Helping Children Sleep While Travelling: Jet Lag, New Beds and Time Zones

Holidays are hard on children's sleep for two separate reasons: a change of time zone, and sleeping somewhere that is not their own room. Each has its own fix. This is how to prepare before you leave, adjust quickly once you arrive, and get everyone back to normal when you are home.

Do you even need to adjust?

For a trip of two or three days, or a time difference of only an hour or two, it is usually easier to keep your child on home time for sleep and naps and simply flex mealtimes. Trying to fully shift for a short trip means your child adjusts just in time to come home and adjust back.

For larger time differences and longer stays, it is worth shifting properly. A rough guide is that the body clock moves about one hour per day, so a five-hour difference takes roughly five days to settle. Travelling east, where you lose hours and have to fall asleep earlier than your body wants, is generally harder than travelling west.

Before you go

• Travelling east: for three or four days beforehand, move bedtime and wake-up earlier by 15 to 30 minutes a day, and get bright morning light.
• Travelling west: do the opposite, shifting everything later by 15 to 30 minutes a day, with more light in the evening.
• Pack the sleep kit: your child's sleeping bag or comforter, their usual bedtime books, a white noise app or small machine, and a portable blackout blind or even bin bags and tape for the windows.
• If you use a travel cot, set it up at home for a few naps so it is familiar rather than novel.

On arrival

1. Switch to local time immediately for meals, naps, daylight and bedtime. Do not keep converting to home time in your head; commit to the new schedule.
2. Use daylight deliberately. After travelling east, get outside in the morning and keep the afternoon calmer and shadier. After travelling west, seek out afternoon and early-evening light and keep mornings darker for the first few days.
3. Recreate the bedtime routine exactly: same steps, same order, same wind-down length, in a room made as dark and cool as you can manage. Familiarity does a lot of the work.
4. Protect one real nap a day for children who still nap. A cot or bed nap is better than a stroller or car nap, and a jet-lagged toddler should not nap past mid-afternoon or bedtime slips.
5. Expect the first two or three nights to be broken, especially the small hours. Keep night responses calm, dark and boring so you are not accidentally teaching a new habit.

Sleeping in one room together

Whole families sharing a hotel room or a single holiday bedroom is one of the most common reasons trips wreck sleep. Everyone wakes everyone else, and a child who normally sleeps alone now has an audience.

• Put the cot or child's bed in the darkest corner, or use a bathroom, dressing area, balcony alcove or a sheet over the travel cot to create a visual barrier.
• Stagger bedtimes so your child is asleep before the adults come in, and move around quietly in the dark afterwards.
• Use white noise to cover the sound of other people in the room.
• If your child wakes and sees you, keep the same calm, minimal response you would use at home rather than starting a new routine you will have to undo.

A note on medication

Melatonin and antihistamines are sometimes suggested for children's travel sleep. Neither is routinely recommended for young children, doses and product quality vary, and effects can be unpredictable. If you are considering anything, ask your doctor or pharmacist first rather than buying something over the counter.

Coming home

The return trip needs the same treatment as the outbound one: shift gradually if you can, switch to home time on arrival, use light, and be a bit stricter than usual about the schedule for about a week. Most children are back to normal within a few days to a week. If sleep has not recovered after two weeks at home, treat it as a schedule that needs a full reset rather than lingering jet lag.