jennynd Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 We were out of country for 3 weeks to Taiwan to visit (11hrs time diffent) Came back for 2 days now. While myself and DS did fine adjust, my DD4 had a terrible time. She is on sleeping 4 hrs and wake up for 4/5 hrs for past 2 /3 days. I do not want to force her to stay awake nor to wake her up because that just make her a very grumpy kid. But I start to think I will need to. Any brilliant idea to help a kid adjust jet lag without too much pain? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annie Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 We had a 9 hour adjustment this fall. After two or three days of wacky sleep, we had to pretty much force him to stay up one day. It went fairly smoothly after that day. It stunk, but he wasn't getting better, and nobody was getting enough sleep. Oddly enough, he had adjusted perfectly easily three months earlier when we had to go the other way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amira Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 I agree with keeping her awake during the day. I think it helps to spend as much time as possible outside in the sun, or at least in daylight if it's cloudy. Afternoon naps in particular are the worst. I'll let my kids sleep in when we're getting over jet lag, but I don't want them to sleep between noon and a reasonable bedtime. Keeping them awake in the day is definitely painful, but overall, it's much less painful for everyone than having a child waking up at crazy hours in the night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jennynd Posted November 27, 2012 Author Share Posted November 27, 2012 One difficult thing is that I work full time. I guess I will ask her teacher to keep her awake and see how that works... Thanks a lot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elinor Everywhere Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 When we lived in Hong Kong, we told visitors from the States to expect a minimum of 4 days until they were back to normal. For each decade over age 50 we added a day. It sounds weird, but we had a lot of visitors and this pretty much held true. One curious note.....men tended to catch colds/flu/stomach problems when flying over more than women. Just anecdotal data. :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 We travel overseas every year, and every single time it takes us a full week to completely adjust; the first three days are bad, then it gets easier. Try to stay up as much as possible during daytime and get mid day sunlight to reset the biological clock. Aside from that, I found it not worth fighting with the insomnia; when I return from Europe to the US, I will go to bed early and accept that I will be wide awake at 3am- I just get up. It gradually shifts over a few days. The other direction - I just stay up late and sleep in a bit, as my body desires. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jennynd Posted November 27, 2012 Author Share Posted November 27, 2012 So I supposed there is no magic wand... Even though I am getting up and go to sleep at usual time now, I still feel very tired during day time. It stinks.. I planned to restart school for DS this week and now thinking I might have to give him a week to go back to normal.. that is a month no math/reading.. It will be ugly when we restart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mum Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 If you drink a LOT of water on the flight, your jet lag will be significantly less. I know it doesn't help now, but in the future... I have flown long haul a lot, and always had jet lag, but having found this out,on my last 2 flights none of us (2 adults, 3 kids) had jet lag. We all felt so much better both on the flight, and when we arrived. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nono Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 I am just simply jealous of 3 weeks in Taiwan! :tongue_smilie: One of my kids has a rough time going west, the other going east. (Which is markedly better than my DH, who suffers in both directions!) I think throwing out a "normal" schedule for a week upon landing at either end is the only surefire winner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giraffe Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 A friend of mine has a rule of thumb that every time zone takes a day to recover. So a 7 hour switch will take a week. We have found this to be true, especially when traveling east to west, which kills both me and DD. We still try all the recommendations: sleep on the plane, get up in the am, get into sun in the morning, etc. Still takes us a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jennynd Posted November 28, 2012 Author Share Posted November 28, 2012 A friend of mine has a rule of thumb that every time zone takes a day to recover. So a 7 hour switch will take a week. We have found this to be true, especially when traveling east to west, which kills both me and DD. We still try all the recommendations: sleep on the plane, get up in the am, get into sun in the morning, etc. Still takes us a week. WHAT!!! so 11hrs .. 2weeks... oh... my... I hope not. She is getting a bit better.. although still long nap afternoon and wake up for 1 hr or so around 1AM but did fall back to sleep.. cross my fingers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giraffe Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 WHAT!!! so 11hrs .. 2weeks... oh... my... I hope not. She is getting a bit better.. although still long nap afternoon and wake up for 1 hr or so around 1AM but did fall back to sleep.. cross my fingers Fear not - she'll get better little by little every day, but our experience is that we're not 100% until after the day/timezone period has passed. Hang in there!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amira Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 WHAT!!! so 11hrs .. 2weeks... oh... my... I hope not. She is getting a bit better.. although still long nap afternoon and wake up for 1 hr or so around 1AM but did fall back to sleep.. cross my fingers I'm glad she went back to sleep. I hope you're almost at the end of this. FWIW, we've done 12-hour time changes several times with a four-year-old and it took less than a week to adjust. There's hope! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heather in Neverland Posted November 28, 2012 Share Posted November 28, 2012 We are a 12 hour time zone difference so jet lag is really tough. Either direction, it takes us all about 3-4 days to recover. No matter what tricks we try it takes 3-4 days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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