with child's sleep: no cry, some cry, or let cry?

It's a constant issue in conversations with fellow parents when it comes to their children's sleep; do we never if at all possible let the child cry, or just some, or do we have the child cry it all out and be done with it. What do you think? What works best for you, in your experience? Should the child be trained to self-sooth so as to fall asleep on his/her own? Or should we expect to be there for the child's sleep, even if it implies driving for-seemingly-ever to help the child nap. And is it ok to have your child collapse at night in your arms while you're watching a movie, because frankly, you're not feeling much like putting the child down for bed (especially if it implies lying there for a good hour or so).

I've set up a quick poll (see linked to the right) and would love to hear your opinion. And if you have the time, I would really appreciate receiving your comments in response to my questions for my Sleep Question book, which I will include below.

Since becoming a mom two and a half years ago, sleep has been a constant thing on my mind. How do I get my baby to sleep? And then to stay asleep? How do I find enough sleep? How do I handle this with my husband? And so on and on. I launched my current book project, The Sleep Question,  a collection of interviews with fellow moms (and some dads) of young children about their experiences with sleep a year ago or so, and I'm still looking for more stories. I've conducted in-person interviews with people I could reach, but would love to hear from more people, near and far away.

Feel free to respond either in the comment section to this post or via email to agsabo[at]gmail.com. I'll change all names in the final manuscript, but feel free to leave out or change names yourself in what you submit to me.

 

THE SLEEP QUESTIONS:

• Please state the ages of yourself and your child(ren) and say a little bit about yourself (especially as you might find relevant to a discussion about the way you sleep/nighttime parent)
  
  
• Did you have any preconceived ideas about the child’s sleep (sleep arrangement) prior to birth?
  [Had you thought about how you thought things would be, had you planned where the child would sleep?]
  
  
• How did it go? What did you do? Naps, nights (where and when)
• Then? Now? What have characterized different stages? Nap and bedtime routines?
• Did you ever feel like a human pillow for your child’s naps? If so, under what circumstances, how often, for how long?
• Have you nursed your child, if so, how has that affected your sleep arrangements? If you have not nursed, how do you think that has affected your sleep situation?

• Has your child ever struggled to sleep (falling asleep, staying asleep)? If so, when and for what reasons, do you think? How long did the difficult stretch last, what helped you and the child get through and over it?

• What different strategies did you try?

• How has your own sleep been (from before pregnancy, through it, till now)?

• How has the relationship to your spouse or co-parent been? Do you feel you can share the responsibility of sleep parenting?

• How have you or how do you intend to balance work/staying at home/child care and how do you think that has or will affect your sleep parenting (has or will someone else be putting your child down for naps, night)?

• What books have you read about this topic, and have they been helpful or not?

• If you have two children or more, how have experiences with your first child affected the sleep arrangements with your other child(ren)?
• Did you change anything?
• Do the children seem to relate differently to sleep? If so, how?
  
• What would you do differently (or the same) if you have another child?

• What do you like, dislike about your sleep arrangements?
  
  
• Do you remember the first time you paused to think about your child’s sleep?

'tis the season, of terrific and terrible

What started out so precious and sweet, with me drafting posts in my head about how wonderful the holiday season is with a toddler who gets so blissfully excited about traditions like pumpkins and going trick or treat, soured from fun to busy and then stressful as the season evolved. Halloween truly was a riot. And Thanksgiving still allowed us to focus on a few precious things, like it's about being thankful, coming together, different people sharing and learning from one another, breaking bread together. But just as we'd finished preparing for, hosting, cleaning up and recovering from a week-long Thanksgiving holiday, things spun out of control into this crazy daze of getting ready for Christmas.

With Christmas, there's just so much more to teach and include her in, carols to be learned, traditions to be told, decorations to put up, cards to send out. And then the cleaning, baking, and ah, the shopping. With the ensuing gift wrapping, with the paper cutting, folding, taping, and labeling, all with a little toddler who seems intent to undo, I mean help, with each step of the process.

It's really really hard to stay calm in those situations. And there has been a surge of moments lately where I don't feel particularly proud about myself.

It doesn't help that the academic in me has taken on the gargantuan task of researching the Norwegian history of Christmas, or yuletide, that is, in order to teach my child AND our friends the right stuff. We're hosting again, this time to some friends of ours with Norwegian ancestors. They're excited to take part in a traditional Norwegian yule celebration, and not only do I want to do with them what I grew up doing in Norway; I want to trace each tradition's history to its roots and provide a rich commentary to the various ornaments and decorations and things we eat and do as the evening with our friends progresses. Seriously, I've started taking lecture notes, using Keeping Christmas, a researched account of the history of yuletide in Norway and among Norwegian-Americans in the US, as my primary source. Sounds like a fun Christmas eve to you yet?

I hope it will be, though I've come to see I need to slow down. I can't get as much done as I set out to do with Lilly in tow. And I won't be able to teach her or my friends all I'd like for them to learn. I mean, we'll be lucky enough if we get some sort of meaningful exchange of words in between the toddler care and play. And that's ok, at least for the kids it will be. Just bringing up the tree we're going to dance and sing around gets her tickled silly. And even if we bake just one kind (and not the traditional seven kinds) of Christmas cookies, and it's Hershey kiss cookies and not something traditional Norwegian because I think it'll be easier, and she'll have fun putting the kisses on the cookies (while eating some as well), she'll be giddy with that too. And if we don't get to move on from "Jingle bells" and "Jul med din glede" ("Yule with your joy"), she'll probably be happier with those two than if I keep sitting down with her going through my selection of seven carols to sing around the tree on Christmas eve, after dinner and desserts and before we open gifts.

Yet it's hard for me to let go. With her recently intensified insistence she "do it myself!" it feels like we're back to doing one thing a day, whereas it seemed for a period that we could do more. I got kind of fond of being able to get more things done in a day and I'm resisting the change of entering a new stage. I find myself still pushing for more while instead I need to remind myself to stay present and calm and just do less.

Some things are worth pushing through for though. I'm glad we went to see the Holidazzle parade in the cities, despite the wait and crowds. Hearing her "wows!" and seeing the expression in her face was just so precious. And I'm grateful we made it to the last ten minutes of the Norwegian Christmas service in town, which got her super excited about Christmas trees and decorating the tree with Norwegian flags and heart shaped baskets. And I am glad that we braved it to the winter walk downtown, despite the freezing cold; watching the horses with their sleighs to the sound of people caroling was even more fun than seeing the historic train models set up indoors at the city library (which was pretty cool too).

 

the rock mamas: doing it together

"I don't think I have what it takes," posted a fellow (and at the moment single) parent on facebook.

"You DO have what it takes, of course you do!" was one of the immediate comments.

"But they say it takes a village. I have something more like a hut, perhaps a yurt," was the response.

 (My village, in the Arb)

I am all for the village thing when it comes to parenting. I've relied on play dates for my sanity long before Lilly was able to play with other children. She was about 6 weeks when we left for Norway to spend a year in my native country. I immediately signed up for a new mom and baby group (barselgruppe) that met on a weekly basis that first year. And then we had baby swimming one day, mommy and baby aerobics on another day, always a coffee date some day and Friday was open.

After we returned to the US when Lilly was one, we found new routines and things to do with fellow parents. Age-appropriate read, sing and play classes at the library were a lifesaver that first year, in addition to the various play dates. Now we've branched out, incorporating "school" (ECFE) one morning, yoga another (a friend and I child swap for yoga and then often end up vising over coffee till lunch), and, perhaps my favorite, an outdoors group play date in our amazing local Arboretum. It started out on a casual basis this summer and then firmed up as a "thing" we'd all commit to doing this fall.

We call ourselves The Rock Mamas. It was the rock memorial garden where we first used to meet for play and picnic that inspired the name, but honestly, I think we all feel like we rock while we're there.  Because it doesn't get much better when you're hanging out with kids. The kids are happy playing, running around in the fields, up and down little hills, climbing and jumping off rocks, snacking on picnic treats. And the moms get to talk, often in complete sentences, which, as all parents of young children know, can be a challenge during play dates.

We'd vowed to stick to our weekly outdoors playdate throughout the thick of winter. So we felt pretty good about ourselves when we got together in the Arb this week, all bundled up after the first snow fell this past weekend. (We did make an exception the week of the extremely cold and blustery storm, described as "stronger than most hurricanes, more intense than the Armistice Day Blizzard, the 1991 Halloween Superstorm, and even the wild storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in 1975." That week we headed over to "Wiggles & Giggles" at the YMCA instead.)

what's your asset as a parent?

asked the "teacher" at ECFE this week. Because I cringe at her lecturing approach to our (supposed) group discussion, I froze in my chair. But some good things came about from this question. Several moms expressed what they see as their assets and it's made me think more about what my assets are too.

I was talking with a friend during a play-date this morning, and I told her I see her asset as how calm she always comes about. She laughed, saying she didn't actually feel much like that before telling me about this morning's disaster at their house. Then she told me that her response to the question had she been "called on" (she's in my "class"), would have been her slapstick sense of humor (her favorite movies are slapstick comedies). So when things get really upside-down around their house, she can sometimes just laugh it off.

Then she asked me what I would have answered. But I still hadn't made up my mind. Some of the things shared by the other moms definitely resonated with me (I too love reading and singing to my child, and share my curiosity about the world with her). And I too can be flexible with my child, seize the teachable moment, and maintain a consistent approach in my parenting.

But what else? What new fun or intriguing interesting stuff could I put on the table? That I love to dance and will often turn on the radio for impromptu dance parties when things get either too much or too saggy? That I'm devoted to my nurturing care for her as I continue to attachment parent, nursing on demand, sharing my bed with her, laying down with her for nap and bedtime till she's asleep, for often more than an hour, including her in all our meals that I cook myself from (mostly) scratch, having never passed her off with baby food or offered her anything else than what's on the table, making a real effort to keep mealtimes as calm and positive?

What I told my friend is that I feel good about how I (unlike my mom) really focus on staying calm for my child, providing her with a sense of safety and security in her home environment (which I craved as a child). My friend agreed to this, but then added that what she really thinks stand out about me is my thoughtfulness; how I'll read all these things about parenting and child development that she finds really interesting when I share them with her.

Wow! Don't you just love a friend like that. What an amazing compliment. I just had to give her an immediate big hug. I guess that's just the academic in me, I responded. Not just as in that's my former career, but as in that's what I've always loved to do. To look into things I'm curious to find out more about, reading, researching, and then passing on what I find out, through talking, writing, finding out more in turn as those I share with respond with their thoughts and experiences.

So, though there was lots about last ECFE "class" that bothered me, something really good came out of it. As our "teacher" said, we talk a lot at ECFE about the joys of who our children are and what they do, but not much about what we like and are proud about when it comes to ourselves (don't you just hate it when somebody who turns you off is right about something?). It's a good exercise, to take inventory of your skills and assets that way.

How about you, what do you see as your assets as a parent? Which ones are you particularly fond of?