A spring bedtime routine

The evening light is the first thing to fix

If your child's room is bright at seven in April, no amount of gentle shushing will do much. Start with what you can see. Stand in the doorway at bedtime and look for the gaps: the strip down the side of the curtain, the glow above the rail, the slice under the door from the landing. A folded blanket over the curtain rail is ugly and works surprisingly well. So does a piece of card taped over the top of a blind, or a darker curtain hung on the pole you already have, with no drilling.

Then look at the room from the child's pillow. A nightlight that was comforting in December can be the brightest thing in the room in May. Try turning it off for a week and see what happens, or move it so it sits behind a chair rather than in eyeline.

Keep the getting-ready part ordinary. Same bath, same pajamas, same two books. The room being darker is the change, so everything else stays put and the routine still feels like the routine. Many parents find the first three nights in a darker room are the wobbly ones and the fourth is calmer. If your child is old enough to ask, keep the answer short: the sun stays up later in spring, so we make the room do the job.

Easing the spring clock change

When the clocks go forward, bedtime arrives an hour earlier than your child's own sense of the day. Expect a wonky week. The aim is not a perfect switch on the Sunday night, it is a gentle slide across four or five days.

Start a few nights before. Move bedtime earlier by ten or fifteen minutes, and move the whole routine with it: bath, teeth, books. If bedtime is normally seven, try quarter to seven on Wednesday and Thursday, then half past six on Friday and Saturday. Small shifts are easier than one big jump.

On the Sunday itself, get outside in the morning. A walk before lunch, a scoot round the block, a trip to the shop on foot. Morning daylight and fresh air often help the new time feel ordinary by Monday.

Keep the wake-up time steady, even after a rough night. It is tempting to let everyone lie in, and once is fine, but three long lie-ins in a row make Monday morning harder. If your child still naps, shift the nap by the same ten or fifteen minutes rather than cutting it short. Give it a full week before you decide it has not worked.

More outdoor time, and the wind-down after it

Spring means the garden, the park, the walk home the long way. That is good for everyone, and it also means a child who arrives at the door still running. The gap between the front door and the bath is where spring bedtimes are won or lost.

Try a deliberate landing. Ten minutes of something quiet and physical: stacking bricks, chalk on the patio, peeling carrots at the counter, a slow lap of the garden looking for what has grown since yesterday. Not screens, not a new game with rules, not a wrestle that ends in tears.

Shoes and coats go in one place, so getting in is not a scavenger hunt. A bath that starts at the same time each night does a lot of the work for you, along with the same towel and the same order of things. Some families find a small snack about half an hour before bath helps, especially if dinner was early or the afternoon was full of running. Keep it boring: milk, a banana, a piece of toast.

If your child comes in wired at half past six, do not fight it with a speech about calming down. Lower your own voice, dim the big lights, and start the bath. Children borrow the volume of the room.

Spring stories that match the day

A story works harder when it belongs to the day your child has just had. In spring you have more material than at any other time of year: nests, seeds, puddles, snails, blossom coming out and going over, the first bee, the cat sitting in the long grass.

Bedtime stories about nature are a good place to start, and they can be short. Pick one small thing you saw together and read something that touches it. Let the last minute of the story be quiet and slow rather than funny and loud, so the book ends where you want the evening to end.

If bedtime has drifted later because the evenings are light, ten-minute bedtime stories are the practical choice. One story, properly finished, beats three stories with a rushed ending and a parent saying we have to stop now.

A calm bedtime story helps whatever the season. StoryChoose has free bedtime stories and can write personalised ones, so a child who wants a story about their own garden, their own dog, or the snail from the back step can have one. Use it as the last thing before lights out rather than the start of a long negotiation about how many books.

A spring routine you can keep when the evenings are long

The order matters more than the clock. Keep the order identical all year and move the times as the season shifts. Here is a shape that works for a lot of families with children from about two to six.

Six o'clock: shoes off, kitchen closing, quiet play at the table. Six fifteen: bath or wash, teeth afterwards. Six thirty five: pajamas, curtains shut, small light on. Six forty five: one story, then a song or a few minutes of talking about the day. Seven: lights out, door ajar, the same goodnight in the same words.

Written down it looks tidy, and it will not run tidy every night. The point is that there is a shape to come back to. If you are running late, cut the bath, not the story and not the quiet minute at the end. If two children share a room, do the story together and settle the younger one first while the older one looks at a book.

For a child not yet in a bed, the same shape holds: bath, milk, one book, cot. The times stretch and shrink with the child, not with the calendar. Write your version on a piece of paper and stick it inside a cupboard door, so on a frazzled evening you are not rebuilding it from memory with a child on your hip.

Warmth, birdsong, and other small spring details

A few small things make a difference once the weather turns. Layers come first. A room that was right in February can be stuffy in April, and a child who is too warm will wriggle and kick off covers rather than settle. Lighter pajamas, one fewer blanket, and a window open a crack in the next room rather than right over the bed.

Mornings need a look too. Lighter mornings mean some children start the day at ten past five, which pulls the whole day earlier and makes bedtime harder in a different way. A darker curtain helps here as well, and so does keeping the first part of the morning quiet, with the big lights off and the same small routine as usual.

Then there is noise. Birds, a mower, a bin lorry at six. If your child wakes to sound, a steady background noise can take the edge off it: a fan on low, a radio turned between stations in the hall.

Seasons also change under you. Blossom comes and goes in a fortnight, and a child who noticed it on Monday may ask about it on Thursday. Answer briefly, and let it feed the story that night.

When a spring bedtime goes sideways

Some nights it will not work. Your child will be wide awake at nine in the bright evening, someone will cry, and you will sit on the stairs wondering where the routine went. That is an ordinary week in April, not a sign that you have broken something.

Look for the one thing that has changed before you change everything. Usually it is one of these: the room got lighter, bedtime drifted twenty minutes later over a fortnight, the nap moved, or a child who was tired is now overtired. Fix the one thing and give it four nights.

If bedtime has crept later, a reset helps. Pick a weekend, wake your child at the normal time even if the night was late, get outside in the morning, and put bedtime back to the time you want in one go, with extra bath time and an early story to fill the gap. Two or three days of that often brings things back into line.

If you are on your own with bedtime, or a shift means someone else does it, keep the routine short and written down so it survives being handed over. One story, one song, lights out. If sleep is persistently hard, or your child seems unwell, or you are worried, it is worth talking to your child's doctor.