13 weird ways parents get children to sleep

Then they have to go back to school, like zombies heading into the mid-winter gloom.

Adults as well as children are suffering. Early January is also the peak day for searches for “sleep” and the more plaintive “I need sleep”.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Bad jumpers, even worse sleep. Christmas has all the ingredients for leaving you exhausted.

But desperate days require desperate measures. And mothers, struggling with their children’s lack of sleep, develop their own emergency tactics.

Research for sleep apps, Moshi Twilight Sleep Stories and calm.com, recently identified some of the most eccentric ideas.

They are all claimed as having been tried somewhere. Although you can only imagine how bad things must have become.

And none of them are likely to appear in those unbearably smug parenting books for the perfect family.

13 weird ways to get children to fall asleep

Explaining to your child the infrastructure plans of China’s leader, Xi Jinping

Play a recording of a chapter from an 18 th Century Scottish economics book, read by a really boring teacher

Watch a video of a crossword puzzle tournament

Listen to an hour-long recording of people yawning

Running a vacuum cleaner

Watch a slow-motion film about sheep grazing

Inventing an imaginary figure, like “The 8 o’clock man”, who catches any children still awake after 8p m

Lying the child on the parent’s chest, and the mother slowly spinning in a circle

Putting them in the car and driving

Humming the national anthem

Turning the child’s bed the other way round

Putting a ticking clock under the child’s pillow, to mimic the mother’s heartbeat

Putting an item of garment that smells of the mother in the child’s bed

Image caption Wide awake and ready for another day at work. Who are you kidding?

Image caption The festive season can leave people exhausted and out of routine

Woman’s Hour: Five tips to help your baby sleep well at night

Body Clock: What makes you tick ?

Just a few nights of bad sleep upsets your brain

10 things to know about sleep

Image caption The NHS says that children should not use screens for an hour before bedtime

SHARING IS CARING!

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