How do you know when to put a poorly child to bed?

[crazychemist]

DD is 3 and has managed to pick up a cold (amazing bearing in mind how few people she’s been in contact with! We bumped into another child she knew and they had a cuddle... he had a runny nose).

It’s been ages since she was last ill, and she hasn’t been poorly since she dropped her last nap as far as I remember. She was miserable last night and slept very poorly, waking up because of the blocked nose. Today, she’s been very low energy and has barely done anything other than lie on the sofa watching TV (NOT like her at all) and has now fallen asleep.

How do I know when to put her to bed tonight? Although she does have a normal bedtime routine, from past experience of unusual situations (lots of time in the car etc) putting her to bed before she is ready for it is usually a bit of a disaster, especially in hot weather. But I assume she’ll need a good night’s sleep to help her get better. Any thoughts?

The rule book goes out of the window when they are ill and it's very difficult to predict.

I would avoid more than an hour of daytime sleep. Then play it by ear tonight. It might be that because she's poorly she will still be ready to go to bed at normal time despite having a nap. Otherwise make it a bit later, but not too much.

I'd leave her to doze on the sofa, as she needs. Skip bath unless essential then pop her to bed at her usual or bit later bedtime.

She only slept about 20 minutes, then her blocked nose woke her up again. She says she doesn’t want to go back to sleep, but she looks exhausted so I think today will just be Disney and sofa..... I never know what to do for the best in these situations!

I would try her normal bedtime but if she won’t settle then bring her back down. My DD will normally settle to bed at her bedtime even when ill but in this heat I let her stay up a bit last night until it was cooler

My dd is 6 and she has always slept very very badly if she has so much as a cold. On Friday she was just starting with it and had me up the whole night. Yesterday she was ridiculously over tired and whiny. I gave in and she went to bed at half five. Slept until 9pm, got up herself for the bathroom and then slept straight through until this morning. I say put her to bed early. She needs it

Thanks very much for the advice! As it happened, next door were having a bbq with fairly loud music till 8.30, so I just kept her downstairs on the sofa and then asked her what she wanted to do - she didn’t want a bath (still feverish) so I just read her a story and put her straight to bed. She slept much better than the previous night, her blocked nose didn’t wake her till 5.30 (early for her, I normally wake her at 7) so she’s a lot more lively this morning.

Remember that a fever is a coronavirus symptom for testing.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/symptoms/coronavirus-in-children/

You should phone 111 to see if a test is needed, and self isolate as a family.

@FATEdestiny thanks for the concern. I did phone 111 at the time and they said it wasn’t necessary unless I really wanted to get her tested - she has no cough, just a massively runny nose. The child she caught it from (we know who it is because she has seen so few people and we contacted all of them to let them know that she was unwell, and one of the mums said hers had been ill a few days before with the same symptoms) was tested and it was negative.