Читать книгу The Baby Sleep Book: How to help your baby to sleep and have a restful night - Martha Sears - Страница 14

It’s good to have goals as a parent. When you know what you want for your children in the long term, it’s easier to do the things you have to do right now to reach that goal. So what are your sleep goals for your child? Two important sleep goals are:

 Children should learn that sleep is a pleasant state to enter and a peaceful state to stay in, and therefore develop healthy sleep habits.

 Children should have pleasant memories of how they were parented to sleep.

Children need to develop a pleasant attitude toward falling asleep and staying asleep. We believe that your child’s ability to sleep well in the future depends on his having happy, stress-free, positive experiences at bedtime when he is young. Eventually, these positive experiences will translate into sleep independence – the ability to fall asleep and back to sleep on his own. And all these good sleep experiences will help your child grow up to be a happier, less stressed, and healthier person.

Many well-meaning parents push their kids into sleep independence too soon. After a long day at work and caring for the kids, parents need a break and want the evening for themselves. Between the ages of one and four their whole goal at bedtime is for a child to fall asleep on his own, and do so quickly and quietly. When this is achieved, parents feel they have finally succeeded in creating a “good sleeper”.

But what if a child isn’t quite ready for this? What happens when a child grows up feeling that bedtime is a time when she is forced to stay in a darkened room alone and told to be quiet and go to sleep? This is a child who will procrastinate because she fears or resents the isolation at bedtime. She will make up all kinds of reasons why she wants Mum or Dad’s attention at bedtime. She will get up to come and find you because she’s thirsty or there’s a monster under the bed. She will ask you to leave the light on or the door open. She will use every stalling tactic she can think of when what she really means is she just wants you. This is a child who is more likely to grow up with a fear of bedtime, of the dark, and of being alone. She may feel anxious and insecure, because her parents have pushed her into nighttime independence before she was truly ready. Imagine how you, as an adult, would feel if you went to bed every night feeling stressed, scared, and unfulfilled. There is one more ingredient that parents often add to this bedtime picture without realizing it – anger or hostility. We use phrases like “Get back to bed”, “If you get out of bed one more time …” “Stop your whining and go to sleep.” Even if there is no anger in your voice, these negative phrases night after night over the years add up to a child who resents and fears bedtime.

Ask yourself: are you willing to put in some time now to help your kids achieve the long-term goal of a healthy attitude about sleep and a trusting, secure attitude toward life?

Remember what we said about keeping the long-term goal in mind when you are making short-term decisions about parenting? While most of what is in this chapter assumes that you are going to be close by while your toddler drifts off to sleep, one of your long-term goals is a child who goes to sleep happily on his own. So, keep in mind that while you are parenting, not just putting your toddler to sleep, you are also teaching him skills and attitudes that he will someday use to help himself fall asleep without you there. As he is ready, you are encouraging him to use these skills. No, you are not a victim of childish manipulation. When you rub a child’s back at bedtime to help her relax or soothe a tearful toddler with quiet talking in the middle of the night, you are modelling self-help skills. When your child is ready to cope with these challenges on his own, he will call up images of the good feelings he had while falling asleep in your presence. And bingo, he’ll fall asleep.