How can parents keep babies and toddlers cool during a heatwave?

Cold showers, paddling pools, wet towels placed in the bed, and frozen flannels are all effective ways to help young children regulate their temperature during a heatwave. Keeping a fan running in the room — but not directed straight at a baby — and letting children sleep in as little clothing as possible are also recommended. The overriding principle is to find what works for your specific child and your specific home.

The hosts of The Toddle About Show discussed these strategies in the context of a particularly brutal summer, recording the episode in early July after already experiencing four separate heatwaves. With their daughters Florence and Aurora — aged eight and six — sleep was the sharpest pressure point: the heat was pushing bedtime back to half past seven or eight o'clock, and keeping the bedroom environment cool enough to settle young children became a daily challenge.

Temperature monitoring was another recurring theme. Bill Clapson described owning five thermometers simultaneously — including head, mouth, and gun-style devices — illustrating just how much cognitive load heatwave parenting can generate. The impulse to keep checking is understandable, but the episode makes clear that no single gadget replaces the hands-on, trial-and-error approach of testing what actually works for your child on a given night.

This wrist-cooling tip, aimed at parents struggling to cope with the heat themselves, captures the episode's wider spirit: practical, body-level hacks matter more than expensive solutions. The same logic applies to the children — a wet towel laid across the foot of a bed or a frozen flannel costs nothing and can make the difference between a settled night and a miserable one.