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.
Kate
Young children who have healthy sleep tend to seek healthy sleep as teens and adults (Blog Posts starting at 242 and 243) because they remember how good it feels to be well-rested. I asked some former patients whether there were carry-over effects for their own children, the next generation.
Q: “Your parents received advice from me regarding sleep beginning when you were a baby and my question is whether or not you are more attentive to or more successful than your peers regarding healthy sleep in your own child or children. In other words, do you think that my attempts to educate your parents about your sleep when you were growing up might have any carry-over effect on the next generation, your own child or children?”
I am 38 years old.
How old was your child or children when you began to think about helping their sleep? “I started to think about it before my children were born — it came up as a part of considering whether to invest in a Snoo, for example, and thinking about how we would prepare for our first child and whether or not we would “sleep train.”
I’ve always had a positive association with sleep and loved sleeping late. My mom is a night owl and my dad is a very early riser — so the patterns at home varied, but I always felt like the value of sleep was important at home growing up.
Were there any differences of opinion between you and your mother regarding early bedtimes for your children and if so, how did you respond? Yes – I aspired to an earlier bedtime and she defaulted to a later one. I would typically say why it’s important (and invoke your name) and if we ended up staying up later, usually a meltdown would help prove my point.
My husband didn’t have a different philosophy that ever came up — he just read your book and was in!
Other people were supportive of how I handled my children as an infant, though it very much seemed unusual compared to our friends with babies who rarely (if ever) had their infant sleep alone in their room.
You will appreciate that over Thanksgiving we were having a little too much fun with Elle who is now three and half. It was about 11pm (and she was eating an ice cream sundae) when she announced: I need to go to bed! And promptly ran off to her room to “put herself to sleep.”
I still very much value sleep and while I often stay up late, I am aware of my “sleep bank” and try to find ways to make up for lost sleep when I need to. If I get a chance on weekends, I will take a nap and think about sleep as a part of my overall wellbeing.
I work at home.
