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After you purchase your Bedtime Hero Program membership you can login from the Main Menu on the website. After you login you should see “Bedtime Hero - Full Program” in the page title. Scroll down and click the "Let’s Begin" button to start the Online Program. If that does not work then logout, clear your browser cookies and cache and login again.
This is not a training program. It is a therapy method. You should not expect it to proceed in a sequential order like chapters in a course because it all depends on your child's responses. Of course, there are limitations on how flexible a computer program can be in response to your child's progress. A certain amount of repetition is necessary for your child to establish new ways of thinking and behaving at bedtime. Even though the structure in each session may be similar, your child can and should come up with their own new ideas, which will lead to new results. Do a session every 3 or 5 days with your child.
After you begin the program you will see two buttons: “First time here” and “More sessions”. The “First time here” module addresses the fear of being alone and starts with a rating scale that looks like a thermometer to measure your child's level of anxiety at bedtime. Their level of anxiety will be measured again at the end of the session.
At the next session after you click on the "More sessions" button you will see another rating scale. As long as your child rates their level of anxiety at bedtime as 3 or higher the program will provide a list of sessions that be can worked through. Your child should click on the issue that still bothers them the most and do that session. Certain sessions may need to be repeated until your child starts to cope differently. You will know that you are in a different session because the initial image will be different from the other sessions.
The process in each session is very similar at first. However, I recommend that your child pick a different confident scene each time he or she does a session. When it comes to mixing the confident scene together with the idea of lying in bed alone many children simply imagine lying in bed at bedtime while thinking about their confident scene. Other children are more creative and think about how the confident scene and lying in bed could be similar. For example, they might realize that sleeping on their own is similar to going down the water slide on their own because they both could feel good even though they were afraid at first. Encourage your child to think about the problem in a new and different way and come up with their own unique way of achieving their goal of sleeping on their own.
Towards the end of each session there are new suggestions provided to help your child manage that particular fear. For example, the strategy suggested for “fear of intruders” is very different from the strategy for “fear of the dark”. If a child seems stuck and has repeated a particular session a few times it can be useful to simply switch and do a different session (for example, you could stop repeating the “fear of the dark” session and go to the “scared of sounds” session just to change things up). Through all of this make sure you are encouraging and praising your child for even small increments of positive progress in their bedtime coping.
It’s important to continue the sessions until your child’s anxiety rating drops to 0, 1 or 2. When this is selected on the rating thermometer your child will be taken to the final Confidence Session, which helps your child to lock in their positive progress and become a Bedtime Hero!
Best wishes,
Dr Lauderdale
