Laughter At Bedtime

When you think of your child’s bedtime routine, do you think of laughter?

Yes, laughter.

We have different routines with our kids in each of our homes that help them to unwind and transition from awake to asleep, but one thing that the two of us do have in common is the intention of laughter existing throughout the preparation for sleep.

Bedtime is supposed to be low stimulation, quiet, calm, consistent and peaceful, right? So yes, we can imagine how you can see laughter correlating with the opposite.

We still strive for a lot of those aspects, but bedtime is also supposed to be filled with closeness and connection with our children, isn’t it?

Our mindset around bedtime is rooted in that fact.

We have put significant effort into seeing our bedtime routine as a time to press pause on trying to balance working from home, house work, running errands, the never ending laundry, our marriages, social activities, and being a responsive parent. Sometimes by the end of the day we are simply exhausted (as we are sure you can all relate) from trying to balance everything. So tired, that dare we say it, some days we catch ourselves counting the seconds until they close their precious little eyes.

Sound familiar?

If so, maybe you have also been tempted to rush through bedtime with your little ones to reach the end goal. Maybe you don’t even realize that you’re just going through the motions (we’ve certainly been there). Maybe you can relate to the idea of accomplishing the logistics of bedtime for the sake of getting it done. Maybe you would agree that placing more focus on connection with your child before they are faced with the separation night time brings might be helpful.

We all want our children to feel secure, safe and connected with us.

We have to acknowledge that sleep is separation and separation is the hardest thing for our little ones to face. In order to make separation a little less scary, we need to offset it with more connection.

With laughter, comes connection.

If our children are laughing as a part of our bedtime routine, it can help us to feel confident that we have welcomed that last opportunity to connect, to pour into our relationship, to help them take their attachment needs for granted, to know that we love them unconditionally and beyond measure. In fact, laughter releases oxytocin which is the bonding hormone.

Their laughter means we are tuning into things that make them happy or that they love, that we are giving them a few moments of undivided attention. That magical sound of their beautiful laughter allows us to feel confident that we were intentional in those moments with them and that we gave them something to bridge through the separation until morning.

As Dr. Laura says, “laughter is a vitamin that we want to make sure we get some of every day”.

So how do we get them laughing?

This will look different for everyone. You know what your child loves!

Maybe they love when you make silly faces.
Maybe they love when you play peek-a-boo.
Maybe they love when you dance around with them.
Maybe they love when you tell a made up story and get overly dramatic.
Maybe they are one to need more gross motor before bed and love being chased around.

Take some time to notice what naturally gets your child laughing throughout the day and do more of that!

Taking the time to foster laughter can benefit US as well. When we are laughing with our children it can bring in a little extra joy to our day, to offset some of the frustrations or exhaustion we undoubtedly all come across. Laughter is also nature’s way of helping humans destress so including it in bedtime can really help to create a positive emotional association with sleep for your entire family by taking some of the stress off of bedtime and allowing us to focus on relationships instead of everything else weighing on us.

We hope this different perspective on bedtime has been helpful and can maybe lead to a little extra joy for you today.