How to Help Kids with Sleepover Anxiety | Psych in 60
Channel: Psych Bytes
Date: 2018-05-10

There are many challenges that kids can face when invited to a sleepover. 

From the perspective of sleep, they will have to face sleeping in a foreign environment, which will disrupt a lot of the cues that they may have for being able to fall asleep.

Our brain is most soothed if scent, sound, and touch are consistent in our sleep environment, but most kids would not want to travel with a white noise machine so it can be best to focus on scent and touch.

Make sure that they take their pillow, and it can be helpful to even add a familiar scent so that they know they are connected to home.

Some kids may still sleep with a special blanket, and it can be good for them to take the blanket with them.

If they don't want to be obvious that they took their blanket, you can also pin a small swatch of their blanket in their sleeping back to make it less obvious.

Lastly, you want the emphasis of the event to be having fun with friends, so normalize for them the fact that they may not be able to easily turn their brain off and go to sleep.

It can be good to have a plan for a time for resting the following day so they can feel relaxed about disrupted sleep. 

I recommend limiting to one every two weeks so that it is never too big of a strain on their overall well-being.

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