How To Improve Your Sleep And Parenting Skills
Being a parent is one of the toughest and most challenging jobs in the world. It can leave you physically and emotionally tired since you have to toil throughout the day to meet the needs of your children. Raising children is not an easy task as they have multiple needs and, at times, tantrums.
Handling them can make you go nuts sometimes. With so much stress mounting on you due to parenting, it can take a toll on your nighttime sleep as well. You can experience trouble falling asleep at night because of stress.
Sleep deprivation is a problem that complained by many parents, especially moms of young toddlers and small infants. Not only it creates issues in sleep, but it also drains out energy and even negatively impacts the cognitive skills of the parents.
Lack of sleep can hurt your parenting skills and can make you feel irritated and annoyed all the time. Improper sleep is also found in parents who have indiscipline children and adolescent kids.
Therefore, it is necessary to address the sleep issue; otherwise, it can cause problems in your parenting as well. To know how you can handle both the issues, have a look at some useful tips that are given below.
Get some exposure to sunlight
It is imperative that you get yourself exposed to some sunlight during the daytime before you start your parenting job. If morning time is too tight, then half an hour in the afternoon will also do. Sunlight helps in setting the circadian rhythm of the body right, which regulates our sleep-wake pattern.
At night, ensure that your room lights are dimmed before sleeping to set the tone for bedtime. Finally, when you go to bed, switch off all the lights and darken the room completely. It will help in increasing the melatonin level of the body, which is a hormone that makes you fall asleep.
Refrain from having heavy dinners
Eating heavy or food with too much of oil and fats can make your digestion an elongated process. It can even interfere with your nighttime sleep. If you are about to have dinner, then it should be at least 2-3 hours before bedtime. It will give time to the food to settle down in your tummy.
Also, it shall be better if you eat light before going to bed as it allows easy digestion of the consumed food.
Avoid caffeine before bedtime
Coffee is good when you wake up in the morning, but not when you go to bed. Coffee or caffeinated drinks are traditional stimulators that help in keeping us awake throughout the day.
Hence, if you drink it right before going to bed, it will keep away sleep from you and make you stay awake at night. In case you want to have a drink before going to bed, then you can drink herbal teas such as lavender, passionflower, and valerian.
These drinks can soothe your senses and help in inducing sound sleep in you that will allow you to function properly in your parenting work.