Children need morning rituals just as much as they need bedtime rituals to help reinforce their understanding of wake-up time versus sleep time. When it’s time to start the day, do a “dramatic wake-up.” Open the blinds, switch on the lights, sing some cheery good-morning songs, and welcome the new day.
As you read further into this workbook, you’ll see how I use dramatic wake-up to help your child differentiate between when you’re going to get them out of their crib or bed. Let’s say your child wakes at 5:00 a.m. and you go to her and sit next to her crib or bed to help her back to sleep. At 6:00 a.m. she’s still wide awake with no sign of going back to sleep, and you wish to give up on the night (6:00 a.m. is the earliest I ever want you to give up on the night). I would not want you to stand and pick her up and start the day fearing that you might train her to cry on and off for one hour (see intermitten reinforcement below). Instead I want you to leave the room, count to 10, go back in, turn on the light and say, “Good morning!” and start your day.
An Important Note on Consistency: Once you have a sleep-training plan in place, it’s absolutely crucial to be consistent—even in the middle of the night when you’re tired and not thinking clearly. Sending mixed messages—which behavioral scientists call “intermittent reinforcement”—to your child throughout the day (and night!) will only frustrate him. He won’t be able to decipher what type of behavior merits rewards and what type of behavior doesn’t. Inconsistently reinforced behavior is the hardest type of behavior to modify or extinguish. It takes longer to change and it always gets worse before it gets better. This is particularly true of a child who’s more than 1 year old.
Here are three examples of intermittent reinforcement with children and sleep that I want you to avoid:
1 “Sometimes I feed you to sleep and sometimes I don’t.” For example, you may nurse your baby to sleep, feed him if he wakes after 10:00 p.m., rock him to sleep if he wakes again before 1:00 a.m., and then finally bring him into your bed out of desperation. This causes confusion. I want you to work toward putting your child down to bed drowsy but awake and responding to him consistently the same way through out the night.
2 “Sometimes I’ve let you cry for 15 or 30 minutes because I was desperate and heard this approach might work—but then I couldn’t take it anymore and went in, picked you up, and rocked you to sleep.” This is an example of how you can train your child to cry until you put him to sleep—any way you can!
3 “Sometimes I bring you in to my bed—but only after 5:00 a.m.” Please remember that your child can’t tell time. Why wouldn’t he expect to come to your bed at 2:00 a.m. if you bring him in after 5:00?
Keep in mind too, that children actually crave consistency at bedtime (and all the time, for that matter). When they know what to expect, and what’s expected of them, it reassures them and helps them feel safe and sound.
SLEEP-TIGHT TIP
Consistency is truly the key to parenting and especially sleep training success.
How to Prep for Sleep Coaching Success: Steps to Take before You Start
1. Get the green light from your child’s doctor.
Most sleep problems are behavioral, but you should still have your pediatrician rule out any underlying medical conditions that may be contributing to your child’s sleep issues, such as reflux, asthma, allergies, ear infections, or sleep apnea. Make sure medications, including over-the-counter remedies, aren’t disturbing her sleep.
If you’re still feeding your baby during the night, ask her doctor if, given your child’s age, weight, and general health, she still needs wee-hour nourishment. Review with your pediatrician how much your child is eating during her waking hours.
2. Keep a sleep-and-feeding log.
Chances are, your short-term memory isn’t quite up to par as a result of sleep deprivation: Your days and nights are going by in a blur. But in order to figure out how to solve your child’s sleep problem, you’ll need to have a clear picture of what’s happening at bedtime and during the night, what’s working, what’s not, how your baby is responding, etc. Keep track by writing it all down for a few days or a week. Having a record in writing, instead of relying on scrambled mental notes in your sleep-deprived brain, will give you a more accurate picture of your child’s patterns and your own responses.
Some parents find it easiest to keep a log for scribbling on right next to their child’s bed. Look for signs of his natural bedtime window. Jot down when and how often he wakes up during the night. Note what you did to get him back to sleep, whether you rocked him, nursed him, sang to him, or brought him into your bed. Compare your child’s daily schedule with the typical schedules I suggest in Chapter 2.
Once you start my program, continue your log. Tracking your child’s sleep patterns will help you figure out what’s working, what’s not, and what tactics you should tweak. At the end of this workbook is a sample log you can use. (Feel free to come up with your own format if you don’t like mine.)
3. Figure out your child’s ideal bedtime.
This is the period of time during which she’ll show signs that she’s ready to sleep—yawning, rubbing her eyes, twisting her hair, fussing. Often parents miss a child’s sleepy cues—especially in the evening, because it’s such a busy time of day. They may be cleaning up the dinner dishes, shuffling through the mail, helping an older child with homework, etc. Pay extra attention to how your child behaves between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. (and make sure she’s not zoning out in front of the television). As soon as she begins acting drowsy, you’ll know that that’s her natural bedtime—and the time at which you should be putting her down each evening going forward.
Although I usually recommend making bedtime adjustments gradually, 30 minutes or so at a time, sometimes with a child under 3 you can make the changes quickly if you learn to recognize her natural patterns. For instance, if your 20-month-old is used to going to bed at 10:00 p.m., but you can see that she’s drowsy at 7:30 p.m., you don’t need to spend days gradually adjusting. Just put her to bed at 7:30 p.m. and make sure you do so again the next night and the night after that.
If you have trouble picking up on your child’s drowsy signals, you can pinpoint a reasonable bedtime for her simply by looking at when she normally wakes up and factoring in how much sleep she should be getting based on her age. (You’ll find sleep averages on pages 15–26.) Let’s say you have a 2-year-old who tends to wake up by 7:00 a.m. every morning. The average 2-year-old needs 11 hours of sleep at night, so that would mean that your child needs to have gone through her entire bedtime routine and be sound asleep by 8:00 p.m.
4. Create a relaxing bedtime routine.
All children, from newborns on up to school-age kids, need a set of comforting and predictable rituals to help them prepare physically and psychologically for sleep. These activities should be calm, quiet ones, like reading, story-telling, or lullabies; bedtime is not the time for tickling, wrestling, scary stories, or TV shows, or anything else that’s stimulating. Because you’re preparing your little one to be separated from you for the night, the tone should be serene and reassuring. For babies over 6 months old, I encourage attachment to a “lovey,” a favorite stuffed animal or blanket that he can use to comfort himself when he wakes during the night. And with the exception of baths and tooth-brushing, the bedtime routine should take
