Sleep challenges are a common problem that parents share with me in my pediatric nutrition practice, and natural sleep support for babies and kids is what most parents prefer. Babies and kids who can’t sleep not only exhaust themselves, but can keep the whole family stressed and drained too. This drops immune function, resilience, cognition, learning, focus and attention, mood, and happiness for everyone! The good news is there are several ways to natural sleep support for babies and kids that can do wonders before you turn to prescription medication.

With all systems go in the body, babies and kids normally drop off within 15-30 minutes on their own. Once settled into a sleep pattern, they can usually stay asleep, once past that first 10-12 months. When insomnia regularly disrupts this, one of the key changes is that cortisol, a stress hormone, will rise and remain elevated at the wrong times. This can have negative effects on metabolism, immune function, and other hormone cycles the body relies on – including melatonin, which helps us fall asleep and normally rises before sleep while cortisol drops.

1 – Melatonin is just one natural sleep support for babies and kids that I’ve used in my pediatric nutrition practice. Long short, used in discreet and small doses, it is safe and effective. It can be especially useful in resetting a broken or disrupted pattern in kids on the autism spectrum, or who have difficulty falling asleep to begin with. Check out my deeper dive on this tool in my melatonin blog post here, for dosing details and what forms are best for children (spoiler: NOT gummies. See the blog post for why those are not recommended!).

2 – Food – Parents in my practice are amazed to see how much simply using the right food during the day or near bedtime corrects a child’s sleep pattern. This is one reason why reviewing your child’s actual food intake (via a food diary) is so helpful for my practice. Food itself is probably the single most effective natural sleep support tool in my pediatric nutrition practice. Here are ways that food might disrupt sleep:

• There isn’t enough food during the day or near bedtime to support staying asleep all night, which will make cortisol spike not long after falling asleep. Although cortisol helps stabilize a falling blood sugar level by getting some glucose into the blood stream from stored sources (like glycogen in liver or muscle), it’s an “alert” hormone, and wakes us up. Though young infants’ stomachs are still too small to stay fed and asleep for more than just a couple hours at a time, babies and certainly older kids can sleep longer stretches when they have enough to eat during the day. It’s amazing how often I find that a child is over-restricted and can’t sleep well because of a too limited diet or imbalanced macros or calories. Try a happy bedtime snack with some healthy carbs (not sugary), a little protein, and some healthy fats.
• There is poor digestion, especially for proteins like milk (casein), wheat (gluten), soy, or pea protein concentrates (like in Ripple Milk,  Kate Farms, or vegan substitutes for cheese, formula, protein powders, or milk). Depending on gut status, these can form opiate like peptides that disrupt sleep pattern. In my clinical experience, they usually cause wakefulness between midnight to 3 AM, and the kids will be full of energy or content enough, but awake when they should be asleep. I often see this in picky eaters who rely heavily on processed wheat and dairy foods, without eating much else for proteins or healthy fats and oils. Their brains are not getting nourished with the amino acids and minerals needed to form good sleep chemistry. Bust the picky eating so there are more varied proteins and more minerals in the diet.
• There are reactive foods that are unassessed, and these may cause pain or reflux once your child lies down. See more details on screening for sensitivity, allergy or other reactions here. For immediate reflux relief, try gentle herb tinctures before turning to a medication. More options on managing reflux here.

3 – Minerals are important factors for balancing and maintaining a good sleep pattern. Calcium, magnesium, and iron are the star players here. Children with anemia, pre-anemia, or low ferritin level are going to have restless sleep or may not be able to stay asleep. Signs of marginal iron status include mercurial moods that flash between happy, moody, angry, or just plain tired; you might also see salt cravings or teeth grinding in sleep. Ask your pediatrician to run a full iron panel – not just a Hemoglobin finger stick, which will not assess iron itself. Kids may still need iron support when hemoglobin is in the normal range, and this can make great improvements for sleep – but get guidance from your doctor, because iron is also poisonous if overused. See more detail here on when kids need iron and what to do.

What about blood tests for magnesium and calcium? We need a lot of these minerals every day compared to a mineral like iron – think in terms of hundreds of milligrams for calcium and magnesium, versus single digit milligrams for iron, that the body needs. Testing for magnesium or calcium with blood draw is not so useful in assessing whether there is enough on board to support sleep. This is because these are electrolyte minerals that only leave their very small normal ranges in the blood under severe and dangerous circumstances, like dehydration, abnormal heart rhythm, extreme malnutrition, or fatigue or dizziness. Milder signs that a child may need these minerals include muscle cramps, restless sleep, being easy to fatigue, anxiety, inattention, or difficulty falling asleep. Check where you child gets these minerals in their diet. If it looks low, use Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) in a soaking tub before bed, or apply it as a creme topically at bedtime. You can easily add oral calcium supplements too, and my preferred form is calcium citrate. Another easy fix: Give 1 (one) Tablespoon magnesium and calcium liquid supplement at bedtime, like this one. For kids under forty pounds, start with a teaspoon only.

4 – Move and Play – A great natural sleep support for babies and kids is a regular diet of gross motor movement – that is, big play. Crawling, scrambling, jumping, climbing, swinging, splashing, swimming, tumbling, and running provide necessary organizing activity for the developing nervous system and brain. While a lot of parents take their kids’ ability to play like this for granted, the reality is that many kids have trouble with physical play if they have chronic conditions, low muscle tone, or other issues that keep their play abilities limited. If your child has sleep problems as well as aversions to light, noise, touch, clothing on skin, or varied food textures, sensory integration techniques can calm and organize their nervous systems to promote sleep at the right times. The other part of this equation is supplying the brain and nervous system with the right nutrients for calming chemistry, with helpful foods and nutrients. Use my Sensory Nutrition Checklist to see if your kids get balanced nutrition for good sensory processing.

5 – Supplements are typically the final option on my list of natural sleep support for babies and kids, simply because they won’t work as well if the first four items I’ve included here aren’t fixed first. Though those first four items take more effort, the pay off is often better than dabbling with pills and potions alone (just like your doctor does with medications). That said, there are many safe herbs and supplements that can aid sleep for children. If you would like help sorting what might be best for your child and how to use it, contact me here for one on one help. You can also dive into my book on using nutraceuticals in children here.