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The Wrong Way to Put Your Child to Sleep

By now, I’m sure we all know that there are a lot of different “right ways” to do just about anything where parenting is concerned.

Techniques that some parents use to get their kids to eat their vegetables may work beautifully for them, but not so effectively for other moms. Ditto for preventing tantrums, taking baths, putting on PJs, and so on, and so on. It doesn’t mean that one’s the “right” way to do things and one’s not. They’re just two different, functional approaches, which happen to work.

But just because you’ve found a technique that works, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s “effective.”

Let me explain what I mean by that… Suppose your smoke detector goes off in the middle of the night. What do you do? You know the smoke detector is blaring at you in order to tell you that there’s a fire. (Or you should. If you don’t know that, a crying baby is the least of your problems.)

What you do NOT do, of course, is take the batteries out of the smoke detector.

But hey, why not? That solves the problem, right? No more blaring smoke detector. Back to bed with you!

This is what my physician used to call, “Ignoring the cause and treating the symptoms.”

The reason I bring this up is that a lot of parents I’ve talked to say that their big problem isn’t getting their child to go to sleep, it’s getting them to stay asleep.

“She’ll fall asleep almost as soon as she starts nursing,” is a common line, “but then 15 minutes later, she’s up again, and she howls until I come into the room and pick her up.”

It’s the single biggest mistake that most mothers make at bedtime, and I’m happy to tell you, it’s a relatively simple fix.

Get your baby into her crib before she falls asleep!

The reason for this is simple. Your baby has to learn how to fall asleep without you. That way, when she wakes up in the night, she’ll have the skills to go back to sleep on her own, leaving you undisturbed and happily snoozing through her wake-up.

It sounds simple, but so many parents can’t get past those first few nights of crying. The temptation is just too overwhelming when they know they’ve got that one little trick that will get their baby to go to sleep.

But that one little trick is the equivalent of pulling the batteries out of the smoke alarm. It may stop the agony for the moment, but you’ve still got a problem on your hands.

Sooner or later, you’re going to have to deal with the underlying issue, which is that your child can’t fall asleep without you.

Whether they’re being nursed, rocked, cuddled or sang to sleep, it’s entirely dependent on your presence in that room, and that means that every time she wakes up, you’re waking up.

Every. Single. Time.

And it’s not going to stop until you teach your child to fall asleep, on her own, in her crib. That means no relying on nursing, pacifiers, rocking motions, or hypnotic storybooks. (More information on sleep training your baby can be found here.)

So the bad news is, the little gimmicks only work for the short term, and they generally teach bad sleep habits that can be hard to break down the road.

The good news is, as soon as you’ve taught your baby this invaluable skill, she’s going to sleep much more soundly.

Baby Not Sleeping Through The Night?

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Yes, The Sleep Sense™ Program is a great Do-It-Yourself guide for solving your baby or toddler’s sleep problems!

But if you’re looking for full-service, one-on-one help, I’m here to help!

The Sleep Sense Philosophy

Cry-it-out? Coddle? Co-sleep? Attachment parenting? Ferberizing?
If you’re going to let me help you with something as precious as your child’s sleep, you probably want to know a little bit about who I am and exactly how I think...

Dana’s Sleep Blog

Straight talk about sleep, parenting,
babies, toddlers, relationships… and
just about anything else!
My blog is a great place to find opinions, advice, the occasional rant, and some great videos about sleep.

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