 The end of daylight savings time in the United States happens this coming Sunday at 2 am.
I’ve always recommended that parents start, ideally, transitioning their kids four days ahead of the end of daylight savings time. The challenge is that it’s complicated to remember to transition all naps, meals and bedtime every day for 4 days in a row. So here’s a different approach, presented to me by fellow sleep consultant, Nichole Levy. She says that day-by-day approaches rarely work because children simply don’t notice and accommodate gradual changes. She prefers to either a) do nothing and just go by the new times when Sunday rolls around, b) split the transition over 2 days (half an hour per day), or c) put your child to bed at the regular time on Saturday but then wait until the new, correct time the following day to get them up. So most likely, your child will wait an hour for you to show up. This was an interesting perspective for me. I have always recommended the 4-day approach to families: move bedtime, morning wake time, and nap times later by 15 minutes per day. If you start on Monday, you have 6 days to make the change so you have a couple days of padding, just in case. But in practice, I rarely remembered to actually make the change gradually with my own children. Best case scenario, I remembered one day in advance and was able to spread it out over a day, and then I treated Sunday as a transition day so really, Monday was the first day the time change was imposed. And everyone knows how good the Monday after the time change feels. Now we live in Mexico and as of a year ago, Mexico abolished daylight savings time. This is definitely the ideal way to handle daylight savings – just don’t do it. If you have to change time zones, let me know what strategy you choose and how it goes!
0 Comments
 When Emerson’s parents started sleep training, they decided to do a form of timed checks where instead of checking in in person, they gave a verbal reassurance via the intercom feature of the baby monitor in their son’s room.
They reasoned that opening the door to visually reassure Emmerson would likely lead to him attempting to run out of the room and really upset him in the long run. To all of our surprise, Emerson did not react well to the verbal check-ins via the intercom. Just like he used to repeatedly visit his parents’ room during the night prior to sleep training, now Emerson was repeatedly requesting verbal reassurance via the intercom. It seemed like our plan to reassure him was actually creating more anxiety. So after 6 nights of frequent wakings and requests for reassurance, we updated our plan. Emerson’s parents put up photos on his wall of people who love him, so that E could feel loved and secure while alone in his room at night. Then they reminded him at bedtime that they would no longer be doing any check ins via the monitor anymore. And then we all held our breaths. After literally just one minute of crying and testing the door on the first night, Emerson returned to his bed. (His parents were watching his progress on the video baby monitor.) He cried and checked the door 7 more times throughout the night, the longest time being 50 minutes. But as he had already been having multiple night wakings before this, his parents were cautiously optimistic. The next night, Emerson tested the door and cried for one minute and then was asleep in 10 minutes. He got up to check the door 4 more times that night, but the longest episode lasted 5 minutes and the others were only 1 minute. The third night, Emerson only got up twice to check the door, and each episode lasted less than a minute. Same thing happened the fourth night. The fifth and sixth nights, Emerson slept through the night with zero wakings! And in the morning after the sixth night, he actually told his parents that “staying in bed all night is easy!” This case was illuminating because it really showed how in our attempts to reassure our children, we can prevent their abilities to learn to self soothe. Frequent check-ins, even over the intercom, were actually causing anxiety for Emerson. Once his parents decide to stop interacting with him – not an easy decision – Emerson quickly grew more confident in his own abilities. If you are considering sleep training but are worried that your child will feel abandoned or scared, consider the possibility that it might be your child’s dependence on you that is actually creating the fear. I know you have the best of intentions but often times, leaving children to figure things out on their own really is the best thing for them. PS Little Emerson is five years old. Many parents ask me if their toddler/preschooler/or school aged child is too old for sleep training. The answer is no, it’s never too late. PPS If your family is struggling with a child’s frequent need for reassurance, you are not alone. Schedule a free consult today and find out how your child can become a confident independent sleeper in just two weeks or less, guaranteed. It’s Weird, He Actually Seemed So Much Happier This Morning After Our First Night Of Sleep Training10/10/2024  “He was WAY happier this morning than he was yesterday morning when he tested the boundary and we didn’t hold our ground. Today he was very cooperative on all other parts of our morning routine.”
Parent often worry that their children will be mad at them for not responding to them (or responding to them in a very limited way) during the night. This particular family just started sleep training last night, and decided that the best thing for their five-year-old child would be regular verbal check-ins through the baby monitor only. They felt that opening the door would likely lead to their son either rushing out the door or getting even more upset if they managed to contain him in his room. So every 5/10/15/20 minutes, they would repeat through the intercom feature, “It’s time to sleep. You’re safe in our house. We love you.” They did this at bedtime and again at a 3 am waking. And in both cases, just before their son collapsed into his bed, he said to them through the intercom, “I love you too.” (This was after plenty of less pleasant protesting.) Pretty sweet, right? And this was the report from this morning after he got up. (Starting with “he was WAY happier this morning.”) So if you are worried your child will be irreparable damaged by sleep training, here’s more evidence that they will not. PS Want to get your family sleeping through the night and still worried about how your child will respond? Let's talk about your fears. I've worked with nearly 500 families to help them get the sleep they needed. I'm sure I can do the same for yours. Book a free consult here. |
AuthorAbby Wolfson is a pediatric nurse practitioner, certified child sleep consultant and certified life coach for parents. She divides her time between Brooklyn, NY and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Archives
October 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed