If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
Putting aside the issue of infant temperament, you might ask why it is that some parents appear to find the teaching of self- soothing fairly manageable, while others find it an ongoing, frustrating challenge. The short answer is that parents vary enormously in their ability to restore a calm balance to their lives after the baby is born, assuming that their lives were reasonably stable beforehand.
Sometimes there are parent issues or barriers that may make prevention and treatment of sleep problems more challenging. Sometimes these barriers are only speed bumps that slow down the process of helping your child sleep better. However, if they are major roadblocks, consider professional counseling before working on your child’s sleep problem. In such cases, you cannot help your baby until you help yourself.
Here are some examples.
1.Parents Lack Information or Tools
Your child does not come with a parenting manual. Starting in infancy or early childhood, parents may have unrealistic expectations or misunderstandings regarding age- appropriate sleep needs and sleep schedules. Or parents do not appreciate the benefits of healthy sleep and the harm caused by sleep deprivation in their children.
2.Working Parents’ Guilt, Exhaustion, or Absence
Parents may feel guilty because they are not available or do not want to be available to their child. So they give in to whatever their child wants. A parent might truly believe that it is more important for the child to spend time late at night with her mother or father than it is for her to get more sleep from an earlier bedtime. Keeping a child up too late is more common with a parent who works outside the home, because he or she is not present to see the overtired child in the late afternoon but instead sees only the child running on the fumes of a second wind. Sheer exhaustion from the demands of work may prevent the parent from being persistent and consistent. Sometimes the problem is neither guilt nor exhaustion but simply absence. Some modern parents do not do a lot of parenting. Because they spend so much time at work, they heavily rely on daycare or nannies. They are in denial or do not see the seriousness of the problem. Fathers especially, who are often less involved in child care than mothers, tend to say dismissively, “She’ll outgrow it” or “It’s not a big deal.”
3.Bad Marriage
Three themes frequently occur here. The first is that one parent wants the child for support and love and thus becomes overly permissive in order to keep the child allied with him or her. This alliance maintains the parent’s self- esteem. The second recurring theme is a control issue. A parent arrogantly asserts that he or she is right no matter what and knows best, end of story. The third theme is lack of communication. The parents are unable to communicate effectively with each other to develop a practical plan that they can consistently implement.
(to be continued)
