teaching good sleep habits (xpost)

toypup wrote:


You are so right. It really bothers me when parents try to make their kids
grow up so fast. They'll do everything they need to eventually and it won't
harm them at all to do it later. In fact, the relaxed approach may even
work more quickly. Case in point: my friend was letting her child cry to
sleep as an infant. At age 30 months, she still cried to sleep, sometimes
for 45 minutes. Didn't do a darned bit of good, the method never worked to
teach her anything but cry to sleep. DS was always rocked or nursed to
sleep until he was 21 months. He now easily goes to sleep at the age of 2.
I just put him to bed, read a story and say goodnight. He puts himself to
sleep. I'm not saying my method works for everyone, I'm saying everyone
will get to the same point eventually, even my friend's child. It will take
longer with some methods than others, but what's the rush?


I agree, but with caveats ;-) I'm not a fan of pushing children
to grow up too quickly. On the other hand, I think there are areas
in which we short change them by catering to them too long--almost
as if we've got things backwards. We want them to go to sleep
without help, get by without any comfort objects, and cope with
all kinds of more grown-up situations. On the other hand, we
don't expect them (when they're a bit older than babies, obviously)
to take responsibility for their things, help out around the
house, or be a functional member of the family. I think sometimes
it all boils down to we want things to be easy. We don't want to
deal with the demands either of their needs or of teaching them
when it's so much easier to do things ourselves. And we get
confused and try to make them grow up in ways that aren't that
important and leave them childish in areas that *are* more
important. I certainly fall prey to laziness myself, so I have
sympathy for it, but I think one has to resist.
I also think, when it comes to sleeping issues, that
it's a bit of a tightrope to walk if you don't do well
co-sleeping. On the one hand, if you leave a baby to cry
I think you destroy trust and it leads to more crying and
it delays the day when the child will go to sleep on his
or her own peacefully. On the other hand, I think you do
build patterns of behavior that encourage babies in one
direction or another. If you *always* have the same sleep
routine and it *always* involves somehow parenting the child
to sleep, I think it will be longer before they do it on their
own as well. I always shoot for a middle road, where I
occasionally put the baby down awake but drowsy, but if it
doesn't work, I always go get the baby. In fact, even with
Genevieve only a month old ("only"?! how did she get to be
that old already!) at night she nurses in the dark. So when
she's done, I just put her in her cradle and I don't really
know if she's awake or asleep when I do it. Most of the
time she's out. Sometimes she fusses after I put her down
and then I pick her up again. I do much the same during
the day. If I think she's sleepy but she's not out and I
need to do something, I'll put her down. If it doesn't work,
I'll pick her up ;-) For us, anyway, that seems to work
well.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Marie writes:
I know they are too young for Ferber, but I would *really* like to
teach them how to fall asleep in their cribs--it seems like an
important lifeskill.

I guarantee they will acquire the skill of going to sleep by themselves
before they go off to college. I don't think there's any evidence that
children who sleep by themselves grow up to sleep any better (or worse)
than those who cosleep. It's just a short-term issue. (Although I
certainly agree that the first several years---my kids are about 1000
days old---don't always seem like the "short term"!)

David desJardins

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 21:44:00 -0500, Nan wrote:

Oh, you put my thoughts right in there. I always figure my 3.5 yo
won't be sleeping with me when she is 18, so I'll enjoy it now :-)

This reminds me of a funny story. DD likes to go to the bathroom with
me and always has. I asked my MIL if they ever grow out of that. She
turned to my DH (her son) and asked, "Hey, wanna go to the bathroom
with me??" gg

--
Daye
Momma to Jayan
EDD 11 Jan 2004