intermittent reinforcement on pages 6–7. Given that we all need to hear things at least three times before we can really understand them, and the fact that you’re probably too tired to remember much these days anyway, it’s vital that you take the time to refresh your memory about these important concepts.
Need-to-Know Sleep Facts
Regular sleep time is key. Going to bed at the same time each night and getting up at the same time each morning is vital for children. The consistency keeps their internal body clock, a.k.a. circadian rhythm, on track, which in turn ensures that they get quality sleep. Even adults should have regular bed-and wake-up times; it’s okay if we vary our own routine on weekends, but only by one hour.
If you miss your child’s natural time to sleep—in other words, her “sleep window”—her body will begin to secrete hormones, including one called cortisol, which acts like a mild form of adrenaline and can leave her too wired to get to sleep easily. (I imagine this must feel much like trying to nod off when you’re tired but have had too much caffeine.) Eventually, after you’ve both endured a good deal of crying, your child will fall asleep. “Thank goodness,” you’ll think, “at least she’ll sleep late tomorrow.” Logical, but incorrect. Having missed her regular bedtime, she’ll actually sleep less soundly and she’ll wake earlier than usual. This can then lead to poor naps the next day, a disrupted bedtime that night—and the beginning of a vicious cycle that will be tough to break.
Quality of sleep is just as important as quantity. Besides the right amount of sleep (for age-by-age sleep requirements, see Chapter 2), a child needs:
the right kind of sleep—unfragmented, uninterrupted (except in the case of newborns who still need to nurse or take a bottle during the night), and motionless: the movement of, say, a baby swing prevents the brain from going into a deep sleep and is not as restorative.
to sleep at the right times—in other words, his bedtime, wake-up time, and naps are all in sync with his natural sleep patterns.
sleep that’s undisturbed by medical problems such as asthma, allergies, reflux, or obstructive sleep apnea or other physical sleep disorders.
Babies must be taught to put themselves to sleep: It’s a learned skill. Putting your baby in her crib when she’s “drowsy but awake,” will give her the opportunity to get herself to sleep on her own. If you have trouble visualizing what “drowsy but awake” means, imagine a scale of one to ten, one being wide awake and ten being deeply asleep. You want to put your baby down at around a seven or eight on the drowsy scale. She should be warm, fed, comforted, and clearly sleepy, but alert enough to know that she’s going into the crib.
When you put your baby down at the right point on the drowsiness scale, she’ll probably protest. This is normal; no need to get her out and restart her bedtime routine. Instead, stay nearby and use physical and verbal reassurance to comfort her, and soon she’ll learn to transition from drowsiness to sleep without fussing. I will go over this in more detail in Chapter 3.
Note that you don’t want your baby to fall asleep too quickly: If she conks out in less than five minutes, she was probably already so far gone when you put her down that she wasn’t aware of being transferred from your arms to her crib. And without that lack of awareness, she won’t learn her sleep “lesson.” Get her into bed when she’s a tad less drowsy the next time.
Incidentally, “drowsy but awake” becomes less important as children get older. With toddlers and preschoolers, a calming bedtime routine of reading and songs prepares them for slumber. Of course, make sure you’re not falling asleep with them during those soothing bedtime stories!
A child’s ability to put himself to sleep is important not just at bedtime, but also when he wakes in the night or during a nap. Just as adults do, children have cycles of non-REM (deep) sleep and REM (light) sleep. A child’s sleep cycles do not mimic a grown-up’s until around the age of 2. When a sleeper of any age moves from one cycle to the next, his brain experiences a “partial arousal,” in which he’ll wake up just enough to roll over, realize he’s thirsty, or notice a fallen pillow; then, if he doesn’t need to get up for that glass of water or to retrieve that pillow, he’ll go right back to sleep. For babies who sleep through the night, partial arousals take place approximately every three to four hours (during naps, they occur after 10 minutes and 30 minutes of sleep); this means that during a partial arousal they may open their eyes and even realize that they’re alone in the crib—and think, “Oh, I’m in my room, there’s my lovey …” and put themselves back to sleep.
It’s vital for a baby to learn to put herself to sleep without a “sleep crutch”—in other words, a negative sleep association that requires something be done either to or for her in order for her to go to sleep. Some examples of common sleep crutches are nursing, bottle-feeding, rocking, walking, and having a parent lie down with a baby or young child until she falls asleep. These activities are labeled “negative” because a child can’t do them for herself.
“Positive sleep associations,” on the other hand, are self-soothing behaviors or rituals that a baby can create for herself, such as sucking her thumb or fingers, twirling her hair, stroking a stuffed animal or favorite blanket, rubbing things against her cheek, rocking her body, humming, or singing.
SLEEP-TIGHT TIP
Putting oneself to sleep is a learned skill. Gently guiding our children to master this skill is just as important as teaching them their ABCs.
Phasing out a sleep crutch can be as challenging for the parent as the baby. After all, you’ve come to rely on the magic of rocking, nursing, swinging, or pacing your baby all the way to the Land of Nod too. It can be really hard to give that up, but ultimately you want to get to the point where you can stop before your baby drifts off completely. Try cutting the amount of time you walk or rock your little one before putting him in his crib. Note that some babies get upset when “teased” with enough walking or rocking to make them drowsy but not enough to put them to sleep—in which case a more drastic approach is necessary: a minute of walking or rocking—just long enough to say, “I love you,” say a prayer, or hum a short lullaby—before being put down. If you have to choose between too drowsy or too awake, choose awake, and then work on soothing your baby to a drowsier point in the crib.
If you nurse or bottle-feed your baby to sleep, you can try making feeding an earlier part of the bedtime routine. Or, leave a dim light on so you can see when she’s starting to drift off (and to lessen the association in her mind between eating and falling asleep). Watch her closely: When she stops sucking energetically and swallowing (and instead is suckling gently, with a sort of fluttering motion), she’s past the “drowsy” target. At this point, you have two choices:
Unlatch her from your breast or the bottle, put her in her crib, and try to catch her a little earlier at the next bedtime. If she wakes up while you’re unlatching her and gives you a look that says, “Hey, I’m still hungry! I didn’t mean to fall asleep on the job!” then give her one more chance. If she wakes up enough to really eat, let her finish. But if she goes back to that fluttery business, you’ve been duped! She’s not hungry—she just wants to suckle herself to sleep. Unlatch her, burp her, give her a kiss, and put her to bed.
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Arouse
