.jpg)
help we need sleep
At Moonbeams, we know that sleep is very important not only for your baby but for your entire family. We believe that a gentle approach can be very affective. We would like to share with you some information from Kim West, known as The Sleep Lady. Parents that have attended Kim's seminars at Moonbeams about how to get your child to go to sleep, stay asleep and wake up happy have told us how helpful her suggestions have been for them. We would like to share with you some of her knowledge here. For more information about Kim and her gentle approach to helping your child sleep, go to www.thesleeplady.com.
Top Ten Sleep Tips from The Sleep Lady:
1. Skipping naps and keeping your child up later will cause early risings, more wakings and poor quality sleep.
2. Pay attention to your child's sleep window -- when a child is naturally ready to fall asleep. If you miss that natural opportunity, your child will get wired. That second-wind will mean it takes the child even longer to get to sleep, stay asleep, and won’t sleep later in the morning.
3. Put your child to bed drowsy but awake. Stay with her and reassure her until she is asleep.
4. Start introducing gentle sleep shaping techniques when your child is an infant and avoid the years of sleep deprivation everyone talks about.
5. When your child is 6 months or older, encourage him to become attached to a lovey – a special stuffed animal or blanket. It makes the child feel safe and secure, particularly at bedtime or when he wakes up at night.
6. Children usually transition from two naps to one afternoon nap between 15-18 months. Don’t transition them until they sleep through the night.
7. Moving from crib to bed before age 2 usually doesn’t solve sleep problems but increases them. Not only is your child up at night but now he’s able to walk around!
8. Install room-darkening shades if your child wakes up very early or has trouble napping. Also, consider using a white noise machine or a fan if you live in a particularly noisy home or neighborhood.
9. If a new baby is coming, move the older child from crib to bed at least two months before or four months after the birth of the sibling to avoid feelings of displacement. Better yet, borrow a crib for the interim if the older child isn’t ready to move out of hers.
10. Consistency Counts! Whatever your plan is, be consistent at bedtime and for all night wakings. Also, give it time. Sleep is a learned skill and children don’t learn it over night.
REMEMBER…. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO IMPROVE YOUR CHILD’S SLEEP HABITS!
Average Sleep Requirements
Remember, every child is different- some need more or less sleep than others- but variations should not be huge. Most children need A LOT of sleep! Many parents think that when their child refuses to go to bed before 11pm that they "just don't need a lot of sleep". In fact, that child may actually be sleep-deprived!
Ask yourself these questions:
- Do you have to wake your child almost every morning?
- Does your child fall asleep almost every time he/she is in the car? -Does your child seem cranky, irritable or overtired during the day? -On some nights, does your child seem to crash much earlier than his usual bedtime?
-Does your child have fragmented naps and wake often during the night?
-If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, your child may not be getting enough sleep. It is more important to focus on your child's behavior than the actual number of hours of sleep. As a rule of thumb, the more children sleep at night, the better behaved they will be!
The right AMOUNT and QUALITY of sleep impacts our children's:
attention spans
-flexibility
-irritability
-ability to play independently
-ability to take in fully and learn from their environment
Below are some general guidelines as to how many hours of sleep the AVERAGE child requires at various ages.
| AGE | NIGHTTIME SLEEP |
DAYTIME SLEEP |
TOTAL SLEEP |
| 1 week | 8 1/2 | 8 (4 naps) | 16 1/2 |
| 1 month | 8 1/2 | 7 (3 naps) | 15 1/2 |
| 3 months | 10 | 5 (3 naps) | 15 |
| 6 months | 11 | 3 1/4 (2 naps) | 14 1/2 |
| 9 months | 11 | 3 (2 naps) | 14 |
| 12 months | 11 1/4 | 2 1/2 (2 naps) | 13 3/4 |
| 2 years | 11 | 2 (1 nap) | 13 |
| 3 years | 10 1/2 | 1 1/2 (1 nap) | 12 |
| 4 years | 11 1/2 | 11 1/2 | |
| 5 years | 11 | 11 | |
| 6 years | 10 3/4 | 10 3/4 | |
| 7 years | 10 1/2 | 10 1/2 | |
| 8 years | 10 1/4 | 10 1/4 | |
| 9 years | 10 | 10 | |
| 10 years | 9 3/4 | 9 3/4 | |
| 11 years | 9 1/2 | 9 1/2 | |
| 12 years | 9 1/4 | 9 1/4 | |
| 13 years | 9 1/4 | 9 1/4 | |
| 14 years | 9 |
9 |
Do you have an Early Birds? Read on...
Early risings sometimes have a very simple solution. If too much light is coming into the baby’s room, buy room-darkening blinds (also good for napping). If an external noise—garbage trucks, songbirds, or a dad with a long commute who has turned on the shower—is waking her, you might want to try a white noise machine or a fan. Unfortunately, it’s not always so simple.
If your child is awake at 6:00 or 6:30 a.m., cheerful, refreshed, and ready to start his day—even if you aren’t—you’ll probably have to live with it. That’s a common and biologically appropriate wake-up time for a baby or small child. Remember to adapt the meal and nap schedule to suit his early hours. The first nap should be one and a half to two hours after he wakes up.
If baby is now sleeping through the night and napping well but still waking before 6:00 a.m., you might try making his bedtime later, shifting it in fifteen-minute intervals to see if that will coax him into sleeping later, but be careful. He may still wake up at 6:00 but be more tired and cranky because he’s no longer getting enough sleep at the front end. Pay attention to his sleep window, his sleepy signals and behavior. Don’t force him to stay up when he really needs to go to sleep, or he won’t be able to fall asleep when you want him to. If you do make a trial run on the later
bedtime, try letting that third little afternoon nap run a little later so he isn’t too overtired when you put him down. You may also use the techniques I outline below for problematic early risers, but they may or may not work for a child whose early wake-up time is appropriate for his own internal clock.
Babies who wake up before 6:00 a.m., or who wake up cheerful at 6:00 or 6:30 but are a total grump by 7:00, are a different story. You need to intervene and coach him to sleep later. The longer you endure early risings, the harder it is to change the pattern, so I strongly suggest you address it now, even if it takes a few weeks to see results. Once they’re older, it can take months.
Make sure your early riser is getting enough daytime sleep because nap deprivation can cause poor night sleep and early awakenings. You can try adjusting an early bird’s morning nap, moving it later in half hour increments. Make sure he doesn’t start his morning nap before 8:00 a.m., and then gradually push it back to 9:00 a.m. This might help shift his whole body clock and coax him into sleeping later. But be careful. Watch his sleep windows and use your intuition, because you don’t want to postpone his nap so long that he is too wired to fall asleep. If you think he is waking up very early because he is hungry, try waking him for a final feeding about 11:00 p.m. as an interim step, and also work on making sure he takes more food during the day.
When you hear your early bird stir, go to him very quickly. Try to soothe him, and offer him a lovey. Try to get him and his lovey back to sleep without taking him out of his crib. Even if he doesn’t doze off again, do not turn on the lights or let him out of his crib until 6:00 a.m.—even if he wails with impatience. When I say 6:00, I mean 6:00. I don’t mean 5:45 or 5:50. Or even 5:59. Letting him get up earlier, while it is still dark, sends a confusing message, and is another example of intermittent reinforcement. He cannot understand why he can get up in the dark at 5:45 a.m. but not at 2:15 a.m. Also, many parents I’ve worked with have learned the hard way that if they let him get up at 5:45 a.m., he’ll gradually wake up earlier and earlier.
At this age, I usually recommend that the parent stay in the room while the child gets back to sleep in the early morning. But keep your interaction minimal. Try sitting in a chair with your eyes closed. Say that Mommy (or Daddy) is still sleeping and act like baby should be sleeping as well. When the clock finally strikes 6:00—and it can seem like it takes forever—leave the room for a minute or two. He may cry, but it’s only one minute. You’ll be right back. Whether you’ve been out for a minute or much of the last hour, when you reenter the room, do a dramatic wake-up. Open the blinds, turn on the lights, sing a cheery morning song—a reverse lullaby. Think of it as a morning routine, just like you have an evening one. The idea is to help the baby distinguish between day and night, to know when it is really time to get up and start his day. Your message must be clear: “I’m getting you out of the crib because it’s morning time—not because you were crying.”
Sleep Lady Tip
If you feel your presence in his room is encouraging your baby to stay awake, you can try leaving his room and see if he falls asleep again on his own. Stay out until 6:00, or check on him periodically until 6:00.
Early Risers
If your little one wakes up before 6:00 a.m., he’s probably overtired. Overtired children don’t sleep as well, or sleep as long, as well-rested ones. He may be:
• Going to bed too late
• Not napping enough
• Staying up too long between the end of his afternoon nap and going to bed (try not to let it exceed four hours)
• Going to bed when he’s past that “drowsy but awake” mark. If he’s too drowsy, he won’t know how to get himself back to sleep when he’s more alert—including at 5:00 a.m.
