- Child's health from A to Z
Sleep is an integral part of our life. Both adults and children need it. It is known that babies grow in their sleep. But napping during the day is not only beneficial and relaxing for the child, it is also an opportunity to get some free time for his mother (do household chores, beautify, and just sleep!).
But what to do if the little one stubbornly refuses to fall asleep? How to teach a child to sleep during the day?
How to teach your child to fall asleep on his own: the basics
Sleep has two phases in both adults and children. One phase is fast, in this phase one dreams, and the second is slow, one does not dream in this phase. Between these phases there are always gaps when a person does not sleep. At this time, he can change his body position, adjust the blanket or pillow, the baby will also roll over from one side to the other, maybe be naughty, and if he is not accustomed to falling asleep on his own, he will wake up completely.
Sleep is important for everyone
For your information! Sleep phases change 10-12 times throughout the night.
Tips for a good night's sleep:
- reduce activity before falling asleep;
- ventilate the room;
- maintain a daily routine;
- remove all gadgets an hour before bedtime.
A child’s lack of self-sleep skills is already a problem for both parents and the baby himself. A child needs night and day sleep equally. Depending on age, the duration of daytime and nighttime sleep varies.
A 3-4 year old child needs one afternoon and one night nap. Sometimes daytime sleep is called the most necessary for a child’s growth, since it is in this sleep that regeneration processes occur faster and new neural connections are laid.
You need to calm down before going to bed
Irritating factors
They should be excluded so as not to provoke the development of a bad habit in the baby. Avoid overeating or nervous tension before going to bed. Outdoor games must be excluded no later than two hours before going to bed. You should not irritate your child or scold him just before bedtime. If there are guests in the house, ask them not to make noise. All of the above negatively affects the child’s psyche. If you intentionally help create a calm environment at home, your baby will grow up in an atmosphere of harmony and love. It is important to eliminate everything unpleasant that can affect your mood. But this does not mean that you should indulge all the baby’s whims.
Causes of poor sleep
If you try to understand the reasons for poor self-sleep, you should pay attention to certain points.
Violent physical activity of the child before bedtime
You should not play or maintain very active games before bedtime.
For your information! It is worth paying attention to your baby's level of physical activity. It is different for everyone and depends on many reasons. The level is determined by genetic and hereditary factors.
Excessive physical activity of a child greatly affects his perception of the world around him, since he cannot concentrate on one thing and misses important information, and is less observant.
It is important to conduct active games with your baby before lunch, ending them an hour before bedtime so that the muscles relax and breathing and heartbeat become even.
Preparing a 6-year-old child for school at home
Microclimate in the room where the child sleeps
Ideally, the child should have his own bedroom where he is accustomed to constantly sleep on his own. Or your own permanent sleeping place with a separate crib.
For your information! The crib should be appropriate for the height and weight of the body, be comfortable, with a good mattress, blanket and pillow. Saving on these things is not encouraged, as this is half the success of a child’s good sleep.
Lighting is allowed to be very soft and dim or completely absent, since the body is adapted to sleep only in the dark. When the eyes detect darkness, they send a signal to the brain, and the body begins to produce the hormone melatonin, which acts as a sleeping pill, thereby helping to fall asleep. When complete darkness is created in a room, the brain perceives it as nightfall.
The bedroom should be comfortable
The sounds in the room where the baby sleeps are not loud and harsh, but quiet, monotonous, without changes in volume.
One of the necessary requirements for a child to fall asleep quickly is fresh air in the room where the baby sleeps.
For your information! It is worth paying attention to the air temperature in the bedroom. It should not be higher than 21-22 °C. For a child, this is a kind of aerotherapy. The increased oxygen content in fresh air leads to good, high-quality and long-lasting sleep.
Mode for a baby 3-4 years old
The main rule of the regime before teaching a child to fall asleep independently is to maintain a time interval between classes so that they take place at the same hours. And, if you follow a daily routine from the very first month of a baby’s life, this will help him acquire a large number of skills by the age of 3-4, thereby instilling the skill of falling asleep independently.
The baby's daily routine includes:
- awakening;
- hygiene procedures;
- eating;
- walk;
- games;
- lesson with parents;
- time to sleep.
The main thing is that all these events take place daily and at approximately the same time. Gradually, month after month, the child will subconsciously want to go to bed at the same time. Self-sleep will occur faster.
Watching TV and various video games on the computer before bed
Turn off the TV and computer an hour before bedtime - this rule should be strictly followed by parents. After watching cartoons or playing games on a tablet or computer, the baby’s nervous system tries to process all the information, both visual and audio. Sometimes this process is delayed, which leads to the fact that the child cannot fall asleep for a long time.
Methods of gender education for preschool children
For your information! The brain tries to connect everything it sees and hears, like puzzles. This creates more and more centers of excitement, which makes it difficult to fall asleep quickly.
Diet
Many young mothers mistakenly feed their baby when he asks for it. At the same time, the baby is not always well fed and often becomes restless and anxious. In this case, every regime is disrupted. The baby may begin to ask for food even at night, that is, at a completely inappropriate time for this. Sleep is interrupted, becomes incomplete, the body does not rest properly. The opposite situations also happen. Sometimes the baby goes to bed overfed and therefore cannot fall asleep right away. Of course, such an approach will not help to teach order. If the diet is not established, then certain difficulties may arise.
Faced with the problem that it is impossible to put a child to sleep at 2 years old, parents begin to clutch their heads. They don’t know what to do, what to do in this case. It seems to them that this baby has become so uncontrollable, restless, even aggressive. In fact, the main difficulty is that from the very beginning they left the process of organizing sleep and wakefulness to its own devices.
How to teach a child to sleep
No doctor will give you an ideal recipe for falling asleep on your own that would work for everyone and for all occasions. If this happened, it would be a revolutionary method and would probably even be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
There are many different methods of falling asleep independently, but all of them are aimed at developing the child’s habit of falling asleep independently from three to four months, that is, by the third year he should already have this skill.
The computer turns off well before bedtime
Games and reading
When parents are constantly with the baby, they themselves notice: the child is overtired, begins to rub his eyes and is capricious - he needs to be put to bed, using either light rocking, or reading his favorite book and telling a story with a good ending.
Constant ritual
Parents should teach the child to go to bed on his own, having washed and changed into pajamas, and not to go to bed in the clothes he played in the street or in the room. A child should learn to brush his teeth every day before bed at the age of three. Children's toothpastes and toothbrushes are available in stores or pharmacies. In the first months, go brush your teeth and wash your face together, show by your own example how these procedures are performed. Then the child will do everything himself.
Favorite toy
You can allow him to put a soft toy with him in the crib, which the baby most often likes to play with, convincing him that the toy also wants to sleep. A child's daily routine is a kind of ritual. How pleasant and accepted this ritual will be for the baby depends on the adults nearby.
By following all the above tips and being patient, parents will definitely be able to develop the skill of self-sleep in their baby. A child is born like a blank book, and what will be written in this literature on his behavior depends only on the parents. Only their perseverance will help him become a harmonious person who knows how to manage his emotions.
Creating an environment
This is also an important factor that should never be ignored. In order for the child to quickly and safely fall asleep, it is necessary to create a cozy atmosphere in the room that will be conducive to rest. It is recommended to close the curtains, turn off the lights, and turn off the TV. The baby simply won’t be able to get a good night’s sleep if something constantly disturbs him. What seems quite familiar and normal to an adult can have an extremely negative impact on a child. Sometimes it is impossible to imagine how much distractions affect him. For example, it is not recommended to give toys before bedtime. The baby will definitely get excited, he will lose all desire to go to bed.
For a little person, the emotional state plays a big role. If a 2-year-old child does not want to sleep, then you need to figure out the reason and try to eliminate it. Even if no special environment has been created up to a certain point, it is never too late to work on it. You will see how your child will change. A rested child behaves completely differently. He does not strive to demolish everything in his path, he indulges less and is capricious.
Day 2: Practice makes perfect
Today you continue to build a regime. If your baby still requires night feedings, this may be a good time to emphasize the difference between day and night. Make nighttime feedings very relaxing, with dim lights. Do your best to avoid stimulating your child. And during the day, make feeding times a high activity time. You can tickle the feet or sing songs during feeding so that the baby begins to perceive the difference.
Continue to pay close attention to what calms your baby in the evening. A bath can be a calming ritual for one child and an invigorating ritual for another. You can also try white noise—the noise of a fan or air conditioner, or a radio tuned to no wavelength. This works well for many children.
Developmental activities
They are extremely necessary for the full development of your little son or daughter. The first classes should begin in the parental home. There is no need to wait until your child goes to kindergarten. There, of course, he will be taught everything he needs, but first impressions will be missed. Daily intellectual and emotional stress is essential for the baby to then fall asleep peacefully in his crib in the evening. The more tired the baby is, the better the sleep will be. This is true.
Every successful parent knows that a small child always wakes up at six or seven in the morning. This is why adults have to get up early in the morning to feed, wash and dress their child. While the baby is happily snoring, parents themselves can take a little break from household chores. During the child's nap, the mother also has the opportunity to relax a little.
