Learn Hardcore French: Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme les aident à bien dormir. - A balanced meal and a quiet walk help them sleep well.

It replaces a plural noun (often people), for example:
- les enfants → Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme les aident à bien dormir.
  - les = les enfants
Aider in French takes a direct object:
- aider quelqu’un = to help someone
  So you must use the direct object pronoun les, not the indirect leur.

Compare:

Je les aide. = I help them. (direct)
Je leur parle. = I speak to them. (indirect, because parler à quelqu’un)

So here, les = them, as a direct object of aident.

Why is it aident and not aide?

The verb must agree with the whole subject, which is plural:

Subject: Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme
→ This is two things joined by et, so it’s plural.

In French, a verb must match the subject in number:

Singular: Un repas équilibré les aide à bien dormir.
Plural: Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme les aident à bien dormir.

Even if in spoken English many people say “A balanced meal and a walk helps them…” using a singular verb, in French you must use the plural form aident.

Why does les come before aident instead of after the verb, like in English?

In French, object pronouns normally come before the conjugated verb (except in affirmative commands).

So:

English word order: help them
French word order: les aident

Pattern:

Sujet + (pronoms objets) + verbe
- Ils les aident. = They help them.
- Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme les aident. = A balanced meal and a walk help them.

Only in affirmative imperatives does it switch:

Aidez-les ! = Help them!

Why is it aident à bien dormir and not just aident bien dormir?

The verb aider is normally followed by à before another verb:

aider quelqu’un à faire quelque chose
= to help someone to do something

So here:

les aident à bien dormir
= help them to sleep well

You cannot drop à; aider needs it when followed by an infinitive verb:

Je t’aide à comprendre. = I help you understand.
Ils nous aident à travailler. = They help us to work.
Un repas équilibré les aide à bien dormir. = A balanced meal helps them sleep well.

Why is it bien dormir and not dormir bien?

Both bien dormir and dormir bien are possible in French, but:

The most natural, neutral expression for “to sleep well” is bien dormir, and that’s what you see fixed in many phrases:
- J’aimerais bien dormir.
- Il ne peut pas bien dormir.

Dormir bien can also be used, especially if you want to emphasize bien at the end, but in structures like aider quelqu’un à…, the infinitive usually keeps its complement immediately after it:

les aider à bien dormir sounds more natural than les aider à dormir bien.

So à bien dormir is the standard and smoothest choice here.

Why is it un repas équilibré and une promenade calme (adjectives after the noun) instead of putting the adjectives before the nouns?

In French, most adjectives normally come after the noun, unlike English:

English: a balanced meal, a calm walk
French: un repas équilibré, une promenade calme

Adjectives like grand, petit, beau, bon, mauvais, jeune, vieux often come before the noun, but descriptive adjectives such as:

équilibré (balanced)
calme (calm)
intéressant (interesting)
difficile (difficult)

generally follow the noun:

un livre intéressant
un exercice difficile
un repas équilibré
une promenade calme

Should calme agree with both repas and promenade? Why isn’t it calmes?

No, in this sentence calme describes only une promenade, not un repas.

The structure is:

Un repas équilibré (a balanced meal)
et
une promenade calme (a calm walk)

So:

équilibré agrees with repas (masculine singular): un repas équilibré
calme agrees with promenade (feminine singular): une promenade calme

If you wanted to say that both the meal and the walk are calm (which sounds odd for a meal), then you could write:

Un repas équilibré et une promenade calmes les aident à bien dormir.

Here, calmes (plural) would describe the whole group: repas + promenade. But in the original, each noun has its own adjective.

Why doesn’t calme end with an extra e for the feminine noun promenade?

The adjective calme has the same form in masculine and feminine singular:

Masculine singular: un garçon calme
Feminine singular: une fille calme

Only the plural adds s:

Masculine plural: des garçons calmes
Feminine plural: des filles calmes

So with une promenade (feminine singular), the correct form is still calme, not calmée or anything else:

une promenade calme ✅

Is les a direct or indirect object here?

Les is a direct object pronoun.

Verb: aident (from aider)
Pattern: aider quelqu’un (no preposition before the person)

So in:

Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme les aident à bien dormir.

we have:

Subject: Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme
Verb: aident
Direct object pronoun: les (them)
Infinitive complement: à bien dormir

If it were an indirect object, there would normally be à + noun/pronoun after the verb, and we would use leur as a pronoun:

parler à quelqu’un → leur parler
But aider doesn’t take à before the person, so les is direct.

What would the sentence look like if we didn’t use the pronoun and said who les refers to?

You would replace les with the full noun phrase, and it would come after the verb, like in English:

Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme aident les enfants à bien dormir.
= A balanced meal and a walk help the children sleep well.

Structure:

Subject: Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme
Verb: aident
Direct object noun phrase: les enfants
Infinitive complement: à bien dormir

With a pronoun, French moves the object before the verb:

Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme les aident à bien dormir.

How would the sentence change if only the meal were the subject, not the meal and the walk?

If you only talk about the meal, the subject becomes singular, so the verb changes to aide:

Un repas équilibré les aide à bien dormir.
= A balanced meal helps them sleep well.

Compare:

Singular subject:
- Un repas équilibré les aide à bien dormir.
Plural/compound subject:
- Un repas équilibré et une promenade calme les aident à bien dormir.

The pronoun les and the rest of the sentence stay the same; only the verb form changes to match the subject.