How to promote children's sleep

Promote children's sleep

There are many publications on children's sleep. Raise your hand the parent of a sleepless child who does not have a pile of books on the subject resting next to the bed or on his bedside table. Go to sleep, All the children sleep, Let's sleep, Make the bed without tears ...

It starts like that and then you get to go to bed, you bastard! and Fai is fucking sleeping (as soon as the bookshop comes out).

Desperate parents, with their gaze between dazed and angry, wander around the world in search of a solution, collecting notions they hope can be useful for something. In summary, here are some of the indications often contained in the volumes that deal with the issue of sleep and children.

It is useless to take the children to bed when they are not sleepy ; we should wait until they are very tired.
The parent should leave the room a little before the child falls asleep to foster the ability to fall asleep independently. On how to behave in the case of crying and screaming, the methods are divided essentially into two categories, those that invite the child to cry and those that focus on reassurance.
The bed is not a place to play and therefore the children should be taken to the bed only to sleep .
It is not a good habit to put the children to sleep with the TV on . Better the book. A beautiful fairy tale is certainly ideal. There are many books that tell stories about sleeping; maybe they do not reach the goal (that of making the child sleep like a baby), but often they are beautiful and pleasant. The little man of the bed, for example, or Topo tip does not sleep .
It is important to establish regular sleep patterns and it is important to organize an evening ritual . For example, it is established that every evening, after dinner, a quiet game is played, one is washed, one puts on pajamas, a fairy tale and then sleep. Maybe the results are not immediate, but establishing a ritual and giving regular rhythms can really work. We must, however, be constant to have so much patience. Babies like habits, they are unscheduled that disorient them.
The children should always sleep, since they are very small, in dim light or in the dark and in silence . It is therefore not a good habit to put the buggy in the living room or in the kitchen especially if there are people chatting or noise.
It is not a good habit to put children to sleep by taking them for a walk in the buggy or stroller, just as it is not a good habit to use the soporific power of a nice car ride. It can be counterproductive, in the sense that if it works it becomes slavery. What if the baby wakes up at night? Do you get back in your car, maybe in your pajamas, to do another ride?
This last "rule" is perhaps the most complicated: we must not make the child's state of intolerance and desperation clear . It is counterproductive: the children are very influenced by the feelings of adults and can trigger a chain mechanism (a chain that is difficult to break) in which the more the parent shakes the more the child screams and, vice versa, the more the child screams the more the parent becomes agitated .

Symptoms, causes and natural remedies for insomnia

And if it doesn't work?

The sleep of children is not a certainty and, sometimes, it is a complicated conquest. The world, unfortunately, is full of little ones who find it hard to sleep all night and parents who don't know what to catch anymore. In those cases it might be useful to concentrate on the thought that will pass; sooner or later all children learn to appreciate the moment when they can sink under the covers and dream of their favorite hero. As Ron Biber wrote:

“ Since the human being has freed himself from his kinship with the monkey and with the other animals; since it began to form the first family nucleuses, the first de facto unions under the vault of the caves; along the path of civilization, her cubs have always grown the same way. And that is eating, shitting, sleeping and breaking everything by day; crying and fidgeting at night. "

What to do if you are completely exhausted? It might work to allow yourself some time to relax, perhaps being helped by parents, in-laws, a friend, a babysitter ... Taking care of yourself and looking for a space, even a small space, to rest, can help more than that pile of manuals of pediatrics crammed on the bedside table. Sometimes it is difficult to find time to relax and forget about yourself, but it is important, for your own well-being and also for that of your child.

If, however, the child does not sleep, it is recommended to talk to the pediatrician, for advice, but also to calm down and exclude that at the base of the problem there are no triggers such as pain, sleep apnea or other disorders.