command. Maybe you say it nicely, hey, it's time to put your

pajamas on. And then as the

resistance, or what you might think is defiance,

happens, you're getting more and more upset, right?

You're becoming more and more emotional. And so you are

escalating. You're repeating your commands. You're being more

harsh, more firm. Maybe you're starting to add threats. And

as you do that, your child's emotion is also

changing. It's being impacted by your emotion. So

maybe they do comply when you yell. This is why parents always say to me,

my kids only listen to me when I yell. And I'm like, yeah, because you

have trained their nervous system to only respond from that emotion

of fear or worry or whatever emotion

you're kind of communicating to them. Then they are complying

because of the emotion. And the threats

and the yelling, they are effective in getting your kids to listen

in the short term. However, in the long term,

using yelling and threats and emotional manipulation

essentially is going to cost you long-term gain

because threats and yelling, they put your child into that fight,

flight, freeze, faint, fawn instinct. And they are

making that decision driven by emotion. But what we

want is we want our kids to start making decisions based on their

thinking, based on the way that their brain is doing that

cause and effect. If, then that. If I

don't listen to my parent, then this thing happens.

I want your kids to make that decision, not because you've yelled at them, not

because you've raised your voice, But because they have done the thinking

for themselves. And that's what limit setting really does, is it

puts the thinking onto the child. It makes them

start to realize like, oh, I can get

books read to me if I put my pajamas

on. So they're making a cause and effect

connection between the two things.

This, then that. That's what executive functioning is all

about, right? It's about thinking and planning and

organizing time and organizing consequences. And

little kids, like I said, have trouble doing that, but we wanna help them

learn and grow and become capable of doing that. We wanna

help them move from that limbic center where everything is

driven by emotion into that

executive functioning, that prefrontal cortex where they make decisions based

on what's good for them. So when we communicate limits, we're gonna tell

them what we want them to do and help guide their brain toward the

behavior we want. So in the Connected Parenting process,

we use the limit setting formula to communicate to our

child what is expected and what happens when they do listen.

You set clear boundaries and then you let your child experience what

happens when they don't keep that limit. A limit

helps your kids understand what is expected of them and

what they get when they meet those expectations.

We wanna communicate to our kids that you may

have this nice thing, which is

reading stories or having a before-bed snack or

filling up your water bottle, right? Kind of like sort of whatever

that is gonna happen once they finish this one thing. Mm-hmm. That they can have

that next thing as long as this first thing happens. You're teaching them

sequence. And then if they go against the

sequence, a consequence, then they have to experience that

consequence. The goal of limit setting, it's not to get

compliance in the moment. It's to get your kids to think

about their actions and start to connect the dots between how they

behave and what happens when they behave that way. The limit

setting formula is where you tell your child what they can do or

have, as long as they do the thing that you want them to do.

So think of it as flipping a threat into a limit. I

wanna give you a few examples of how this sounds in real

time. So a lot of times parents will say, put your pajamas on

now or you won't get any books. That's a threat, right? It's a

command. Put your pajamas on or you won't get something.

I want you to flip that and tell them what they will get

and the condition that they need to do in order

to get that thing. So listen to this. I'm

happy to read books to you as long as your

teeth are brushed and you're in your pajamas before the timer

goes off. Then you sit back, you set a

timer, and you Wait.

You communicate, you can repeat it by looking them in the eye and saying,

do you hear what I said? What can you have? You can have what?

What did I say? Books. Right. So you can have books as

long as what? Brush your teeth. Yeah. And?

Put my pajamas on. Yes. So I really want you when you're teaching

this routine, when you're teaching the limit, to slow it down,

get in their face and communicate to them. This is not

armchair parenting. You're not sitting from the kitchen yelling,

get your pajamas on, you know, or hurry up,

brush your teeth while you're finishing tidying up the kitchen. I

want you to be present for the teaching time,

the first couple of weeks that you teach this limit, teach this routine.

And then eventually you can just say from the kitchen, hey,

I'm setting the timer. I hope you guys get some books tonight. You know what

to do, right? I want you to have done this

enough times that you can just cue your kids into saying,

okay, time for bed. And they already know I get books and

cuddles and all of those things, as long as I get my pajamas on before

the timer goes off. Here's another example. Parents will say, if they, if you have

a jack-in-the-box kid, right? If you have a kid that keeps coming out of the

room, you might come out and say like, if you come out here one more

time, I'm shutting this door. And you're saying it with anger and you're not

trying to, but what you're trying to do is get them to

respond because they're afraid. Like, I know you don't want to think

that you're manipulating your kid, but you, we all do

this. Like we get upset and we want our kids to listen. We want them

to like understand that they need to listen to us. And so we end up

with these threats and we end up with this anger and we end up with

this frustration and it becomes emotionally charged.

And whenever there's emotions involved, a lot of times there's not logic involved.

There's not thinking involved. I would rather you say,

okay, you keep coming out. Now look, you can have

your bedroom door open as long as you don't come out.

So then you say, okay, do you understand? Yes. Okay. You tuck them

back in and then you leave that door open. They jack

in the box one more time. You go, oh, Looks like I have to close

this door. And then you put them back into bed

and you close the door. Now, if you wanna kind of be careful and not

trigger too big of a meltdown, you can say, oh, you know what? As long

as you stay in your bed, you can have the door open just a little

bit. I want you to feel like you can negotiate a little bit within these

limits, but still with the same language of this,

then that. I really want you to be able to have your kids

understand that They need to do something in order

to get something. This is a little transactional, but it's

also logic. Here's another example that I've heard parents say

recently. If you wanna be in my bed and you wanna lay down with me,

then you have to lay down. You can't be jumping up. Which I

understand that emotion, I do. But I would rather you say, you are

welcome to lay down on my bed as long as you are actually laying

down. Or say you have decided as a family that your kids get to have

have like 5, 10 minutes to read alone in their room. Maybe they're getting a

little bit older, or they can be little too. And you wanna let them

kind of learn how to self-regulate and have some self-control and stay in their bed

and look at their little books. And you say, that's great. You can do that

for 5 minutes, or you can do that until 8:15, as long as

we are in bed by 8. And then if it goes till a little bit

later and they're like, can I read to myself for a little bit? You say,

no, no, we didn't make the time today. We'll have to try again tomorrow.

Another example is like, you know, maybe you wanna do a little bribe, right?

You wanna like get them motivated, which is fine. You might say, we're not

gonna have a dance party if you guys don't get outta the bathtub right now.

What about saying, hey guys, we can do a quick dance party as long as

you get outta the bathtub and get your pajamas on in the next 2 minutes.

The language is you're welcome to, or I'll be happy to.

It's a permissive language in that we're telling them what they

get, Which the brain loves to hear. And then

how do they get that thing? Now, sometimes the thing that

they get is just the next thing. Like you could put your

pajamas on after you brush your teeth. It's very funny when you

use this language, the brain really likes it. It's like, wait, what?

I can do what? I can put my pajamas on? What do I have to

do? Brush my teeth? Okay, great. So it kind of ends up becoming

the pattern in your family where They understand the sequence of

events based on the limit setting. When you start learning this

for yourself, the way I had to teach myself doing this and how I've had

to teach all my clients is that for the most part, it's hard to remember

this language. It's one of the biggest obstacles to limit setting or

using this limit setting formula is remembering to say it.

And I had the same problem when I learned about this. What I did was

I would just say it wrong. Like, stop it right now.

Or, you know, my boys used to like to have sleepovers in each other's rooms,

and I would be like, you guys can't have a sleepover if you guys don't

stop it right now. And I'd be like, oh wait, you guys are welcome to

have a sleepover as long as you both

sit on your bottoms and read stories for 5

minutes quietly. I would then remember to

add in the desired behavior. that I had for them in

that moment and communicate to them what I

wanted them to do and what they would get under that

condition. In the beginning, you might tell them to stop doing

this or stop doing that, or do this or do that. You might

add, this bad thing will happen. You might add a threat. And so then you

just shift it, you flip it. So you say it

kind of wrong. I don't think it's wrong, but like— For this

conversation, you say it in a command, you say it as a threat,

and then flip it. You can have books tonight as long as you walk

quietly back to your bedroom in the next minute. Now,

whatever limit you're setting, I want you to wait

after you say it and give your child a

little bit of time to catch up to what you're

saying. Notice I'm including a timeframe.

That's because it might take a couple of minutes or 1 or

2 minutes for your kid's brain to get back online. We often think

we need to have our kids like, stop right now. Like we feel like it's

an emergency. And so we communicate to our kids like, stop it.

Don't do that. And I want you to be able to

allow a little bit of room for the child's brain to catch up to

the moment. You can say, hey, listen, I see you jumping up on the couch

and having a good time over here. But I wanna remind you that you can

have books and storytime as long as you are in

your room in the next 2 minutes. And then you wait and you

pause. Now, if your child loves an audience and they

keep being silly or naughty because you're watching them, you

can also say to them, I'm gonna go get a drink of

water and I'll come check on you to see if you've made it to your

room. You wanna be able to remove yourself as the

audience for a minute. And then come back to them.

So in this moment, you're kind of like moving the moment

forward. You're seeing this kid who's kind of out of bounds.

They have a lot of big energy and you're setting some boundaries to

move them towards where you want them to be, back into that

bedroom. An important note here is try not to repeat yourself.

So a lot of parents will do this. They'll be like, hey, remember I said,

oh, it looks like you're not getting books. Oh, you're still jumping. Oh, it looks

like you're not. Do you want books? I said, do you, are you gonna, do

you want me to read to you? You don't want me to read to you.

We just talk a lot. So be silent and watch.

When you are quiet and just looking at your child, especially with

like a neutral face, your child is gonna be like,

wait, what? Like they're gonna feel that feeling

of like, uh-oh. Instead of you yelling and escalating, you're kind of

showing them that They maybe need to pay attention to

what you're saying. Now, if you feel like your kid really isn't listening, they're

super out of bounds, it's okay to get right into their face,

eyeballs, make that connection, not rudely, like grab their face or anything. I'm

just saying move closer to them and make some eye contact and say, listen,

did you hear what I said? I said you can have what? You can have

books, right? As long as what? You go to your room, right?

Okay. So I'm gonna go get some water and I'm gonna check on you in

2 minutes to see if you've made it into your room. Notice how calm my

voice is. Notice how patient I am with my

child's need to play and then their need to shift

into compliance. Rescuing, it looks

like reminding your kids over and over again, or not following through on the limit

you set. I don't want you to feel like you can't repeat yourself, but

I want you to repeat yourself with intention, making eye contact,

being quiet, being calm. Communicating very clearly

what the boundary is and what your child receives

or doesn't receive based on that boundary. I want your

child to know that they have a choice here, that they're

actively making a choice. So the first few

times that you do this, your child's not going to believe you. Like, I remember

doing this with my kids, learning about this and then doing it. And my boys

are now young adults. They're 20 and 22, but they were

Rascals. Okay. So I started doing this, I think like 4 and

6 or 5 and 7 is when I learned this. And I remember telling them

that I would lay down with them and read to them and do, you know,

songs and all the things that I did, as long as they had their

teeth brushed, their pajamas on, and they were in their rooms

waiting for me by the time the timer went off. And I had like a

little egg timer and I set it to 10 minutes. And then I went and

laid down on my bed that I could see the hall

from my bed, so I could see all the shenanigans that

they were doing in the hall. I mean, they were just like cuckoo pants. They

were not listening at all because they had no reason

to believe me. I had only ever parented them by yelling and

threatening, and here I am all of a sudden being really firm and setting

limits, and They're just cuckoo. So then I went in

calmly and I said, timer's gone off. Let me look around. Who's in their pajamas?

Oh, not you. Not you. Okay. Looks

like we're not having books tonight. So then I would scaffold a little bit

and say, okay, well, we're not gonna have books, but I will

have time for songs as long as, and then they kind of started to

realize that I was serious and they started to get the program.

So it didn't take that long, maybe a week or 10 days of doing this

consistently. That then when I would say it's time to get your pajamas

on, you guys can have books as long as you are ready,

you beat the timer, then they would like, like rush

to do it. And I know you're probably like, that's

bullshit, but like, no, it's true. That's what happened. But the

first time, nope. Big feelings, emotions,

lots of dis— you know, disobedience. That's kind of the

point really. I want them to experience the negative impact of

their behavior. 'Cause that's how they learn. They learn through failure.

They don't learn by being perfect. So following through

on your limit means allowing your child to not have books, not have

stories, not have the door open, you laying down with them, or whatever the

thing you said could have as long as they complied.

Now I wanna give you a warning. When the condition isn't

met in the beginning, when you first start doing this,

Expect a meltdown. You get to

soothe and have compassion for your child when they make a

mistake, even though you're the one who put the consequence together in

the first place. It's okay if they're sad or mad or

disappointed. They might cry or they might yell. It's

normal to have a negative emotion when you experience a

negative consequence. Don't be afraid of their feelings.

They'll pass. But don't give in either. Now, if you have a

big feeling cycle and you usually read 3 books and you do

wanna move that moment forward, you can say, oh,

listen, why don't we make a deal that I'll do 1

book as long as you lay quietly on your bed starting right now?

You can kind of move it towards what you want by being a

little bit flexible, especially in the beginning.

Because you kind of don't want that big meltdown, right? I want you to

rescue just a little bit, like 50% or 20%,

right? Give them a little bit of what they might need in order to

soothe, especially in the beginning of doing this limit setting formula,

especially in the beginning of setting these routines. Just trust that

if your kid doesn't beat the timer, they don't get that extra book. If they

melt down, that's okay. It's gonna happen

and It's genuinely hard to sit through at bedtime because

everyone's tired and you just want it to be over. But when you expect that

meltdown, you can be calmer and you can connect better

by saying, I hear you. You really wanted that book. It's hard to stop

playing. I know, but I think you're going to do better tomorrow. I

really do. Can I give you a hug? Can I lay down with you for

a minute? So you can still be very sweet and kind,

especially in the beginning. You don't have to be so— firm right away. You're

teaching this routine and you're learning alongside of them.

You can still co-regulate even without giving in.

After a few times of experiencing this consequence within that

limit, your kid is gonna start to realize that it's in their best interest to

listen to you. They won't need to be afraid of you. They will

trust that what you say is true, and they'll know that

what you say goes. And they'll feel more safe and

more supported. I've said this before on the podcast that little

kids know that they're little kids. They know they're not

supposed to be in charge. They know they don't understand time. They don't

understand money. They don't know how cars work. They don't know how the microwave works.

Like they don't know stuff and they know they don't know stuff. They want

you to be in charge. But of course they also wanna be in charge

cuz they're human. And so when you are in charge and you're calm,

you create that authority within yourself, then your child will

know that they are safe and that you're taking care of them.

Now, this is a question I get all the time is what to do if

they don't listen and then bedtime runs really long, right? So

especially in the beginning, your kids are like, you know, well, I don't care about

books. They're like, I don't care if you lay down with me. Okay. So it

gets a little cuckoo, right? It can. And I want you to think

about the impact that their behavior has on

you. When your child's behavior, their bedtime

behavior causes a problem, it runs late, what does that

mean for you? It means that you aren't getting the

time that you need to recover from your day.

You're not getting the time you need to reset the next day, to

tidy up, to prep breakfast, to prep— lunch, to prep clothes, to do

all of those chores, or just to rest. It's an

actual practical drain on you when

bedtime goes late, right? It zaps you of time and energy

that you need to function. If your child's bedtime routine

went really long because of their misbehavior or because of a meltdown,

I want you to feel free to follow through with the

consequence For that extra time and energy.

This is why I have the correct pillar in the

Connected Parenting Process. This is the consequence piece

in order to teach your child personal responsibility. So

with correct, you give your child the opportunity to repair,

restore, or resolve the impact of their behavior.

This is the way you teach your child to become responsible for their behavior

without using shame or pain. It's also the way that you teach your

children the connection between their behavior and

the impact that behavior has on others. This is like kind of the

values or the skills or the socializing, like teaching your kids how

to be in a community. This is where that part is within the connected

parenting process. I call this concept restitution.

When your kid behaves in a way that creates a problem for someone else,

they have to repair back the time or energy or whatever

the impact was on the other

person. We have compassion for their feelings.

We have compassion for why they behave that way. We

understand, we help connect their behavior to their insides,

but we also need to connect their behavior to the outside world. We need to

be able to show to our children how their behavior affects

others. And we do that through restitution.

Let me give you an example of this to help you understand. Imagine a scenario

where bedtime ran long, right? I'm sure it's not that hard for you to imagine.

So a meltdown, negotiating, the whole thing. And by the time your kid

finally sleeps, you have no time or energy left to pack for the

park playdate that you'd planned to do tomorrow. My kids always, we went to the

park on Wednesdays after school. So imagine there was a meltdown

on Monday or Tuesday in the night. So the next day they're like,

are we going to the park today? And I'd say no, because bedtime took so

much energy last night. I don't have the energy to put everything together for the

park today. So we're going to stay home instead. It's not a

punishment. It's actually the truth of what happened. I

literally have less capacity. Now I use this example,

but a lot of parents are like, well, doesn't that punish me? Because like, if

they go to the park, they have a chance to run around and it's

like better for me. Okay. Great. Don't do that one then.

Don't take that privilege away. But I am going to tell you that

sometimes you're going to have to take preferred activities away from

your children in order for them to learn the impact of their behavior. And it

will cause an inconvenience to you, but the short-term inconvenience of one

or two missed playdates or missed park times

is so much more valuable for years of smooth

bedtime. Like, I promise you the impact will

transfer and you will be able to have better

bedtimes if you follow through with a few kind of

consequences that do create some problems in the short term for

you or your children. So that's an example of you

removing a privilege or taking away something. A lot

of times parents take away screen time. That's fine, but

I think that we should be creative and Try to think about other

ways that we can have our children understand the connection between

their behavior. If you wanted to take away screen time, you'd say, you know what,

last night we watched TV before bed and bedtime went really late,

and I don't wanna have to worry about bedtime going late tonight, so we're not

gonna watch a show tonight. You're connecting the behavior from the night

before with the impact today,

and you can be as creative as you want. So we can remove a

preferred activity or we can have our child restore back our

energy by doing something kind for us. So

this would look like, you know what, this week I've waited 40 minutes for you

to go to bed or to get out of the shower or to get your

pajamas on, whatever it is. It doesn't really have to be exactly 40 minutes, like

whatever. It's just like you've waited a while. Giving it an amount of time will

help your kid kind of make it a little bit more real. You say to

them, You know, this week I've waited an extra 20 minutes every

night at bedtime because you're not getting out of the

bathtub or because you're not getting on your pajamas or because you keep being

silly right when it's time to turn the lights off. And then you go on.

When bedtime gets delayed, I don't have time at night to do my

nightly chores and get to bed on time for me. So since

I waited 20 minutes for you this week, you can

do 4 chores for me today. And you're

welcome to privilege activity, watch TV,

go to a friend's house, you know, whatever they're gonna do, play outside

once you have finished those chores. Now, parents always ask me, what kind

of chores? What kind of chores? I like to do very simple

things that don't really require my

attention. I like to teach parents to have like a

little basket. Of cleaning products that you feel safe for

your kids to use. And that's just set up somewhere in your

kitchen or laundry room or wherever it is, or in a closet somewhere. And

they get that little basket out and they clean all the windowsills in your

house, or they clean all of the light

switches or the doorknobs or

countertops in the bathroom, or they have activities

outside. Maybe— oh, another one is cleaning walls. Because little kids are

so dirty, so your walls are probably dirty. Um, cleaning baseboards is

really good. So having them do some small chores,

um, you can have them carry clothes to the proper bedrooms

or put those extra clothes away. You can have them clean up the

car, clean up the backyard. I want you just to be thinking about

creative things that your kids can do around the house that

you don't really need done but are kind of nice if they get done. I

kind of miss These days, because I used to have like really clean windowsills

and really clean baseboards, and now my kids are older, so I don't do these

kinds of consequences anymore, and I have to clean those now. So,

um, it's nice. It actually can be nice when you have your kids do stuff

around the house. So I want to do a couple of

troubleshooting ideas. So if your kid is

kind of consistently not keeping the limit, expect that in the

beginning. They're learning. So missing the limit is not

a sign that it's not working. Don't give up. It's the normal

expected part of your kid building this new skill and connecting these

dots. The younger your kid is, the longer it will take. Or

if you have not done a bedtime routine and you have like a 9-year-old, you

might be in for it for a couple of weeks because they're going to really

push back against this boundary because they loved the old way.

What happens when your kids are overtired or undertired? If your

kids are overstimulated, their screens are too close to their

bedtime, or you've been out and about— this is airing at the

end of the summer, so it's still kind of bright out— and your kid's

brain is just pumping that adrenaline and that cortisol, which is making

them stay awake, it might be harder for them to fall

asleep. So watch for that window. And if you

miss it, it might make the whole routine a little bit harder. You

may have to be a little bit less firm that

night and just delay those consequences for the next day. Maybe

you don't want to create a big meltdown that night. You don't want to have

a limit that evening, but you can still consequence delayed

bedtime and bedtime misbehavior by doing that active

restitution or removing some sort of preferred activity.

Your child might have like fears at bedtime or really need to

talk to you about that. This is especially true from 5 to

7. Kids start to remember their dreams. They have

nightmares and they have a new awareness that things can hurt me.

And so that's when we start to see like, I'm scared and things like that.

So don't be afraid of doing your monster spray and laying

down with them and dragon scale sand and all those little

Tricks we have. And I have an episode on this sleep

struggles, and I kind of go into a bunch of tips on how to handle

that. So go back, we'll link that in the show notes, but just to be

aware that your kid will sometimes need a little extra love and

attention. And it's not resistance to the limit. It's a separate

real fear. And it's worth naming and comforting that and

using the connection tool and maybe even some emotional coaching,

giving them perspective. Like asking a question like, well,

how do you know that you're safe? What do you think mom or dad do

to make this house safe at night? Or did you know that

our dog is really loud? Did you know that? Yeah. So anybody would come into

this house, we would know. Do you see those fire alarms? That's why we have

those. So you can kind of start to give them some facts in order to

soothe that anxiety. The last thing I want you to remember is that

it is going to take a couple of weeks. Like I said in the beginning,

don't look at misbehavior or your kid failing the limit And not

learning right away, is it not working? I have taught this so many

times and I have watched so many families have smoother bedtimes that I

know it works. I would not teach it if it didn't work. So trust the

process and trust that your kid is going to need to experience

the consequence before their own brain

starts to decide in advance that it should listen and

comply with your limits. Now, the good news, what I love about limit

setting, one of my favorite things about it in general, Is that if you do

a good limit, like at bedtime, and you follow through on it with some

real-life consequences, your child will start to

connect in general that they should listen to you.

So you want your kids to be able to know

deep down that you're the leader in the family

and that it's in their best interest to listen to you. We

want that for your kids, right? And for you, we want you to be able

to know Like I can tell my kid to stop doing something and they stop

doing it. How do you get there? You get there by doing limits

and following through. You do it a couple areas of your life.

You do it in the mornings, you do it in the evenings, you do it

around screens, you do it around homework, you do it around food,

these different areas that are kind of the friction points in a family.

And then your child starts to realize, oh, wait a second,

there's consequences in my life. If I don't do what my parents

ask, then something happens. That

connection is everything to help you

have a kid who listens without you yelling, which is what you

all want, right? You want to have your family have

kids that listen to you without you yelling at them all the time.

So this is how you get there. You set those

limits. You let your kids Break the limit,

right? Fail. You hold it by following through with the

consequence. If they get upset, you stay calm, and

then you follow through the next day or the next few days with a

real-life consequence so they can connect those dots. So this

week, start small, pick a limit. Don't worry

about the next-day consequence yet. Just kind of try the limit-setting

formula. Try to set some boundaries around bedtime. And see your

child really learn and grow. And eventually, I promise,

they will learn that it is in their best interest to listen to you and

you won't have to yell, which is our big goal, right?

So that's it for today's episode, and I will see you next week.