Like most parents, Kelly Paniagua and her partner, Australian actor Julian McMahon, discovered "bedtime" isn't exactly straightforward when young children are involved.
In the hour before bed each night, Julian's daughter Madison would experience a sudden – and rather inconveniently timed – burst of energy.
“As soon as we said it was bed time, it was almost like she was just starting her day,” recalls Kelly. "She would bounce around and in her excitement she would trip or fall, and it wouldn’t matter if we told her to be careful. She'd still end in some kind of stumble and then she’d be sad."
In these moments, Julian would take a moment to comfort her and coax her to sleep.
This simple father-daughter ritual inspired Kelly to sit down and write her first book, Bedtime for Sarah Sullivan. The first in a series of ten, the book explores the power of a child’s dreams and imagination, and the importance of their state of mind leading up to bedtime.
Julian and Maddy
“There have been a lot of studies lately which show the 30 minutes before you go to sleep, for adults and kids, can significantly impact your mind for the following day,” Kelly says. "So I had an idea that if you were to put happy thoughts into your child’s mind before they went to sleep, that it would carry over to the next day."