Co-Sleeping: Should Your Child Sleep In Your Bed? Click here<<<<
Co-sleeping is the practice where the child sleeps in bed with his parents. Not surprisingly, it is one of the most hotly debated and controversial topics related to pediatric sleep. Let’s see why.
Some people argue that co-sleeping is the right and natural way to raise a child because the practice fosters a stronger bond and a more secure attachment.
Conversely, others will tell you that co-sleeping is risky, ridiculous, or even dangerous and they don’t want it for their family.
So, which approach holds the truth?
First, it’s important to understand that co-sleeping is not magic. Although some proponents of the family bed would disagree, numerous couples have reported that their babies did not necessarily sleep deeper or longer because their parents were close by. In fact, some parents found that their child slept longer and woke less frequently when they stopped co-sleeping and moved him into his own crib.
However, whether families choose to co-sleep or have their children sleep independently is a personal decision, and if both parents and child are safe, rested, and fulfilled, then co-sleeping is nothing to worry about.
{The Amazing New Shockwave Torch Makes Bad Guys SH*T Their Pants In Terror! click here<<<<}
If you decide do co-sleep, this commitment requires some very careful thinking about what you and your spouse feel is right for you as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.
Ask yourselves the following questions:
• Is it nice to think about enjoying the coziness of sleeping in close proximity, or does one or more of us tend to stay active during sleeping – potentially disrupting the others?
• Does everyone in our family want to co-sleep, or are we leaning toward it because one of us feels strongly?
• Are we willing to commit to being quiet after our child falls asleep, or do we like to watch TV or talk in bed?
• Will we enjoy being able to feed our baby more often throughout the night, or will having him next to us make it tougher to wean nighttime feeds?
• Are we agreeable to getting into bed when our child does, to ensure his safety?
• For working parents, does sleeping next to our child allow us to feel more connected to him?
As expected, co-sleeping has both advantages and disadvantages.
Let’s take a closer look at them.
• Constant closeness whenever the child is awake. Many children and parents enjoy this feeling.
• Immediate action and support for any sleep-related problem
• The ability to nurse and respond to other nighttime wakings without getting up
• More time to spend with the child
• Possibly better sleep for both the child and the parents, if the child was sleeping poorly to begin with
• Parents may sleep poorly if their children are restless sleepers
• Parents may end up sleeping in separate rooms, and they may become angry at their child or with each other
• Children’s and adults’ sleep cycles do not coincide
• Parents may have to go to bed at a very early hour with their children and be left with little time for their own evening activities
• Parents have little privacy
• There may be a slight increase in the risk to the infant from SIDS and related causes.
The decision to co-sleep should be yours, made by the parent – or parents – and based on your own personal philosophies, not on pressure from your child or anyone else. Another family’s good or bad experience with co-sleeping should not influence your decision: your child is unique and your family is not the same.
The Big Change – Transitioning Your Child From Crib To Bed<<<click here
I want out! That’s the message your toddler will send – one way or another – when he’s ready to wave goodbye to the crib and say hello to a big-kid bed. Your child might actually verbalize displeasure, or more likely, simply climb out of the crib.
So, what needs to be done?
First, resist the temptation to move him too early. Most experts recommend doings so around age 3. Unless your child is climbing out of his crib or needs more space than a crib can provide – his body is growing at an astounding rate – it’s better to keep him in the crib, which allows him to feel safe.
This way, your child can feel comfortable taking giant developmental leaps during the day but still regress to the security of his old crib at night.
Moreover, until age 3, toddlers are very impulsive, and your child’s difficulty in understanding and being able to follow directions or rules (like staying in bed all night) will make sleeping in a bed a real challenge. If you transition to a bed before age 3, you can plan on waking up to a little visitor next to your bed pretty much every night.
When the time comes, however, you need to help your child transition smoothly to sleeping in a bed. For that, you need to follow certain steps. These are:
1. Create a safe environment: Safety proof your child’s room and any adjacent areas he may be able to visit into the middle of the night. Secure windows, tops of stairs, and any stepstools that can be tripped over. Even better, you can install a safety gate at your child’s door. You can even install a small night-light in his room to help him orient himself and avoid hurting himself.
2. Pick the mattress: Go to the mattress store – or any other store that sells mattresses – and let your child help you choose the mattress or bed. With safety in mind, all you need is a twin-size mattress and box spring and some safety rails for the side. You should adjust the height of this new bed accordingly, as it will need to sit low on the floor for some time until your child gets used to it. Get some fun new sheets, some special pillowcases and you’re set to go.
3. Disassemble the crib (together): Once the new bed comes home, ask your child to help you to take down the crib. This way, your child will feel part of the transition process and will also be able to say good-bye to the crib.
4. Set up the bed: Put the bed in a corner of your child’s room so that the head and side of the bed are flush against the wall for protection. Add a safety rail to the exposed side of the bed. Your child will feel safe this way, just as he did in his crib.
5. Explain the rules of bedtime: If your child is verbal before the first night of sleeping in the bed, go over the rules of bedtime with him. Tell him that he is a big boy now who needs to understand that when we go to sleep, we only wake up when the sun is nice and bright.
6. Do your bedtime routine: During the first few nights your child is sleeping in his new bed, take an extra 10 minutes of reading time together to make him feel comfortable in his new environment. The idea here is to make your child feel safe. If your child seems excited about the new bed from the very start, you’re one of those luck people who has made this transition easily
Sleep Struggles – Why Do Children Cry As:<<<<click here
Seeing your baby cry is perhaps the most heartbreaking moment of all. You don’t want him to cry. You want him happy. And of course, you want him healthy. But for all that to happen, he needs to sleep properly.
It would be nice if your child could learn how to sleep without any crying or frustration whatsoever. Every parent would sign up for that. Unfortunately, the truth is that all children, regardless of the method you use to help them sleep, inevitably do shed some tears in the process. Let’s see why.
First and foremost, children cry when learning to sleep because they are protesting – they don’t like change. In fact, they hate change. Just think about it.
Do you remember what your favorite book was as a kid? Do you remember wanting to read that book over and over again, even though you knew every word of it?
We all resist change, children and adults alike. It’s normal to do so, and it’s normal for your child to express his resistance by crying. After all, crying comes before words – not the other way around.
Second, as children begin to learn how to sleep but haven’t yet figured out how to do so, they are understandably frustrated. They no longer have Mom and Dad on their side to help them get to sleep, and they don’t yet know what to do differently. They will eventually.
What’s really interesting about falling asleep is that although each of us is born with the inherent ability to do so, it is considered a learned behavior. And yet you can’t teach anyone else how to do it – you can’t simply say to your child to close his eyes and sleep. Instead, each of us has to learn for ourselves what to do to settle into sleep.
Of course, there are children who seem to learn how to sleep almost magically, with very little effort on the parent’s part. However, children are different. Everyone is unique.
Your child, along with many others, hasn’t learned this essential skill yet, which is why he needs you to take a step back, so he has the opportunity to achieve that on his own.
How will he do it? He might kick his legs around a bit, he might gently rock his head from side to side, or he might grab his lovey. Or maybe he’ll suck on his thumb. If he’s a bit older, maybe he’ll play with his hair.
The truth is, each of us has different things we do to soothe ourselves into sleep, and your child will surely find a way that’s perfect for him. But he won’t discover those things nearly as easily with you standing right next to him or picking him up – he won’t have the motivation to do so.
Simply put, if you “help” him, he will cry even harder because the touching feels like a tease that serves to reinforce the crying.
Sleep Problems And Nighttime Feedings<<<click here
Although your baby may give up regular nighttime feedings on his own by the time he’s three months old, do not expect – or insist – that such a young infant give them up altogether, all of a sudden.
But if your child is at least three months old, still nurses or requires a bottle at bedtime, and needs to eat again several more times during the night, then the extra feedings may well be causing the extra wakings. If that is the case, you may be able to help him sleep better by decreasing the number of these feedings.
However, if your baby takes in a substantial amount of food – from extended feedings at the breast, or bottles adding up to more than eight ounces over the course of the night – then he has learned that certain times of night are mealtimes. To eliminate these feedings suddenly wouldn’t be wise or nice.
The amount of milk or juice your child drinks during the night may be considerable. If he finishes four full eight-ounce bottles, that is a large amount for even an adult to consume overnight.
Solving The Problem
If you have concluded that excessive and unnecessary feedings at night are disrupting your child’s sleep, you will be relieved to learn that although such feedings can lead to severe sleep disturbances, the problem is also one of the easiest to fix.
Two things need to be addressed. The first is to reduce or eliminate the nighttime feedings to avoid their various sleep-disrupting effects. The second is to teach your child new sleep associations so that he can fall asleep without being held, without eating, and without sucking on the breast or bottle. You can do these things at the same time, or one at a time.
To fix the problems caused by the feedings, start by gradually decreasing the number of nighttime feedings, their size, or both. Just don’t stop the feedings suddenly. A program designed to allow new patterns to develop will be easier for him to follow.
Your goal is to gradually move your child’s feelings of hunger out of the nighttime and into the daytime. Once there is only a single remaining nighttime feeding left, you can choose to stop that feeding right away – instead of gradually – if you prefer, since the total amount of ingested food during the night is now fairly small.
If you are working on sleep associations and hunger patterns simultaneously, put your child in bed as soon as each feeding is over, even if he wakes and begins to cry. If you nurse him and he sleeps next to you, move him off of you when the feeding is done so that he can learn to fall asleep without using your breast as a pacifier. You’ve just fed him, so he is not hungry – now you are only changing his expectation of what happens while he falls asleep.
Within a week, if all goes well, you will have finished cutting down or even eliminating the nighttime feedings. After that, continue applying the technique of progressive waiting at any waking at night (except for feeding times) until the wakings stop. It should not take more than another few days.
How lack of sleep affects your baby's brain and personality<<<click here
A leading researcher on temperament in infants and young children once said in despair, “When I raised my first child, I believed behavioral theories claiming that what I do as a parent molds my child’s character. With my second child, I was already a geneticist and believed that a child is born with characteristics that are passed on through heredity and that environmental influence is minimal. I barely knew my third child at all...”
This analysis was, of course, exaggerated, but it demonstrates the ongoing quest of parents and scientists to answer this question: what determines the personality and personal characteristics of the child?
The question of heredity (“She got her shyness from her dad’s family”) versus environment (“If his mother were more strict with him, he would be calmer”) underlies parents’ attempts to understand the range of influence they have in molding their child.
Up-to-date research points to a complex picture: the influence of heredity and environment on the child. Much evidence suggests that the baby is born with genetic baggage that not only determines how he looks, the color of his eyes, and his chances of suffering from various diseases but also significantly influences the character traits that he or she will develop.
Physical activity level, shyness or sociability, openness to new situations, and anxiety are among the traits that are related to the genetic predisposition with which babies enter the world. Many parents discover that their child has traits that are undesirable to them—especially if they remind them of qualities they dislike about their parents, their spouses, or themselves.
Parents frequently try to fight these traits, but they often discover that it is a losing battle.
It seems that the most important variable that influences the quality of the relationship between parents and children is the “goodness of fit” between the child’s traits and the parents’ expectations.
A very active child, for example, may be adored by a father who appreciates and identifies with this trait but merely tolerated by a father who expects a calmer child.
On the other hand, a quiet, calm child may be considered depressive or lifeless by the first father, while the second father sees her as perfect.
Incompatibility between parental expectations and the child’s traits may lead to frustration and stress in the relationship, particularly if the parents try to “correct” the child to conform to their expectations.
The Relationship Between Temperament And Sleep
Every parent is familiar with the situation in which her child demonstrates by his behavior that he “is up past his bedtime.”
When scientists asked parents to describe this situation, some said that the child calms down, seems sleepy, falls asleep on his own, or asks directly or indirectly to go to bed. Other parents said that their child in this situation “climbs the walls,” “is a crybaby,” “is nervous and unhappy with everything,” “doesn’t respond to what he’s told,” or “simply does annoying things.”
Clearly, young children react to tiredness in significantly different ways.
A state of fatigue is not necessarily expressed by decreased activity and obvious sleepiness.
Sometimes the symptoms can be just the opposite.
Some of the typical “negative” behaviors of the tired child are compatible with general patterns that characterize behavior disorders.
Much evidence points to a strong correlation between sleep and the development of the child’s personality traits.
Studies have shown that a baby who suffers from sleep disorders (difficulty falling asleep, for example, or many awakenings during the night) tends to be “more difficult” in other behavioral domains.
In a study conducted in several sleep laboratories, scientists compared a group of nine- to twenty-four-month-old babies whose parents had come for a consultation about their children’s sleep problems with a control group of babies without sleep disorder – not surprisingly, what they found is significant differences in the traits that the mothers attributed to babies.
The mothers completed a temperament questionnaire, which is a sort of “personality” test for young children.
The mothers rated their degree of agreement with such sentences as “The child agrees to be dressed and undressed without protesting,” “The child responds strongly (screams, yells) when frustrated,” and “The child sits quietly when waiting to eat.”
In general, the mothers of babies with sleep problems described them as more demanding, complaining, annoying, negatively sensitive to different stimuli, and difficult to adapt to different situations, as compared with babies without sleep problems.
One of the traits measured in the temperament questionnaire is the degree of sensitivity or responsivity of the baby to different sensory stimuli (noise, temperature, taste, smell).
Some babies are very sensitive to any kind of sensory stimulus, and others are sensitive only to a specific type of sensation—for example, those who recoil from skin contact.
A wide range of babies do not respond in an outstanding way to sensory stimuli.
One of the hypotheses that the researcher William Carey examined in 1974 was that babies who suffer from hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli would tend to develop sleep difficulties.
Carey’s findings supported the hypothesis, and he claimed that the heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli is hereditary.
In order to fall asleep, the baby has to disassociate himself from the external environment and stop responding to people, noise, light, and temperature, and to disassociate from internal signals as well, such as pain, discomfort, and hunger. This ability to disassociate is most critical for maintaining uninterrupted sleep and for preventing awakenings in response to various stimuli.
A baby who is sensitive from birth to any internal or external stimulus will have trouble disassociating from environmental stimuli, which will interfere with his ability to relax and fall asleep easily and will cause him to awaken easily and frequently over the course of the night.
This correlation between sleep and behavior continues throughout later childhood.
Studies that examined school-aged children found a correlation between sleep disorders and problems with behavior and more general adaptation.
Actually, sleep disorders serve as a sensitive barometer of general adaptation problems among children and adults.
Sleep disorders are a prominent sign of stress and anxiety, depression, and adaptation problems. Sleep problems are so prevalent in some behavior or emotional disorders that they have been included in diagnostic criteria.
One factor that strengthens a diagnosis of anxiety disorders in a child, for example, is the presence of a sleep disorder.
The close correlation between sleep disorders and behavior problems in children can be explained in a number of ways.
Perhaps a child born with a tendency toward problematic behavior develops sleep problems as well, as a result. At the same time, it is reasonable to believe that significant sleep problems will lead to insufficient sleep or sleep deprivation, which may cause the child to be nervous, impatient, and harder to manage.
In addition, a third cause, such as incompatible parenting patterns, may provoke or aggravate both behavior problems and sleep difficulties.
In treatment centers, scientists frequently come across babies or young children who are described by their parents as hyperactive.
The parents use this term casually, but professionals use it to diagnose a condition—the professional term is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder— that occurs only in older children.
These babies are described as especially active and restless and are said to demand attention and seek stimuli constantly.
Often parents associate their child’s sleep difficulties with his wakeful restlessness. Occasionally a parent says something like, “This boy has a turbo engine and he cannot shut it down at bedtime,” or “He is like the Energizer bunny; he keeps going and going and going.”
Although hyperactivity is diagnosed at a later age, there is evidence that most hyperactive children were overactive, restless babies, with difficult temperaments.
Again, we face a chicken-or-egg question: are these babies unable to sleep like “normal” babies because they are unusually active, or does their sleep problem underlie their “hyperactivity”?
In many cases sleep disruption appears to lead to “hyperactive” behavior patterns, even though no research has directly confirmed this fact.
More and more evidence demonstrates that lack of sleep may bring on behavior that resembles that of a hyperactive child.
From an intuitive perspective we can all recall methods we use to keep ourselves awake when we are tired.
These methods include increasing our activity, fidgeting, fiddling with our hands or our facial muscles, and similar strategies.
This pattern contradicts the expectation that the tired child will relax and slow down.
The clinical literature has documented certain cases in which significant sleep problems have been found to lead to “hyperactive” behavior patterns and later to a wrong diagnosis and treatment.
It is of utmost importance to examine the possibility that the sleep disorder is the source and not the outcome of the “hyperactivity.”
In the event that a sleep disorder exists, it should be treated before treating the disorders that result from it.
In some cases treating the sleep disorder may spare the child from receiving unnecessary medication like Ritalin, which is the most prescribed chemical response to children’s behavioral problems.
An erroneous interpretation of a child’s behavior can also result when she responds to a sleep disorder with heightened tiredness, indifference, and lack of interest in the environment. This pattern may be interpreted as depression, and sleep difficulties can be seen as the result of that condition.
As the professional literature reveals, such an erroneous diagnosis can result in a failure to detect and treat a primary sleep disorder, as well as mistaken treatment for depression.
Case studies have shown that when the problem is diagnosed correctly as a primary sleep disorder and treated accordingly, there is a parallel improvement in sleep and disappearance of the “depressive” symptoms.
Intellectual Development
Assessing intelligence in infancy is a very complex task.
Tests used on infants to assess early mental abilities that could be considered components of intelligence have generally failed to predict intelligence or cognitive abilities and achievements in later ages.
The research on the relation between sleep and intellectual development has been hampered by our limited capacity to assess intelligence in infants.
Efforts to study this issue have failed to provide a clear picture of the situation, and we need to call upon additional studies on older children and adults to help us consider the issue more systematically.
Scientists from the University of Connecticut in Evelyn Thoman’s group, which has contributed significantly to the field of the study of infant sleep, examined this question. They followed sleep of newborns over the course of their first two days of life and examined their development at the age of six months.
Special recording devices documented the babies’ sleep in hospital bassinets after birth.
The scientists then tested the mental, motor, and perceptual abilities of the babies at the age of six months, using the Bayley Test.
They found a correlation between sleep measures of the newborns on their first day of life and their development six months later.
Some scientists found a correlation between sleep disorders in infancy, especially those that are caused by respiratory problems, and possible shortfalls in intellectual development and academic achievements at a later age.
Other studies, however, found no comprehensible correlation between sleep and later mental function.
Studies on older children and adults have shown that sleep disorders or insufficient sleep primarily interfere with cognitive abilities associated with attention and concentration.
That is to say that the ability to focus on certain stimuli for extended time deteriorates.
People who don’t get enough sleep react more slowly and make more mistakes on tasks that demand attention and continuous concentration. Although the question of sleep and attention has not been directly studied in infants, some support for their correlation comes from indirect approaches.
For example, mothers described their babies (aged nine to twenty-four months) who suffered from sleep problems as having trouble concentrating on play or a particular activity for an extended length of time, and as easily distracted by other stimuli.
In another recent study, sleep scientists examined the relationship between sleep patterns and learning skills, concentration, and attention among school-aged children.
The sleep patterns of the children were examined objectively by using sleep watches, and their learning functions were examined by computerized tests.
Similar to the results in studies of adults, they found that children whose quality of sleep deteriorated (as manifested by many or lengthy awakenings from sleep during the night) also had decreased attention abilities.
These findings support the assumption that these critical functions for learning and academic achievement are adversely affected by sleep disorders among children.
Furthermore, recent studies have shown that if “normal” children are requested to shorten their sleep for experimental purposes, they suffer negative consequences, and their learning and attention abilities are significantly compromised.
On the basis of what we have learned about older children and adults and from the limited information on infants, it is fair to conclude that the intellectual abilities of infants are challenged by disrupted or insufficient sleep.
6 Science-Backed Baby Sleep Strategies click here<<<
Everything about baby sleep can seem frighteningly high-stakes at 3 A.M. in the morning.
Make one tiny mistake in his or her training and your child’s development will be seriously affected: he’ll either end up waking in the night well into his high school years, or worse, develop anxiety, depression, or mood swings.
And with every sleep expert offering slightly different advice on the ideal timing and method for sleep training you may be unsure about who to believe, how to proceed, or which sleep training method you should follow.
That’s where this article fits in – I’m going to help you separate sleep fact from sleep fiction by zeroing in on 6 science-backed strategies that have been proven to promote healthy sleep habits in babies and young children.
Strategy #1 – Learn to Spot Your Child’s Sleep Cues<<<click here
Like the rest of us, your child has a sleep window of opportunity, a period of time when he is tired, but not too tired.
If that window closes before you have a chance to tuck your child into bed, his body will start releasing chemicals to fight the fatigue and it will be much more difficult for you to get him to go to sleep. So how can you tell if your baby is getting sleepy? It’s not as if your one-month-old can tell you what he needs. Here are some sleep cues that your baby is ready to start winding down for a nap or for bedtime:
-Your baby is calmer and less active – this is the most obvious cue that your baby is tired and you need to act accordingly.
-Your baby may be less tuned-in to his surroundings – his eyes may be less focused and his eyelids may be drooping.
-Your baby may be quieter – if your baby tends to babble up a storm during his more social times of the day, you may notice that the chatter dwindles off as he starts to get sleepy.
-Your baby may nurse more slowly – instead of sucking away vigorously, your baby will tend to nurse more slowly as he gets sleepy. In fact, if he’s sleepy enough, he may even fall asleep mid-meal.
-Your baby may start yawning – if your baby does this, well, that’s a not-so-subtle sign that he’s one sleepy baby.
When your baby is very young, you should start his wind-down routine within one to two hours of the time when he first woke up.
If you miss his initial sleep cues and start to notice signs of overtiredness – for instance, fussiness, irritability, and eye-rubbing, simply note how long your baby was up this time around and then plan to initiate the wind-down routine about 20 minutes earlier the next time he wakes up. (The great thing about parenting a newborn is that you get lots of opportunities to practice picking up on those sleep cues—like about six or seven times a day!)
Learning to read your baby’s own unique sleep cues is the first step to a more rested and more content baby.
Here’s something else you need to know about babies’ sleep cues, something that can toss you a major curve ball if you’re caught off guard:
Babies tend to go through an extra-fussy period when they reach the six-week mark. The amount of crying that babies do in a day tends to increase noticeably when babies are around six weeks of age.
You aren’t doing anything wrong and there isn’t anything wrong with your baby. It’s just a temporary stage that babies go through.
If your child becomes overtired, your child is likely to behave in one or more of the following ways (results may vary, depending on his age and personality):
-Your child will get a sudden burst of energy at the very time when you think she should be running on empty.
-You’ll start seeing “wired” and hyperactive behavior, even if such behavior is totally out of character for your child at other times of the day.
-Your toddler or preschooler will become uncooperative or argumentative.
-Your child will be whiny or clingy or she’ll just generally fall apart because she simply can’t cope with the lack of sleep any longer.
You will probably find that your child has his or her own unique response to being overtired. Some children start to look pale. Some young babies start rooting around for a breast and will latch on to anything within rooting distance, including your face or your arm! When nothing seems to be wrong (he’s fed and clean), but he’s just whining about everything and wants to be held all day, he’s overtired and needs help to get to sleep.
Learning to read your baby’s own unique sleep cues is the first step to a more rested and happier baby.
Strategy #2 – Teach Your Baby to Distinguish between Night and Day<<<click here
Because our circadian rhythm (our internal time clock) operates on a 24-hour and 10-minute to 24 hour and 20-minute cycle (everyone’s body clock ticks along at a slightly different rhythm) and all of our rhythms are slightly out of sync with the 24-hour clock on which the planet operates, we have to reset our internal clocks each and every day – otherwise, we’d slowly but surely stay up later and sleep in later each day until we had our cycles way out of whack.
Daylight is one of the mechanisms that regulate our biological cycles.
Being exposed to darkness at night and daylight first thing in the morning regulates the body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that keeps our bodies’ internal clock in sync to that we feel sleepy and alert at the appropriate times.
By exposing your baby to daylight shortly after he wakes up in the morning and keeping his environment brightly lit during his waking hours, you will help his circadian rhythm to cue him to feel sleepy at the right times.
Moreover, he’ll start to associate darkness with sleep time and bright light with wake-up time – you’ll find that it works best to take advantage of sunlight (as opposed to artificial light) whenever possible.
Studies have shown that exposing your baby to daylight between noon and 4:00 P.M. will increase the odds of your baby getting a good night’s sleep.
Strategy #3 – Let Your Baby Practise Falling Asleep on His Own<<<click here
Some sleep experts recommend that you put your baby to bed in a sleepy-but-awake state whenever possible from the newborn stage onwards so that he can practice some self-soothing behaviors.
Others say that you should give your baby at least one opportunity to try to fall asleep on his own each day.
Lastly, some others say that there’s no point even bothering to work on these skills until your baby reaches that three-to-four month mark (when your baby’s sleep-wake rhythm begins to mature so that some sleep learning can begin to take place).
Sleep experts claim that the sleep-association clock starts ticking at around six weeks. They claim that this is the point at which your baby begins to really tune into his environment as he’s falling asleep.
So if he gets used to falling asleep in your arms while your rock him and sing to him, he will want you to rock him and sing to him when he wakes up in the middle of the night – that’s the only way he knows on how to fall asleep.
This is because he has developed a sleep association that involves you – you have become a walking, talking sleep aid.
Some parents decide that it makes sense to take a middle-of-the-road approach to sleep associations during the early weeks and months of their baby’s life – they decide to make getting sleep the priority for themselves and their babies and to take advantage of any opportunities to start helping their babies to develop healthy sleep habits.
Regardless of when you start paying attention to the types of sleep associations your baby may be developing, at some point you will want to consider whether your baby could be starting to associate any of the following habits or behaviors with the process of falling asleep:
-Falling asleep during bottle-feeding
-Being rocked to sleep
-Having you rub or pat his back, sing a lullaby, or otherwise play an active role in helping your baby to fall asleep
-Having you in the room until your baby falls asleep
-Relying on a pacifier
Here’s something important to keep in mind, particularly since we tend to fall into an all-or-nothing trap when we’re dealing with the subject of sleep.
You can reduce the strength of any particular sleep association by making sure it is only present some of the time when your baby is falling asleep.
If, for example, you nurse your baby to sleep some of the time, rock your baby to sleep some of the time, and try to put your baby to bed just some of the time when he’s sleep but awake, he’ll have a hard time getting hooked on any sleep association.
Sleep experts stress that the feeding-sleep association tends to be particularly powerful, so if you can encourage your baby to fall asleep without always needing to be fed to sleep, your baby will have an easier time learning how to soothe himself to sleep when he gets a little older.
Most babies are ready to start practicing these skills around the three- to the four-month mark.
Strategy #4 – Make Daytime Sleep a Priority: Children Who Nap Sleep Better<<click here
Scientific research has shown that babies who nap during the day sleep better and longer at nighttime. While you might think that skipping babies’ daytime naps might make it easier to get them off to bed at evening, babies typically end up being so overtired that they have a very difficult time settling down at bedtime and they don’t sleep particularly well at night.
And rather than sleeping in so that they can catch up on the sleep they didn’t get the day before, they tend to start the next day too early and they have a difficult time settling down for their naps, as well.
Simply put, it is important to make your child’s daytime sleep a priority, just as you make a point of ensuring that he receives nutritious meals and snacks on a regular basis – your child needs nutritious sleep snacks during the day in addition to his main nighttime sleep meal in order to be at his very best.
In addition, babies, toddlers, and preschoolers who nap are generally in a better mood and have an improved attention span as compared to their age-mates who don’t nap.
Strategy #5 – Know When Your Baby No Longer Needs to Be Fed At Night<<<click here
Your baby may continue to wake up in the night out of habit even when he’s outgrown the need for a middle-of-the-night feeding.
If your baby is going without that nighttime feeding some of the time or doesn’t seem particularly interested in nursing once he gets up in the night, it might be time to eliminate that nighttime feeding and use non-food methods to soothe him back to sleep.
Eventually, of course, you’ll want to encourage him to assume responsibility for soothing himself to sleep, but the first hurdle is to work on breaking that powerful food-sleep association.
With some children, it happens quickly. With other children, it’s a much slower process.
Once you break that association, he may stop waking as often in the night and may be ready to start working on acquiring some self-soothing skills.
Strategy #6 – Remain as Calm and Relaxed as Possible about the Sleep Issue<<<click here
If you are frustrated and angry when you deal with your child in the night, your child will inevitably pick up your vibes, even if you’re trying hard to hide your feelings.
Accepting the fact that some babies take a little longer to learn the sleep ropes and feeling confident that you can solve your child’s sleep problems will make it easier to cope with the middle-of-the-night sleep interruptions.
Scientific studies have shown that parents who have realistic expectations about parenthood and who feel confident in their own abilities to handle parenting difficulties find it easier to handle sleep challenges.
The Developmental Importance Of Napping For Babies? <<< Click here
Baby naps aren't just sweet moments of parental respite – they're also developmentally vital.
For new parents, gettine more sleep doesn’t just have to be a dream. There are ways to make it happen, starting with getting their baby on a consistent sleep schedule, both at nigh and with daytime naps.
This may not look to difficult, but in reality, it is. Putting a baby to sleep in a softly manner requires a precise and planned approach.
Sleep experts have proven that setting babies’ internal clocks to a routine nap cycle is more than just a smart way for parents to free up time to work or recharge their own batteries – it’s also vital to early development.
Regular sleep is an essential physical and cognitive aid to a baby’s brain and body. And naps play a vital role.
According to clinical studies, children who have regular, adequate daytime naps settle to sleep at night easier, have less night walking, are less accident-prone during the day, and show better performance on cognitive tasks.
The negative side effects of poor napping are equally noteworthy. Children who lack adequate sleep duration, which is more likely if naps aren’t taken regularly, are at increased risk for obesity during preschool and early school years, have more difficulty with emotional, social and physical functioning in early school years, and are more likely to exhibit hyperactivity. For babies to truly reap the many benefits of sleep, nature alone isn’t enough. Parents play a huge role and their first question is almost always, “How many hours of sleep does my kid need each day?”
Experts have reached a consensus, agreeing that a six-month-old will need 13 to 14 hours of sleep, while a 12-month-old will need 12 hours of sleep.
That amount remains pretty consistent until age four, when kids usually stop napping. Then it drops down to about 11 hours of sleep.
Of course, that’s really helpful to know out of the gate but still not super helpful for establishing consistent nap schedules. Because infants’ daily sleep needs can fluctuate a lot in the short-term – day to day or week to week – parents can feel like they’re shooting at a moving target.
The mindset of “How many hours has it been since the last sleep?“ doesn’t establish solid, daily sleeping times. That’s best achieved through active parental involvement and intervention.
Let’s take the following example – if your baby will sleep 10 hours at night, from 8 PM to 6 AM, that means you aim for bedtime at 8 every night and plan to wake them up at everyday at 6 in the morning.
It might sound crazy, but that’s what helps set that internal clock.
The same goes for naps.
Yes, though it seems counterintuitive, sometimes the best strategy for getting babies on a regular sleep schedule is to wake them up from a nap.
If you don’t wake them up, however, you can start a snowball effect. What this means is that they’ll nap for, let’s say 3 hours, but then they won’t be tired enough to go to bed at night. It’s hard, but having a balance helps.
That’s why some babies hit all the right numbers in terms of daily totals but still struggle to sleep through the night – they’re just not tired enough.
Instead of letting them sleep as long as possible during the day, the more effective approach is to make sure they get a few consolidated hours of good sleep.
Simply put, naps are a matter of quality over quantity – an hour or two goes a long way. So does a strong routine.
How Much Daytime Sleep Do Babies Need? <<< Click here
Newborns: Until they’re about 3 months old, infants are napping machines. They can sleep up to 18 hours a day, and typically only spend an hour or two awake at a time.
Babies: After the newborn stage, but before they reach their first birthday, babies need two to four naps a day. They may rest anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours at a stretch.
Toddlers: Children this age should get 12 to 14 hours of sleep a day, including naps. Somewhere between their first and second birthdays, most toddlers drop from two naps a day to one, which usually takes place in the early afternoon. When that happens, the remaining single nap can be long: up to 3 hours.
Preschoolers: After age 2, not every child needs a nap, though some 3- or 4-year-olds will still benefit from one. Preschoolers need 11 to 13 hours of sleep a day, but it’s more important for them to get a solid night’s rest than it is for them to nap. So if your child can’t fall asleep at night on the days when she naps, it may be time to shorten his afternoon snooze. But make sure to compensate by pushing bedtime earlier.
School-aged kids and older: After age 5, most kids no longer need naps. But a mid-day rest can work wonders for kids and teens who are dragging. Try to keep them short -- about 30 minutes -- and make sure they wake up by late afternoon. That way, the nap won’t mess with their bedtime.
4 Fascintating Facts About How Babies Sleep:<<< click here
When people use the phrase “sleeping like a baby”, they’re probably not being literal, and that’s because new parents are usually tired and exhausted trying to find the best strategies for getting their little ones to sleep.
While we can’t erase the exhaustion that comes with taking care of a baby, we can help you worry a little less, and take some comfort in the fact that some of your baby’s sleep habits are not a cause for alarm, but are actually markers of good health. These are:
#1 Baby Sleep Patterns Are Different from Adult Sleep Patterns<<<click here
We adults depend on circadian rhythms to regulate our sleep patterns – that is, the timing and duration of sleeping hours – but babies aren’t born with a built-in biological clock already ticking.
The rhythm takes time to develop, which is why newborn sleep schedules are so erratic and unpredictable. A normal infant won’t have a regular sleep pattern until they’re about 3 to 6 months old.
Moreover, even after sleep patterns are established, babies will still sleep differently, because they don’t go through the stages of sleep the same way adults do. We go through one sleep cycle – from light sleep to REM sleep – every 90 minutes or so.
For babies, it only takes about 50 minutes, and they don’t catch up to the adult standard until they reach their toddler years.
#2 Babies Are Light Sleepers<<< click here
You probably know this already, but have you asked yourself why?
For one, it has to do with those shorter sleep cycles. Infants, particularly newborns, may actually wake up between full cycles, so it’s not so much light sleeping as it is actually learning how to sleep properly.
On top of this, babies spend about the same amount of time in both non-REM (quiet) and REM (active) sleep; compared to adults that spend only about 20% of their slumber in REM sleep.
Deep sleep actually occurs right before REM sleep, and is the last of the three stages of NREM – the other two being part of light sleep.
What does this all mean?
Not only is the infant sleep cycle shorter, but it also includes a lower percentage of deep sleep.
It can take up to 20 minutes of light sleep before your baby sleeps into a deep slumber, and even then, REM sleep ensues shortly after.
This is part of why they need to sleep so often.
#3 When It Comes to Daytime Naps, Every Baby Is Different <<<click here
Let’s settle this, before doctors and other health professionals get into an uproar. Yes, there are ideal numbers: A good nap is generally considered to be at least about an hour and a half in length. There are also commonly prescribed amounts of naps per day, depending on age range—three to four naps from three to five months, two to three naps from six to nine months, and up to two thereafter and into the toddler ages. Newborns don’t nap, as much as they have short windows of waking moments, in between sleeping periods of two to four hours at a time throughout the entire day.
Your baby’s actual sleep habits may be close to this, or completely different—depending on factors such as temperament, environment, daily routine, and more.
If your baby’s naps are unusually short, but they nap more often or sleep through the night with relative ease—waking only to feed—that’s fine.
If your baby naps for more than an hour and a half but takes less naps overall, that’s fine, too.
What’s most important is the total number of hours spent sleeping in a day—about 11 to 18 hours, depending on the baby’s age.
The point is that your baby hasn’t read the baby books you have, and they don’t understand what their pediatrician says during checkups.
As long as they’re happy and healthy, deviating from standard daytime sleep habits isn’t such a big deal.
#4 Babies Process Information and Learn Even During Sleep <<< click here
Contrary to what some may believe, babies get a lot of sleep.
This is good news, because sleep influences learning and memory; and if that’s true for adults that spend one third of their lives asleep, what more for babies that spend up to 75% of their time in slumber? From training themselves to recognize their parent’s voices, to figuring out working non-verbal cues to express feelings like hunger or pain – and much, much, more – babies learn and test the limits of their environment continuously when they’re awake.
What they learn is then consolidated and bolstered by periods of sleep in between their waking moments.
And even though there’s no conclusive proof that learning while sleeping works with adults — most studies on this actually refer to memory reactivation, which requires previous learning while awake — it can actually work with babies.
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