Hi. I’m Dana Obleman. Welcome to this weeks video. Today I wanted to give you some travel tips. I know a lot of you who’ve worked on the sleep sense program are probably nervous to take a trip. The fear is that you are going to unravel all the hard work you’ve put in to getting your child sleeping well. Let me give you a few tips today that’ll help you travel well with your children.

I travel with my children all the time, but there is a few things that I’ve had to keep in mind to make sure the trip goes well. The first thing you’re going to want to do is make sure you bring a long any lovies that your child is used to at sleep time.

Your blankie or the babies teddy. That’s going to help make the transition easier. You’re also going to want to make sure that there is some place for that child to sleep that is not in your bed.

OK, a lot of people do that. It’s a really big mistake. If your baby or child is not used to bed sharing with you anymore, you don’t want to open that door and have them share a bed with you, because then when they get home they are going to want to share a bed with you. Then six months later you’re wondering how you got here. So, some place to sleep.

If your child is over the age of one, you’re going to want to make sure that you have some place that, that child to sleep that is not in your room. Even if that means you put the pack‑n‑play in the bathroom, or they’re in the closet somewhere.

Just because if she wakes up in the middle of the night and sees her two favorite people right next to her, what tends to happen is she’ll think now that it’s party time, and she’s up playing and acting all cute and this goes on for hours until she finally falls back to sleep. No room sharing with the toddler.

If you’re time traveling so that you’ve got a time zone difference, you want to jump into the new time zone as quickly as possible. Now, the good news is that a child who sleeps well, isn’t running on the same kind of sleep debt that most adults are operating on. Which means that they’re going to handle their jet lag much better then you’re going to.

You do want to encourage them to get on board with the new time as soon as you get to your location. There’s a few things you can do to help that process a long. One is to make sure that there’s lots of exposure to daytime light.

Go out, spend lots of time in the fresh air to teach the body that this is day time. When it’s night, you’re going to want to darken out the room, turn off electronics at least an hour before you want to go to sleep, so you can start teaching your body to release melatonin and start making you feel sleepy.

Now, one last thing. Airplane travel. That can scare a lot of parents. My best advice around airplane travel is to just get through it. I have three kids, I’ve traveled all over the place with them. My advice to myself is always just get through it.

Make sure you’ve got lots of snacks, lots of toys, books, coloring, you name it. If you child needs to nap while you are in route, you can pull out all the stops. If she’s got great sleep habits that might be a little tricky for her because she’s going to want her own bed.

If she fell asleep in your arms or you ended up rocking her, not the end of the world for that day only. As soon as you get to your location though you want to get right back on track with her sleep skills with the schedule and routine so that she know’s that was just a one of, and now you’re back on track.

The more you practice this, the better your children will become at traveling. It’s just a few things you need to keep in mind. It’s not quite the same as solo travel. You do have to accommodate your child’s schedule and routines, but, that’s a small sacrifice to make in order to have a pleasant holiday experience.

All right, thanks for watching today. Sleep well.