Nigh Nigh Sleepy Head (Nigh Nigh)
Are you the connection?
Recently I had an email from a desperate mum that needed sleep. Her toddlers, about a year apart, were doing their best to keep their parents from getting more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time. Everyday, after a night of continuous interrupted sleep meant the family never woke up feeling refreshed, re-charged and ready to start a new day full of energy.
What was in the mum’s email was a question about sleep associations and were they a good idea. She felt concerned that introducing them may make her children even more sleep dependent on her providing the sleep association and that in itself, becoming a problem that then had to be dealt with.
THE FACTS ABOUT SLEEP ASSOCIATIONS
Don’t worry about sleep associations…we all have them! A good sleeper has many sleep associations, cues that their brain identifies with winding down and falling asleep. Their sleep associations might be a series of events or routine that they do consistently every night often without even realising it and it could be as simple as putting their head on their pillow, or snuggling up with their loved one.
Sleep associations can help you feel safe, loved, enhance your comfort or act as a means to calm down so you can relax into good sleep and stay asleep. The best part about it is that it increases the experience of good sleep by being repeatable night after night, and when you are having a bad night, it can be easy to get back to normal.
Sleep Associations can be your ticket to a good night’s sleep
Is your childs’ sleep association you? As the main caregiver it is very normal for children to associate sleep with nestling up nice and close to you, wanting you available every minute of the night and to be their comfort back to sleep.
It all sounds lovely in theory but in practice, your presence can be the factor that is causing your child to delay sleep, get less sleep, wake often and frequently overnight. In fact, the very symptoms of sleep debt plus for added bonus, waking up way too early in the morning.
Sound familiar?
When you are the settling and sleep association, your behaviour changes…frustration and sleep deprivation will do that!
When you feel anxious around sleep your child also picks up on those same anxiety cues. In effect they learn not to be able to settle easily and they learn that they need you whenever they wake up. In effect, we all wake up and children spend more time in light sleep so it’s important to be able to get them to a point where they can return to sleep without needing your help.
What Works…
The best sleep associations are those that allow you to wean yourself away into the background but still give your child a pleasant experience as they move towards self settling. Associations that can be incorporated into the bedtime routine and are portable, ie, you can use it or take it anywhere means you get consistency so they can fall asleep fast and sleep longer.
This process requires, on their part, that they develop resilience to stress and learn how to calm themselves without anxiety.
At Nigh Nigh we love the science around music and play therapy.
Pleasant experiences produce dopamine that make you feel good and promote brain connections that form positive pathways that are essential to a healthy adult mind. What we know is that stress and negative associations form neural pathways that can make you more sensitive to stress and vulnerable to making poor life choices. Again it’s the repetitive connections to stress that makes us less resistant to being able to think clearly, make good choices and sleep.
What Doesn’t…
What we see very often is the move towards more frequent overnight feeding when babies and toddlers develop a strong association with feeding to sleep as part of their learnt sleep habit. Mums often notice that their baby isn’t really feeding but seems to be sucking for comfort and needing a parent to supply what they associate sleep with. Delayed settling can then amount to more frequent waking or just normal waking in light sleep phase. Without the ability to resettle your baby will rely on you to help with that.
With even less overall sleep that is now fragmented the impact on health is huge when everyone potentially gets less deep sleep when the body is in a repair and cleanse phase. Frequent waking also interrupts dream sleep, an essential part of the sleep cycle that we now know is associated with our ability to stay emotionally stable.
Object associations like dummies can require you to frequently put them back into your baby’s mouth. You might like to look at some safe options to help your baby find it themselves and teach them to put it back so they can to learn to resettle without needing you.
Which parent does the better settling?
Parenting is so much easier when it is shared but sometimes babies have preferences and will only associate sleep with one parent. When both mum and dad co-share care including settling it helps parents feel empowered and confident plus the emotional bond between parent and child is emotional gold.
Children can learn to settle well for both parents when parents have the right education and support around settling. Consistency especially in the learning phase of changing sleep behaviours helps your little one learn what is expected far more easier than constantly changing settling methods.
We all have sleep associations. Some are obvious and some are not, many are grown out of but some are not and even adults still sleep with a soft toy. Remember those nerve pathways that form from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences in the formative years can stay with you for life.
The important thing to know is sleep is the most important gift you can give to your child and yourself because you wouldn’t wish broken sleep on anyone!
