Sleep school dropout finds success
June 19th 2008 05:20
A debate has raged in our house for almost two years now – how do we get Ike to adopt a sleeping pattern that will allow us to remain sane? The child has many talents but being a good sleeper is not in his repertoire.
When he was six months old we had a short stint at sleep school, which was a disaster. Ike determinedly screamed through all attempts to force him to sleep, and I cried too, leaving the centre a failure and feeling guilty about the “bad habits” I had apparently introduced and fostered.
Many people (including those at sleep school) believe controlled crying is the answer. The premise of controlled crying being that you leave your baby to cry themselves to sleep and eventually they learn to settle on their own.
I’ve seen it work, I know it can work, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Each to their own but I cannot listen to my little man sobbing, especially when we’re all tired. So we’ve adopted the “soft approach” which has had us up several times every night for the last two years, cuddling, soothing, searching in the dark for discarded dummies, and suffering from the compound effect of endless sleep deprivation. But this week I think we’ve had a breakthrough!
I don’t want to jinx myself by writing this down, but for the past three nights Ike has slept through until dawn, with no “going to bed” dramas at all. And last night I experienced one of the proudest and most touching moments of my mothering career so far.
Lying in his cot, all snuggled up with his special pillow and Cookie Monster doll, my gorgeous little man blew me a kiss, waved and said “bye bye” before closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep.
I’m not a failure after all. Hurrah!!
When he was six months old we had a short stint at sleep school, which was a disaster. Ike determinedly screamed through all attempts to force him to sleep, and I cried too, leaving the centre a failure and feeling guilty about the “bad habits” I had apparently introduced and fostered.
Many people (including those at sleep school) believe controlled crying is the answer. The premise of controlled crying being that you leave your baby to cry themselves to sleep and eventually they learn to settle on their own.
I’ve seen it work, I know it can work, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Each to their own but I cannot listen to my little man sobbing, especially when we’re all tired. So we’ve adopted the “soft approach” which has had us up several times every night for the last two years, cuddling, soothing, searching in the dark for discarded dummies, and suffering from the compound effect of endless sleep deprivation. But this week I think we’ve had a breakthrough!
I don’t want to jinx myself by writing this down, but for the past three nights Ike has slept through until dawn, with no “going to bed” dramas at all. And last night I experienced one of the proudest and most touching moments of my mothering career so far.
Lying in his cot, all snuggled up with his special pillow and Cookie Monster doll, my gorgeous little man blew me a kiss, waved and said “bye bye” before closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep.
I’m not a failure after all. Hurrah!!
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