Sleep Aid for Children -- Reduce Anxiety in Children

True--there is a natural non-chemical sleep aid for children. Moments that you spend with your child before bedtime can be very precious. It's story time and they pass too fast for "Jimmy's parents let him stay up until eleven o'clock."

The whining goes on and on. You begin to feel like a slave and your child's bedtime becomes stress time. After all, after their bed-time is your time to relax and wind down from a long day.

Why don't they just go off to sleep? Why do they make the evening so stressful?

Eighteen years ago my son (who is now twenty) had sleeping difficulties. Maybe in part it was from him not understanding why his mother and I weren't living together. Kids have stress too.

I was honored to have bed-time as an opportunity to tuck him in and read him a story, but then it became two, three and four stories and he didn't seem to ever want to go to sleep.

Since hypnosis was my profession I decided experiment. I spun my son the story of Rip Van Winkle. His eyes were closed within five minutes and they stayed closed. Since he was my captive audience I added in suggestions about him growing up to be a loving, kind, responsible, respective of others, the planet and so on.

Soon it was to become his favorite story and when I perfected the script I recorded it and introduced my son to the tape recorder--he was was about three years of age at the time.

I'd tuck him in, give him a kiss and start the recording. Much to my surprise the recording did the trick and he didn't wake up when it clicked off.

It got so easy that I began feeling a bit guilty.

Occasionally he'd wake up in the middle of the night and come into my bedroom. I'd listen to his problem and walk him back to his bed, put on the tape and go back to bed. It always did the trick.

Rip Van Winkle has been recorded onto cd--no more clicking--for hundreds of kids to go off to a pleasant sleep.

End result. My twenty year of son is the "apple of my eye." I'm so honored to have him in my life. He's an honor student starting his junior year in college, loving, kind, intelligent, respectful of others, talented ... In spite of his parent's turmoil he has become the living version of the suggestions in the Rip Van Winkle recording.