The hummed exhale
Baba Bear
Breathe in for four, and hum on the way out.
A long hum forces a slow exhale, and a slow exhale is the part of the breath that settles you. It also gives a child something to do that is not lying still trying.
It is a tool, not a story world
Sleepy Sleepland looks like a story world and is not one. The books hand you expressions, analogies and visualisations — the route, the named places, the repeated incantations, the yawn cues, and directions on how to say the words — so that you can talk your child to sleep. Everything on this site is a version of that.
There is no jeopardy anywhere on the route. Nothing goes wrong, nobody gets lost, no question is raised. A story has tension, tension is arousing, and a sequence simply proceeds.
The child is promised something wonderful — you will enter Dreamy Dream Land — and the walk is how you get there. We withhold the picture of arriving, never the promise, because arriving is an event, events wake people, and the arrival is meant to happen in the bed rather than on the screen.
How to read it aloud
The books mark the text so you know how to perform it, and the films keep the same convention on screen.
It was time to GO TO SLEEP NOW but Tardy didn’t know how to GO TO SLEEP. His eyelids were drooping and he was starting to breathe very slowly (yawn).
- Teal capitals are the sleep-suggestion words. Say them firmly.
- Teal italics are drawn out slowly.
- (yawn) and (long yawn) are directions to you. Perform them. Never read them aloud.
The repetition is the mechanism, not a mistake. So very, very tired. Deeper and deeper. He slept and he slept and he slept. Never vary something to keep it interesting — interesting is the enemy here.
One rule we will not break
Nothing we make will ever tell your child to fall asleep. Going to sleep is something a child can practise, so we say GO TO SLEEP. Falling asleep is involuntary, so we only ever observe it happening to someone else. Instructing it creates exactly the effort that prevents it, which is the whole reason bedtime goes wrong.
Where each technique comes from
Every one of these is real and published. We have not invented a technique, and we do not intend to.
Sleep Juice
Baba Bear
Montmorency cherries, almonds, kefir and hazelnuts.
All four are real dietary sources associated with sleep, and Montmorency cherries in particular contain melatonin. It is a ritual with a real basis, not a remedy.
The raisin
Chief Mindfulness
One raisin, examined for far longer than a raisin deserves.
The canonical MBSR exercise, taught properly. Attention on a single small object is the whole of it.
The nap curl
The Cat Nap
Circle, curl, and be asleep before anyone notices.
Short naps are well studied, and the cardiovascular work on napping is real. Her purr is the soundtrack; one bell tinkle as her eyes close.
The settling ritual
Shut Eye Sam
The same small sequence, in the same order, every night.
A fixed pre-sleep routine is one of the most reliable things in the literature on children and sleep. The content matters far less than the sameness.
The fixed bedtime
The Lair Bear
The same time, warm and dark, no negotiation.
Regularity beats duration. His yawns are famously contagious, and contagious yawning is real.
Modelling
Auntie Dozer
She is so sleepy she keeps dozing off mid-sentence, and children finish her goodnight for her.
Children copy drowsiness far more readily than they follow an instruction to be drowsy. Watching someone else go first does the work.
Paradoxical intention
The Awake Tree
Try to stay awake.
A real CBT-I technique, and the only addition to the set in 2026. Trying to stay awake removes the effort of trying to sleep, and the effort was the problem.
What we do not do
This is Made for Kids. There is no advertising, no personalised recommendation, no comments on anything a child sees, and nothing is collected from child users. This page is the only place on the site written for an adult.
Nothing on the site is beat-reactive either. Everything that moves is tied to a twelve-second breath, because beat-reactive visuals are stimulating by design. If your device asks for reduced motion, all of it stops.