By EK Wills
When my niece asked for tips on how to get her child to sleep, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already done a blog post on this! So thanks for the heads up and here goes…
Sleep with respect to children is always an issue. As long as medical issues are ruled out, then practical points are required to get good sleep.
Babies
First it starts when they are born and then it steadily progresses through different stages. No sooner do you master the one you’re in then it becomes the next one after only a short period of grace.
When we had our first child (see Secret Diary of a First Time Mother), I had no clue of how I wanted to address the issue. I wanted to be the flexible, go-with-the-flow parent but soon worked out that I'm not made of that stuff.
One of the Mums in my mother’s group recommended The Contented Little Baby Book, based on Gina Ford's experience as a maternity nurse in The UK, who advocates a daily routine for both the baby and the parents. It is now revised as The New Contented Little Baby Book. This was my guide to getting some sanity and sleep in my nightmare world of chaos at the time.
The clues for babies are:
1. Routine
2. Consistency
3. Cues
Ask yourself these questions:
Do you want to have a routine?
Is your baby easy going or would they benefit from structure to help contain them?
What techniques do you use to get baby to sleep? eg soothers (better then dummy or pacifier as a term), feed to sleep, rocking, white noise, music
Could these techniques become more of a problem further down the track? Eg if baby needs you to help them get to sleep every time
That’s the baby stuff. If you get the basics down, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is fool proof but it helps make you feel like you have a plan.
We generally used music to cue our child to sleep using a windup music box that we could take anywhere. When that didn’t work, we had a soundtrack of Baby Bach that played for longer so we didn’t have to keep returning to the room to wind it up (and baby was older so we didn’t need to go in as often either). When baby clued into the trick, it served as a wind-up not a wind-down for sleep so new strategies had to come into play.
Toddlers
Moving into the next stage, babies become a little older and wiser, as well as mobile and learn what your tricks are.
Here are a few tips for older, but still non-verbal, kids like toddlers.
The clues for toddlers are:
1. Predictability
2. Ruling out possible causes
3. Finding new strategies
Ask yourself these questions:
Is less sleep required during the day?
Is there a wind down routine before bed?
Is bedtime the same time every night?
What is your parenting approach?
Have you looked at diet? Is there too much sugar?
Older Kids:
At this point, the Triple P Parenting approach can help for 3-8 year olds where parents gain skills and confidence to reduce behavioural problems in the Positive Parenting Program.
For the more unruly, there is Parent Child Interaction Therapy to deal with defiant behaviours under 7 years old.
But if you’ve been reliably using the same approach and your child knows what to expect, then at this age, some reasoning is possible. A firm approach helps to reinforce habit, even if it has to be repeated till you’re dreaming yourself saying it.
The clues for older kids are:
1. Boring routine
2. Reinforce behaviour
Ask yourself:
Do you have the same routine in place to cue bedtime? Eg dinner, bath, teeth, book, bed.
How do you react to current behaviour?
What strategies seem to work or clearly don't work?
Will your child respond to rewards such as star charts?
There are many finer points to address for each of these phases, and many books have been written on all of them. Everyone always says you have to find the one that works for you and, predictably, it is true. But if you really are struggling and feel that you have tried everything or are lacking the confidence to try it yourself, there are always professionals that can help.
Good resources are your local Baby and Child Health Centre or your local GP (general practitioner). Sleep programs such as Karitane and Tresillian in NSW have helped countless women transition between stages with their babies, todders or combination ages when a new addition joins the family. Other states will have similar programs so check with your GP.
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