Counting Sheep

The other day my 7 year old son was talking about sleeping. He told me he was counting sheep to help himself get to sleep, but it didn’t work.

I laughed as this isn’t something I pictured him doing, wasn’t even aware he had heard about counting sheep. But I couldn’t help resist ask him why it didn’t work. “They just went away” he said. I giggled but then it got me thinking.

Does this method really work? How can you possibly lay there and imagine sheep to put you to sleep? So I researched exactly what it was all about

The whole aim to counting sheep while you are trying to sleep is to keep your mind from wondering and thinking about other things. Most of us head to bed with the intention to go to sleep, but then find ourselves wondering about the things we have or haven’t done. So apparently this method is basically to keep us focused on one thing and eventually bored or relax us into a sleep.

So then bedtime came…

I had forgotten all about the counting sheep conversation. I climbed into bed and found myself as usual wide awake staring at the dark room, tapping my fingers. Despite going to bed because I was tired, I simply couldn’t sleep. Then I remembered about the counting sheep idea. So I figured I might try it.

I laid there, eyes closed, its quiet and trying to relax. I start imagining sheep jumping over this little white picket fence. 1, 2, 3, 4, and then next minute I’m up to 28.

How many of these sheep are you supposed to count before you finally go to sleep???

Not only counting up to 28 but somehow my cute little white sheep that were jumping over this white picket fence, have turned into blue Lego looking block sheep. Don’t ask me how, but that’s what I ended up imagining after about 20 or so, I suddenly realised this wasn’t going anywhere.

So I have given up on counting sheep when I go to bed, and for me…Definitely didn’t work. I told my son that it didn't work for me either, and that my sheep had turned into blue Lego sheep. He just looked at me weird and said "What?".. As in I had just said the most horrid thing ever to him.