There's a sense with infant sleep that if parents break the conventional “rules” (don’t let your toddler sleep in your bed, don’t nurse asleep, don’t let your baby fall asleep on you) that something will "break" with sleep. Even if we don't exactly know why it would work that way. And even if what we are doing to support sleep is working really well!
If you want to geek out on infant sleep, or simply need a boost of confidence that how you are responding to your baby is reasonable, it may be worth the watch. (It's 40 minutes but even the first 10 minutes is a great encouragement for those of you wondering why it feels like you are "doing something wrong" with your baby's sleep even if you are trying to do everything "right").
Sleeping through the night is the holy grail of parenting in the early years. And parents put a lot of pressure on themselves to “make” it happen. Ultimately, sleeping through the night is a complex process involving neurological, hormonal, and biological processes. And this takes time, responsive parenting, and maturation.
Infant sleep is a developmental process. Understanding this process is key to figuring out how to solve, or manage, challenges that arise. And sometimes, with the knowledge of how sleep develops, we as parents may find that what we thought was a challenge, is actually not so troublesome after all. For other times, the times when we are at our wits’ end, understanding the development of sleep helps us see what we can do to support it, so that we all can get a good night’s sleep.
Photo Credit: Marco Verch, Flickr, puzzle pieces in disorder
.I was working on a puzzle this week......and it dawned on me that putting a jigsaw puzzle together is a lot like parenting.
When I work on a puzzle I usually start with a concrete set of steps: finding the corners, gathering the edge pieces, sorting pieces by colour. It's a fairly systematic and structured approach, and it's a great way to get started.
Eventually, however, this approach doesn't work as well and I find I take a figurative step back, and take a big picture approach. I let intuition guide me about what pieces may go where and, to my never-ending surprise, I find I get the right piece in the right place without a lot of thinking about it.
When I work with families I often talk about the balance between problem solving and intuition. I talk about breaking down the situation and looking for clues about what pieces are missing that will create a sleep-promoting environment and improve the situation for everyone.
But I also talk about tapping into intuition -around what your baby needs, what might be getting in the way, and what may, in the end, be an opportunity for some trust in the process: that when babies get what they need (unconditional love, nurturing, and meeting their needs) and when we tap into our awareness, reflection, and intuition, things can shift in surprising ways.
As sleep situations get more complex, and baby's medical history and a family's history become more complex as well, this exploration of intuition versus intellect remains. Some situations require more concrete thinking and problem solving. Others require more reflection and exploration of deeper things. But always the two are explored.
As we approach a season of excitement, disruption of routines, anticipation, and stress, I encourage each of us to approach parenting as a puzzle that requires both our brain and our heart.
Warmly,
Heather Boyd, O.T.Reg. (Ont.)
Occupational Therapist
The jar has a divet in it, right where my thumb naturally goes when I hold it. It's not all that visible. In fact if I go looking for it, I can't find it. But when I happen to pull this mason jar off the shelf and hold it in my hand, my thumb natural slides into that little divet comfortable. Almost like it was made that way.
It's my favourite mason jar in our house. Which is saying something. After all, mason jars aren't all that fancy, and they certainly are usually so uniform it isn't possible to have a favourite! But I'm always glad when I happen upon it and get to hold it in my hand.
Perhaps it's a stretch for some of you, but I think of this flawed mason jar as a nice reminder about the natural flaws we all have --in our parenting and our day to day lives. As much as we try to create a "perfect" and "just so" environment for our kids --not too stimulating but stimulating enough, full of open ended toys but not too many, and with a wide variety of experiences and opportunities but not to the point of indulgence, etc. etc-- we are flawed. All of us. And we will make mistakes.
And the mistakes that we make as parents seem to be among the heaviest. We pay for our parenting mistakes in judgements from others, self-reproach, and a sense of guilt that we have let our kids down.
But what if, instead of guilt and judgement, we looked at our own flaws as this wonderful, natural variation that becomes not just the essence of being human, but also an opportunity for growth? What if we took our imperfect parenting as an opportunity to have grace: with our children, with ourselves, and with our ambitions as parents.
If we do this, mistakes may just turn out to be lovely and surprisingly nice ways of reminding ourselves that we are human. And humans make mistakes. If we take our own mistakes as opportunities to model to our children that we are still worthy, and acceptable, and loving, and learning, rather than letting mistakes be a source of self-rebuke, then perhaps it is not just us who get to learn from these mistakes.
If you want to hear more on this, see this video where, despite the tech-incompetence at the end (oops, aha,I will forgive myself for that self-rebuke!), I chat about my mason jar and also the value of saying sorry. If you haven't had opportunity to say that much to your kids just yet, take this as a wonderful, flawed, and empowering invitation to forgive yourself for your mistakes, and let your children see the power and growth that comes from that.
With absolute imperfection,
Heather
Feeling like you'd like support around parenting through the imperfect, messy path to independent sleep?
Heather Boyd
OT Reg. (Ont.)
www.heatherboyd.ca
