Peaceful bedtime routine
We have several friends with young children who are learning from our mistakes in establishing sleep habits. We developed a number of bad habits early that have made bedtimes difficult from the first few months of life. One was nursing Elisabeth to sleep; another was rocking her to sleep when not nursing her. Essentially, we did everything possible to make her depend on us to get to sleep. Not surprisingly, that trend has persisted. Until about two weeks ago, Elisabeth rarely went to bed without insisting that one of us be in the room with her.
After a bedtime showdown two weeks ago (which was actually about staying in bed, not about one of us being present), she has turned a remarkable corner. Now after Bible story, Window on the World and prayer, she climbs in bed, we leave, and we don't hear a peep for between 11 and 12 hours! We've never had that before.
So we thank God for this wonderful turn, and recommend that if you have, or are going to have, young children that you learn from us: Don't make them dependent on you to go to sleep!
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10 comments:
I totally agree, bedtime routines are really important. I know this indirectly from my sisters' parenting experiences.
Your post makes me think about the differences in how parents raise their first child vs. subsequent children. I saw this with my two sisters. The first kid to come along was rocked and cuddled to sleep each night, while the kids that came later were usually put to bed with much less consoling. The reason for this is simply that with a larger family parents have less one-on-one time per child.
This can have interesting results, my mom said that I used to be able to fall asleep and remain asleep anywhere (I was the youngest of three kids). One evening when I was about a year old I was in my detachable car seat and my mom was helping one of my older sisters in the bathroom. My mom had temporarily placed my detachable car seat in the unfilled bathtub. She got distracted and left me there. Much later she realized she didn't know where I was and she searched the whole house. I had fallen asleep for the night in the bathtub and was oblivious to my mom's panic. Needless to say, we all ended up being fine.
You're right. We'll do things differently with the next one both by necessity, and from having learned. Maybe our youngest will sleep as well as you!
Though I agree that bedtime routines are good, I really disagree that nursing or rocking a baby to sleep is a bad habit. Nursing or rocking a baby to sleep is completely natural and allows them to develop attachment and security. At a certain point, of course, chldren can be expected to fall asleep alone and can be taught to do so, but when they are young it is a beatiful thing to help them to sleep. Parents must also be responsive to their own needs, but all too often childrens needs are pushed aside because they are inconvenient for parents. Often the alternative to nursing or rocking is baby crying it out which may teach them to fall asleep on their own, but also causes tremendous amounts of stress which can harm development and attachment. When babies are young we carry them and they are dependant on us for moving around, but that doesn't stop crawling and outgrowing the need to be carried, they are dependant on us for food, but they learn to feed themselves and outgrow the need to be spoonfed, so why is sleep so different? Most children in the world sleep with adults and most nursing babies nurse to sleep. Breastmilk has a sophorific effect, perhaps God intended that for a reason?
Thanks for your feedback!
I have a couple of questions:
1. Is it possible to develop attachment and security without nursing to sleep (using, for example, the Eat, Activity, Sleep routine)?
2. Are there other alternatives to letting a child "cry it out" to teach a child to sleep?
3. Is it possible that teaching a child to sleep by cultivating intimate nursing times not immediately prior to sleep will help prepare for the transition to sleeping alone, while still developing appropriate attachment?
4. What practical wisdom can you offer to attachment parents (like me) to smooth the transition to sleeping alone?
Many thanks. Graham
Ok, here is a long answer...
1. Definitely. I would never want to imply that attachment was dependant on any one particular behavior.
Secondly, routines do help babies sleep, though I’m not sure one routine is better than any other. I prefer to watch my baby for cues (to eat, or sleep) while also using what I know to anticipate what to do on any given day, always realizing that it could be different from day to day and I have to remain flexible. Also, how easily a baby falls asleep depends on so many things--teething, sickness, etc, that taking nursing and rocking out of one's arsenal is likely to make some days harder than they need to be.
My main problem with the eat, activity, sleep routine is that baby often has to go too long between feedings which often, though certainly not always, causes milk supply issues later on.
2. Yes, there are other alternatives to letting a child “cry it out”, but I think most babies find it hard to sleep without being “parented” to sleep somewhat and most parents I know who do not rock or nurse their baby do let them cry.
3. Cultivating intimate nursing times apart from sleep is certainly important for promoting attachment and definitely lets baby know that nursing is not just for sleep. I also think having multiple ways of falling asleep (including rocking) is good, so that baby will not only sleep while nursing.
4. Practically, I think the No Cry Sleep Solution has great ideas. Beyond that, I think each family is different.
What I would strive to do myself is keep my eye on the long term goal (healthy attitude towards sleep and bedtime) and work on helping my child not to need me. (By the way, I don't think you "made" Elisabeth dependant on you to sleep, any more than you "made" her dependant on you to eat or change her diaper--she was just born that way!) Think of how Elisabeth weaned, got potty trained, or started sliding down slides alone. Probably you helped her along, gave suggestions or incentives, tried to make it not so scary, and eventually, almost like magic, she started doing things more independently, not because she was forced to, but because she gradually was able to.
Also, I think temperament is huge!! Some parents do the same thing for each child and end up with one that sleeps happily in a room alone, and another that has a much harder time. Maybe how our children sleep has less to do with us and more to do with them.
Also, perhaps thinking about one’s expectations can help. The average age of weaning (worldwide) is 4.9 years and 90% of children in the world sleep with an adult. Given those statistics, most American children definitely wean significantly earlier than children around the world (or children of the past) and certainly sleep alone earlier as well. It is debatable whether this is good or bad, but perhaps it gives one pause to think how much Americans expect from their young children. In a lot of ways, Elisabeth is way ahead of the curve!
I could go on an on, but this is way too long anyway! Good luck! Elisabeth is precious and it is obvious how much you love her!
Thanks for the thorough answers.
Perhaps I misstated myself initially in a way that made it sound like it is never appropriate to rock or nurse a child to sleep. I don't want to take those out of the "arsenal" entirely. However, I would contend that exclusively rocking and nursing to sleep, if it does not "make" a child dependent, does condition them to expect to be put to sleep that way each time.
I checked out this review of the No Cry Sleep Solution, and thought that the self-soothing strategies were the most helpful. And I think you're right that individual temperament has a lot to do with how a child learns to sleep.
As a side note, where did you get your statistics on weaning and co-sleeping?
Perhaps "condition" is a better word, though I think helping a child sleep is a need that they naturally outgrow when they are ready. Still, if someone can sometimes get their young baby to sleep without nursing or rocking, I say go for it, it probably will make things easier later. But my child always needed nursing (and was rarely rocked to sleep)but now that he is a little older (though still a baby--at least to me), he just naturally falls asleep more often on his own. I just notice the times it seems I am more a distraction than a help by being there and leave the room. If he gets sad, I go back in, but often he falls right to sleep.
The cosleeping info I got from the book "Our Babies, Ourselves" by Meredith Small. It is fascinating and filled with research. I don't agree with all of her reasoning, but her conclusions make sense.
The weaning info I actually heard from a childbirth teacher, and I don't know the source. I googled and found a few different things, so here are a few articles to check out if you are interested (sorry, I don't know how to make links, so you'll have to cut and paste).
The La Leche League has an article by Dr. Dettwyler (an anthropolgoist) which has some interesting weaning info http://www.lalecheleague.org/NB
/NBMayJun95p86.html
In an article on ivillige the same anthrolopologist is quoted as saying, "In societies where children are allowed to nurse 'as long as they want,' they usually self-wean, with no arguments or emotional trauma, between three and four years of age ... The minimum predicted age for a natural age of weaning in humans is two and a half years, with a maximum of seven years." -- Katherine Dettwyler, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition at Texas A&M University, and author of "Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives." -- source http://parenting.ivillage.com/tp/
tpweaning/0,,3x0w,00.html
So, I couldn't find the exact 4.9, but my point wasn't so much the exact age but that longer breastfeeding is much more typical than the early weaning done in America.
Good luck! You are a thoughtful father and it is nice to see people thinking so much about how they parent!
Thanks for the links on the research, and for your kind words.
My questions arose because if children naturally self-wean between 3 and 4, then an average weaning age of 4.9 seems statistically very unlikely (not to mention that it does not seem true to experience in my international travels).
For the sake of my readers, I want to be careful that statistics put forward have some sort of reference point.
Thanks again!
Ok, I did a little more looking and did find an article published in 2001 saying that "experts consider 4 or 5 years to be the average age of weaning worldwide. " The citation is "Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession. St. Louis: Mosby, 1999" by Lawrence, R.A. and R.M Lawrence" and the article I read was at http://www.lalecheleague.org/ba/
Feb01.html.
Maybe this is old info, I don't know.
Thanks for doing even more research! I appreciate it.
I have to admit that the figure is still very dubious to me for at least 3 reasons:
1) This is the only article that makes such a claim, at least that I could find(I stumbled upon the same article in my searchings). Everyone else who wants to make such a claim cites this article.
2) It is a simple appeal to authority: "experts consider . . ." without citing any sort of data.
3) It is statistically almost impossible if children naturally wean between 3 and 4 years of age. [I also find the weaning age to be astoundingly late considering the high birth rate in the more populous parts of the world tends to speed weaning rather than delaying it, because the next baby often follows so quickly on the last.]
Thanks again for your active research and discussion!
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