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Old March 15th 08, 06:05 PM posted to misc.kids,misc.kids.pregnancy,misc.kids.breastfeeding
Sarah Vaughan
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Posts: 443
Default How to stop the night wakings?

Sue wrote:
"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
I agree that it's worth trying, but we never had any
luck being in the room. That just seemed to encourage the
screaming. Even now, if one of mine loses their temper, it
is far, far better to walk away and give them some breathing
room. They won't get themselves under control if you hang
around.
Different kids are very different on this front, so
it's always worth trying the easy road first, but I don't
think it's always the case that having a parent right there
is the gentlest thing for the child.


I agree, I think it is more confusing to the child because you are right
there. Not picking them up or doing whatever it is they want would just make
mine even more madder and they would cry longer. I think it is far better to
have them in their own rooms and going to them if the screaming escalates.


IME, this depends not just on the child, but on their age and the time
of night!

When I first tried sleep training my son, I used a method of picking him
up in order to immediately lower him down again onto the mattress, and
repeating this until he fell asleep. This was very quick and effective
in getting him to the point where he would fall asleep at bedtime with
just a few minutes of patting his back.

Then, over the next few weeks, things went downhill and he kept refusing
to fall asleep while I patted his back. Eventually I did have to try
walking out of the room, because that was the only thing that would work
(he was one of the kids who was sent nuts by the
moving-further-away-from-the-cot method). Again, quick and effective.
Now, I could have just gone to that one straight away and saved myself a
few weeks of hassle, but I'm glad I didn't. Doing the easier method
first meant that, by the time I moved on to walking out and leaving him
in his room, I knew that he had already had a few weeks of being put to
bed in his cot and thus knew what it was for and what was meant to
happen at this time of night. I knew that although he might not *like*
having to go to sleep there, at least he wouldn't be wondering "What the
hell's going on?!" the way I felt he would have if I'd gone straight
from co-sleeping to leaving him alone in the cot. And it meant I knew
that I had already tried everything else and found it didn't work, so I
was absolutely clear in my mind that this needed to be done and didn't
have any qualms at all about it. I didn't find it awful at all - I knew
the alternatives weren't working, and that was that.

But the interesting thing (to me) is that all of this was *only* done in
order to get him to sleep at bedtime, and, during all this time, I went
on taking him into bed whenever he woke up at night. This worked out
perfectly well. A few months later I night-weaned him but went on
taking him into bed with us whenever he woke up at night and wouldn't
settle immediately - I just wasn't up for a lot of middle-of-the-night
hassle at that point and was prepared to leave that battle for another
time. But, you know what? It never was a battle. As soon as I'd
night-weaned him the night wakings dropped markedly, and within a week
or two he was sleeping through, without me doing a thing further to make
him.

And then, when he was about two, he went through a phase of waking up in
the middle of the night and coming into our bedroom, whereupon I'd take
him back to his room and climb into bed with him and he would fall
asleep. He didn't do this every night and within a few weeks had
stopped doing it, so it seemed to be just a phase. But having me there
settled him down very quickly in the middle of the night, even though he
*still* needed us to be out of the room at bedtime for him to get the
message that it was time to go to sleep instead of staying up chatting.
He had different needs at the different times of night.

So, I guess the message is - I agree with Ericka that it's worth trying
the gentler methods first, and then be prepared to move on if they
aren't working!


All the best,

Sarah
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"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell