Spring

Spring brings longer evenings, more light after dinner, and for a lot of families, a bedtime routine that suddenly stops working the way it did last week. You might notice bath time now happens in full daylight, dinner runs later because everyone wants to stay outside, or the whole evening just feels less “winding down” than it used to. None of that is a coincidence.

Daylight is one of the biggest cues our bodies use to know when it's time to wind down. It's part of our internal body clock, and children are especially sensitive to it. When the sky is still bright at 7pm, a child's body can genuinely believe it isn't bedtime yet, even if the clock on the wall says otherwise. That's biology catching up with the calendar, not defiance, and it's not something a firmer routine alone will fix in the first week or two.

Warmer afternoons add a second layer on top of the light change. More outdoor play, later daycare pickups (an alternative to this… spring time doesn’t necessarily mean a change in school/work/daycare schedule) and generally higher energy in the hour before dinner can all push the whole evening later, even before bedtime itself.

There's a second, sharper shift hidden inside spring too: daylight saving. In the states that observe it (NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT), clocks jump forward a full hour overnight in early October, a much bigger jump than the gradual lengthening of daylight either side of it. Where the general spring shift creeps up over weeks, daylight saving changes the clock in a single night, which is often why bedtime can suddenly feel impossible the exact week it happens, even if the two weeks before felt fine. If you're in Queensland, Western Australia or the Northern Territory, daylight saving doesn't apply where you are, though the general daylight lengthening above still will.

A few things that help during this seasonal shift:

• Block out light in the bedroom. Close blinds or curtains 30 to 45 minutes before your usual bedtime, even if it's still bright outside. Removing the visual cue that it's “still day” helps the body start winding down.

• Keep the wind-down routine at the same time each night, rather than pushing it later just because it feels lighter out. The routine, not the light outside, is what tells a child's body what's coming next.

• Watch afternoon naps for younger children. Longer daylight can quietly push nap time later, which then pushes bedtime later too. Anchoring naps to the clock rather than to how light it feels outside helps keep the whole day on track.