Baby Sleep Tips - Develop A Reasonable Attitude
It's impossible to list all the different skills you need, and
decisions that you have to make, as a new parent. Although you
should try to educate yourself and talk to other parents, in
most cases the best solution for any questions you may have is
to follow your instincts. Parenting is, after all, one of the
most natural things in the world. One of the most common and
difficult things you'll deal with as the parent of a newborn is
in getting your child to sleep well and throughout the night.
Often, the process of achieving this seems to be a combination
of science, art, and just plain luck. There are many baby sleep
tips out there, and many of them are useful, but before you
begin researching and applying them, you should develop a
realistic and healthy attitude towards sleep. If you don't do
this, you risk applying tips in a rigid and scattershot manner,
which isn't likely to work.
One of the keys to this is understanding that you should be
developing a long term goal, in terms of your baby's sleep
habits. As much as any parent's short term goal is simply to get
their child to go to sleep, so that she can get some sleep
herself, you should be thinking of the long term goal of
instilling healthy sleep habits in your child. A successful way
to implement this goal is to be realistic and flexible. Your
child is not going to sleep the same way or in the same manner
every night. What you should be trying to do, therefore, is
creating an environment that is conducive to sleep, so that your
child can slowly learn to fall asleep on his own.
The best thing you can do is help your child develop an attitude
in which sleep is both an enjoyable and secure state. Your child
should think of sleep as a comforting thing that comes
naturally. One way you can help foster this idea is by avoiding
too much interference with your child's sleeping habits.
Although it can be tempting to follow guides and implement rigid
rules regarding your child's sleep, in many cases this can cause
problems down the road.
If you rouse or put your child to bed at set hours, you may
achieve a short term goal of getting some rest, but you may also
be altering your child's attitudes towards sleep. Instead of
thinking of sleep as an enjoyable activity, he will begin to
think of it as something he "has to do" like eating his dinner.
By altering your child's attitude towards sleep in this way - by
making him think of it as a task rather than an enjoyable
activity - you risk problems developing later.
In older children and adults who have sleeping problems, doctors
can often trace the source of the problem back to sleeping
habits enforced at an extremely young age. If as a baby the
subject was put to bed at a set hour, for example, regardless of
weather he was tired or not. By trying to stay more in tune with
how your baby is feeling and what he wants, you will encourage a
healthier attitude towards sleep, which will benefit both you
and your child in the future.