I've slept like a baby for more than two years now – as well as my daughter would let me, that is. The old truism of sleep when they sleep is true. Whether it's short or long, most parents do sleep like their children, often in shorter quantities. With the upcoming arrival of Daylight Savings Time, there's going to be another kink in the night for a few days, and most parents look for help to make sleep go as smoothly as possible.

When my daughter was a newborn, my husband and I went through all the typical struggles of parents who don't get enough sleep as we tried to acclimate ourselves and her to a sleep pattern. Routines are important to parents and children alike. So what do we do when Daylight Savings Time disrupts the routine we've worked so hard to establish?

"The time change in the fall and the spring is very difficult on children, and it can take children [from] a few days to a week to adjust," says Dr. Jodi Mindell, author of Sleeping Through the Night. In general, every child is different and has a particular sleep pattern, which changes with age and development. Time change affects our children because in the spring they are going to bed an hour earlier and in the fall, an hour later.

"During the transition period, parents have to be careful to maintain a strict pattern of how they've handled putting their children to bed before," says Dr. Mindell. "It's tempting to go in and offer them drinks, lay down with them or add to other bad sleeping habits that they may not have had before. You want to stick by the clock and stick to the bedtime rules. Another piece that is key is wake them up at their normal times – don't let them sleep later to 'make up' for lost sleep from the night before."

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