Parenting Right From the Start by Vanessa Lapointe

Author:Vanessa Lapointe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2019-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

6

SLEEPING

MY TWO BOYS, now aged twelve and fifteen years, cannot seem to get enough sleep. They’ve become expert sleepers, and would sleep a solid twelve hours a night plus a nap after school if it were possible. And yet, neither one of them slept through the night without waking at least once until they were eighteen months old. As small babes, both of them would wake several times a night. As toddlers, they liked to start the day between five and six in the morning. One of them slept with me from the age of three until he was six. During the early years of my boys’ lives, I received much advice about their sleep patterns, most of which was unsolicited. The overriding beliefs seemed to be that how and when my babes were sleeping needed to be sorted out, their schedules weren’t “normal,” and that this could spell disaster for healthy sleep habits down the road. I fell prey to some of this advice briefly. Most of it I ignored, choosing instead to follow my intuition, and today, here we are: two expert sleepers in the house.

Even though my boys are now very adept at the art of sleeping, it wasn’t really quite as simple as just ignoring all of that unsolicited advice and doing it my own way. In fact, the path through those early days was not simple or easy at all. When my first son was born, I had no idea what it would mean to sleep for no more than two consecutive hours—I was exhausted. Finally, at the age of six weeks, he slept through his first four-hour stretch. I felt like a new woman thanks to those two wonderful, extra hours of sleep. Not long afterwards, though, the whispers began: “He’s eight weeks old and he hasn’t slept through the night yet?” “You know you will have to teach him how to sleep sooner or later.” “He’s going to have to figure out how to do a lot of things he doesn’t like, so you might as well get started on sleep training now.” Sound familiar?

I am often asked what I think about sleep training. Isn’t it better for babies to sleep so parents can be their best selves? Here is my bold answer—one that I offer to you based on the science of child development: it depends. It depends on your baby, on you and your temperament, and on extenuating circumstances. It is only when a parent understands how a baby’s brain functions and grows that they are able to make sense of the individual and complex circumstances that influence how a baby sleeps, and figure out how to help that process in a healthy way.

Sleep Training is for Adults

You’ve probably figured out that the traditional version of sleep training has no place in science-based, heart-centred parenting. Any parenting strategy that involves denying your child access to you is, in my view, a non-starter (see pages 30 and 222). Strategies that force the

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