Forcing Little ones To Stay Awake Won’t Help Them Sleep Better
However that is not often the case. Either your baby takes forever to fall asleep, or the baby might wake every couple of hours. Not only will the parents end up tired, but the child will also be tired and irritable.
Many mothers and fathers believe that if their newborns (or small children for that matter) battle to sleep through the night, they simply have to put them to bed later. Even though that makes logically sense, it is in fact not the complete truth! Putting your child to bed later might actually have the complete opposite effect. If you (as a grown-up) stay awake extremely late, the body will need to compensate for this. A hormone to battle tiredness will be released and when you eventually want to go to sleep, you will have difficulty, even though you are dead tired! The same goes for children – trying to keep your child awake way past his/her bedtime will only result in them having difficulties to go to sleep even more.
It is also in your child’s nature to want to rise early. Remember that the world is a new and exciting place for them to explore and they would want to make the most out of each day! This is much like a grownup exploring a new destination for the first time – will you lie in bed until midday or will you rather wake up even before the sun rises so that you can go check out your exciting environment? Once again, babies work in a very related way! You can’t force them to wake up later – as they grow older this will gradually happens. until they are teenagers when you will not be able to get them out of bed at all!
There are ways to prevent baby from being overtired at night. Taking short naps daily is very important. Once again, this sounds like it will have the opposite effect, but the better baby rests during the day, the better sleep can be expected at night. This certainly will not be 2 – 3 hour naps each time – a quick powernap of between 35 and 45 minutes is more than adequate. Your baby should ideally have 2 – 3 of these powernaps during the day.
Infants also have internal clocks and it is important to “program” their clocks correctly. Keep in mind that your baby needs routine. Try to schedule the powernaps at the same time every day and put the little one to bed at the same time every night. Do not allow your child to get too tired – this will have the complete opposite effect from what you are trying to achieve.
Try these short powernaps and putting your child to sleep early for at least 3 or 4 days – you will soon be seeing results!
Download a MP3 to help baby sleep and read more articles on baby sleep by visiting the “Help Baby Sleep” website today!
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