Although having more daylight hours during the summer can be great when you’re wanting to do activities outside, if you have kids at home who need to get to bed early, fighting them to get to sleep when the sun is still up can be a real challenge. However, if you have your home and your family prepared for this, you may find that putting your kids down early is just as easy in the summer as it is in the winter.

To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for getting your kids to sleep when it’s light outside.

Stick To A Consistent Bedtime Routine

For families that have kids who struggle with winding down at night when they can still see the sun outside, Andy Kryza, a contributor to Fatherly.com, shares that the best thing you can do is stick to a consistent bedtime routine that you follow each night, regardless of what time of year it is.

With a bedtime routine, your kids should start to get more and more ready for sleep as the routine goes on. So whether you give your kids a bath, read a story, sing quiet songs, or snuggle before bed, just make sure that you’re doing things in descending order of stress so that, by the time you need to be putting your kids in bed, they’ve come around to the idea of getting some rest despite what may be going on outside of the house.

Block Out The Light

If it’s really the sunlight that your kids are having a problem with, the best option for you to eliminate this variable is to block out the light in their room with blackout curtains.

In addition to helping your kids realize that it’s time to relax and fall asleep as the blackout curtains darken their room, Emily DeJeu, a contributor to BabySleepSite.com, shares that having the blackout curtains can also help your kids sleep in longer in the morning. So if you struggle with your kids waking up too early even after having gone to bed okay at night, blackout curtains can help with this sleeping problem, too.

Get A Clock To Help

Despite how early the sun gets up in the morning, most parents don’t want their kids to be up at that same time. When they’re little, the blackout curtains can really help. But as they get older, you might want to find a clock that can help you.

Kim of Team-Cartwright.com shares that there are clocks available that will light up at the time when your kids are allowed to leave their room. While there might be a bit of a learning curve while your kids get used to this routine, it can help keep them in bed and out of their room until a decent hour in the morning.

If you’ve been having a hard time getting your kids to sleep as it gets lighter outside, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you address this problem.

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