Laying the groundwork for positive discipline - sleep

Many parents are worried about sleep.

Many parents ask me about sleep.

There are a few things that are very important to think about as we help children to establish good sleep habits.

1) Sleep should be a time of calm, heading into naps or bedtime should also be a time of calm

2) If you help your child establish a calm sleep routine, it will last a whole lifetime

3) For the first year of life, for the most part, infants hear little of what is going on around them, and they have the MOST flexible settling into sleep ‘skills’ -they are born with these - they are hardwired. This means that you should not worry about total darkness, or total silence - babies will generally sleep through. This does not mean you can startle the sleeping baby with loud noises or bright lights - but in general they will settle themselves back to sleep when they awake or near-awake in a lighter part of the sleep cycle

4) Preparing to face childhood and then adulthood with resilience is a good idea. Taking advantage of the baby’s ability to soothe in that first year work to help your child to sleep in different environments - overhearing quiet conversation, in their crib or car seat, out for a walk in a stroller or in a carrier - don’t treat the baby with ‘kid’ gloves - help them to soothe to sleep in different circumstances - this will help you later. Use white noise, or quiet music, but also silence or just quiet background ambient noise. Similarly for light - not always total and absolute darkness - certainly hard to achieve for a midday nap!

5) As the child gets older it is a good idea to establish a regular sleep routine at a regular time. That will be discussed in the next blog post.