Does your preschooler have bedtime or sleep difficulties?

Research indicates that it’s very important to treat sleep problems as early as we can, because poor sleep in early childhood has been shown to hinder a child’s ability to regulate their emotions, increase their behaviour problems, reduce their ability to learn and remember, and results in difficulties transitioning into primary school.

In the longer term, early childhood sleep problems predict problems with academic outcomes and mental health including depression, anxiety and behavioural problems, both while they are still young, and moving into later childhood and adolescence. Given that over 14% of Australian pre-schoolers have moderate to severe bedtime problems and that these problems CAN be treated effectively, treating them early in the preschool years before children commence primary school can prevent several associated problems from occurring later in life.

The workshops provide parents with a range of strategies to help deal with different bedtime problems that this age group experience. We first focus on what may be driving that sleep problem by seeing if the problem is biological, behavioural or fear based. We then teach parents how to tackle these problems! Our program covers bedtime behaviours such as night time fear or anxiety, difficulty falling asleep and maintaining sleep, requiring parental presence, co-sleeping, refusal to take part in the bedtime routine, night time tantrum throwing and leaving the bedroom to name a few.

Parents can email the team at preschoolsleep@griffith.edu.au, find us on Facebook at fb.me/lightsoutsleep or call our central office on (07) 3735 3305 to register their interest in the program

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