TREATMENT OF YOUR CHILD SLEEPING DISORDER
HOW TO GET YOUR CHILD TO SLEEP?
1. Teach them the difference between day and night: daytime is light, noisy, interactive; night time is dark, quiet, and dull.
2.Bedtime routines are important, regardless of a child's age. It should include about 15–30 minutes of calm, soothing activities with a definite endpoint. Discourage television, exercise, computer and0telephone use, and avoid drinks containing caffeine. For babies and younger children, it really is quite depressingly simple: bath, story/lullaby, lights out, sleep.
3. Help children avoid an overloaded schedule, identify and prioritise activities that allow for relaxation and sufficient sleep time.
4.Remember, even the best sleepers will have periods of time when they do not sleep well.
5. We are all different and so if your child is happy, healthy and well behaved on less than the recommended hours, don't worry. If they are tired, crabby and prone to temper tantrums then however
much sleep they are getting it is probably not sufficient.
6.The key is to do what is right for you, your partner, and most importantly your child – not what your friends, neighbours, mother‐in‐law, sleep experts or self‐help parenting books tell you.
IS CO‐SLEEPING WITH MY CHILD WRONG?
For most of human history the accepted norm was for mothers to sleep with their babies. This is still true
in the majority of cultures in the world including countries such as Japan and India. By sleeping next to its
mother, an infant receives protection, warmth, emotional reassurance, and is easily fed. However,
recently, in Western societies, the practice of mothers and infants sleeping together has been actively
discouraged. Western parents are taught that they should not co‐sleep with their child for two reasons.
1. It will make the infant too dependent on them.
2. It increases the risk of accidental suffocation or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). With regards to the child becoming too dependent on their mother, studies actually suggest that children who have ‘co‐slept’ in a loving and safe environment become better adjusted adults than those who were encouraged to sleep without parental contact or reassurance.
The fear of suffocating infants has a long history. However, since before the Middle Ages ‘overlying’ or suffocating infants deliberately was considered the problem and it was for this reason – infanticide – that the Church forbade parents sleeping next to their infants. Later, the practice of giving infants alcohol or opiates to get them to sleep became common, and this could cause babies to die during the night. There
was also a problem with children sleeping in smoke‐filled, unventilated rooms, which could give rise to
asphyxia.
Thankfully these conditions to a large extent no longer exist. However, health officials in some Western countries now promote the message that sleep contact between the mother and infant increases the chances of the infant dying from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). But the research on which this message is based only indicates that bed‐sharing can be dangerous when it occurs in the context of extreme poverty or in situations with multiple risk factors: parental obesity, parental drug/alcohol use, prone sleep position, sleep surfaces such as a couch or waterbed or pillow, tobacco exposure, co‐sleeping with other children, maternal exhaustion, or leaving baby unattended on an adult bed. It should be noted that Japan
where there is still a high rate of mother/baby co‐sleeping actually has the lowest rate of SIDS in the industrialised world.
Despite a myriad of advice to the contrary infant‐parent co‐sleeping, especially with night‐time breast feeding, is inherently safe, protective, and beneficial. It would appear to be ‘where’ and ‘by whom’ the
co‐sleeping takes place that is the risk factor not the act itself. It seems that the custom of separating
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