Another sleep pattern query

xzanti

Would very much appreciate some advice on this.

My 1 year old wakes up every day at 6am, which I don't really mind as I generally go to bed early myself. However my Mother and a few other people have been telling me that he should be sleeping til much later than this, specially during the dark Winter months.

His routine goes as follows:

6am - wake up, have about 3 oz of bottle.. will not go back to sleep so I put him in his playpen til around 8am.

8am - Breakfast and full bottle

8.30am - Back to bed til around 10

11.30 - snack

12 - Go out shopping/visiting/walking (I generally make sure we both get out of the house every day, if even just for a short walk)

3pm - Dinner

6pm - Tea

6.30/7pm - Bed.

I don't want to keep him up any later than the above as I value my 'Me time' in the evening more than I would in the morning.

So, is there any way that I can get him to still go to bed at that time, but sleep til later in the morning?

He will not nap at home.. he will only sleep during the day if we're out in the car.

Thanks

annamcmahon

Hi. You could be describing my daughter 11months. For the last 2 months now at least 5 mornings a week she wakes at 6, of course not the mornings I actually need to get up early. We've just put a single bed in her room because of night waking problems and have found that she will sleep for another hour on my husband's chest.

Before putting the bed in he would get up with her since he was leaving for work at 7 anyway. He'd bring her up to me as he was leaving.

Best thing was to go with it. Once she had slept a certain length of time she was awake and therefore time to get up. She goes to bed around the same time as your son and wouldn't stay up later. She's usually starting to fall asleep by that stage.

Sorry my long reply isn't offering any help other than he's not the only one doing it.

xzanti

God, I wish he'd even fall asleep on one of our chests.. he's very animated and since he was very little he's wanted his own personal space.. He won't even sit on our laps watching tele.. So taking him back to bed with me for an hour is a big no no.. he'd be trying to climb over me

cbyrd

He's having a 12 hour sleep at night and a 1.5 hour sleep during the day..so unless you bring bedtime up to 7,30 8pm i don't see how he would change.. he's got a great routine and it's very hard getting up in the dark with small ones when your knackered, but 14 hours sleep per day is his thing obviously .. my 23 month old goes 8pm to 8am . . some days he doesn't nap others for anything from 20 mins to 2 hours depending on how demanding the day has been never allowed to sleep after 4 in the afternoon.

I'm with you on the me time in the evenings.. i've 4 the youngest is 8 weeks and the last goes to bed at 8.30 (12 year old) If its not a problem for you his waking early then i wouldn't change it.. disruption to routine can cause more trouble than it's worth.. Sometimes people should butt out

Hannibal Smith

I don't mean to cause offence, but I hate when family and friends start sticking their oar in. If you're happy and baby's happy, why are they trying to cause you worry where there is none?

Our son sleeps from 7 to 7...always has done. To be fair it took a bit of getting used to and some days you'd just wish he'd sleep a bit later, but you can't have everything. I remember everyone used to say to me 'oooh poor you my son/daughter sleeps till 9am... would you not put him to bed later and he'll sleep later for you'.

It took me a while to realise that whilst these people may have the perfect child who sleeps to a decent hour in the morning, the child wasn't going to bed till 9 or 10 at night! Whereas my husband and I had our full evenings together, but also had a full day with the boy.

Keep going they way you're going, I don't see a problem with it at all!

How Strange

My son is 10 months and pretty much has the same sleep pattern. He goes to bed at 7 and during the week he's up at 6-6.15 and if we're very lucky at the weekends he'll sleep until 7.30. I just go to bed early every night. I also prefer our baby free evenings and if he sleeps through to 5am I feel like I've won the lotto.

I agree that its annoying when people say they should be doing x, y or z.

annamcmahon

LOL be careful what you wish for Xzanti. There's nights when she spends up to 6 hours asleep on his chest and until the weekend there wasn't a second bed in her room. God only knows how many hours he's spent walking up and down her room in the last 3 months.

LegacyUser

xzanti wrote: »

Would very much appreciate some advice on this.

My 1 year old wakes up every day at 6am, which I don't really mind as I generally go to bed early myself. However my Mother and a few other people have been telling me that he should be sleeping til much later than this, specially during the dark Winter months.

His routine goes as follows:

6am - wake up, have about 3 oz of bottle.. will not go back to sleep so I put him in his playpen til around 8am.

8am - Breakfast and full bottle

8.30am - Back to bed til around 10

11.30 - snack

12 - Go out shopping/visiting/walking (I generally make sure we both get out of the house every day, if even just for a short walk)

3pm - Dinner

6pm - Tea

6.30/7pm - Bed.

I don't want to keep him up any later than the above as I value my 'Me time' in the evening more than I would in the morning.

So, is there any way that I can get him to still go to bed at that time, but sleep til later in the morning?

He will not nap at home.. he will only sleep during the day if we're out in the car.

Thanks

Tell them to mind their own business.

Sounds like you are doing a fantastic job.

My mother in law was a mother in the 1970s. She got her husband to make the hole in the bottle bigger so that the baby (my wife's sister) could get a rusk through as well as the formula milk, to make her "sleep through the night"

This sister-in-law is now grossly overweight with an obese son too. My mother-in-law still recommends this method of hers.

I don't listen to ANY of her advice.

angelfire9

Xzanti he's not one yet ! :D:D

As for your routine... you lucky lucky sod! I wish Aisling would sleep that long at night not a hope... the only thing you can do is put him down later so that he sleeps later but that'll cut into your evening time??

I don't know.... wanna swap babies? :cool:

Morag

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201112/dangers-crying-it-out

Dangers of “Crying It Out”
Damaging children and their relationships for the longterm.
Published on December 11, 2011 by Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D. in Moral Landscapes

Letting babies "cry it out" is an idea that has been around since at least the 1880s when the field of medicine was in a hullaballoo about germs and transmitting infection and so took to the notion that babies should rarely be touched (see Blum, 2002, for a great review of this time period and attitudes towards childrearing).

In the 20th century, behaviorist John Watson, interested in making psychology a hard science, took up the crusade against affection as president of the American Psychological Association. He applied the mechanistic paradigm of behaviorism to child rearing, warning about the dangers of too much mother love. The 20th century was the time when "men of science" were assumed to know better than mothers, grandmothers and families about how to raise a child. Too much kindness to a baby would result in a whiney, dependent, failed human being. Funny how "the experts" got away with this with no evidence to back it up! Instead there is evidence all around (then and now) showing the opposite to be true!
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A government pamphlet from the time recommended that "mothering meant holding the baby quietly, in tranquility-inducing positions" and that "the mother should stop immediately if her arms feel tired" because "the baby is never to inconvenience the adult." Babies older than six months "should be taught to sit silently in the crib; otherwise, he might need to be constantly watched and entertained by the mother, a serious waste of time." (See Blum, 2002.)

Don't these attitudes sound familiar? A parent reported to me recently that he was encouraged to let his baby cry herself to sleep so he "could get his life back."

With neuroscience, we can confirm what our ancestors took for granted---that letting babies cry is a practice that damages children and their relational capacities in many ways for the long term. We know now that letting babies cry is a good way to make a less intelligent, less healthy but more anxious, uncooperative and alienated person who can pass the same or worse traits on to the next generation.

The discredited behaviorist view sees the baby as an interloper into the life of the parents, an intrusion who must be controlled by various means so the adults can live their lives without too much bother. Perhaps we can excuse this attitude and ignorance because at the time, extended families were being broken up and new parents had to figure out how to deal with babies on their own, an unnatural condition for humanity--we have heretofore raised children in extended families. The parents always shared care with multiple adult relatives.

According to a behaviorist view completely ignorant of human development, the child 'has to be taught to be independent.' We can confirm now that forcing "independence" on a baby leads to greater dependence. Instead, giving babies what they need leads to greater independence later. In anthropological reports of small-band hunter-gatherers, parents took care of every need of babies and young children. Toddlers felt confident enough (and so did their parents) to walk into the bush on their own (see Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods, edited by Hewlett & Lamb, 2005).

Ignorant behaviorists then and now encourage parents to condition the baby to expect needs NOT to be met on demand, whether feeding or comforting. It's assumed that the adults should 'be in charge' of the relationship. Certainly this might foster a child that doesn't ask for as much help and attention (withdrawing into depression and going into stasis or even wasting away) but it is more likely to foster a whiney, unhappy, aggressive and/or demanding child, one who has learned that one must scream to get needs met. A deep sense of insecurity is likely to stay with them the rest of life.

The fact is that caregivers who habitually respond to the needs of the baby before the baby gets distressed, preventing crying, are more likely to have children who are independent than the opposite (Stein & Newcomb, 1994). Soothing care is best from the outset. Once patterns get established, it's much harder to change them.

We should understand the mother and child as a mutually responsive dyad. They are a symbiotic unit that make each other healthier and happier in mutual responsiveness. This expands to other caregivers too.

One strangely popular notion still around today is to let babies 'cry it out' when they are left alone, isolated in cribs or other devices. This comes from a misunderstanding of child and brain development.

Babies grow from being held. Their bodies get dysregulated when they are physically separated from caregivers. (See here for more.)

Babies indicate a need through gesture and eventually, if necessary, through crying. Just as adults reach for liquid when thirsty, children search for what they need in the moment. Just as adults become calm once the need is met, so do babies.

There are many longterm effects of undercare or need-neglect in babies (Dawson et al., 2000).

What does 'crying it out' actually do to the baby and to the dyad?

Neurons die. When the baby is stressed, the toxic hormone cortisol is released. It's a neuron killer. A full-term baby (40-42 weeks), with only 25% of its brain developed, is undergoing rapid brain growth. The brain grows on average three times as large by the end of the first year (and head size growth in the first year is a sign of intelligence, Gale et al., 2006). Who knows what neurons are not being connected or being wiped out during times of extreme stress? What deficits might show up years later from such regular distressful experience?

Disordered stress reactivity can be established as a pattern for life not only in the brain with the stress response system, but also in the body through the vagus nerve, a nerve that affects functioning in multiple systems (e.g., digestion). For example, prolonged distress in early life, resulting in a poorly functioning vagus nerve, is related disorders as irritable bowel syndrome (Stam et al, 1997). See more about how early stress is toxic for lifelong health from the recent Harvard report, The Foundations of Lifelong Health are Built in Early Childhood).

Self-regulation is undermined. The baby is absolutely dependent on caregivers for learning how to self-regulate. Responsive care---meeting the baby's needs before he gets distressed---tunes the body and brain up for calmness. When a baby gets scared and a parent holds and comforts him, the baby builds expectations for soothing, which get integrated into the ability to self comfort. Babies don't self-comfort in isolation. If they are left to cry alone, they learn to shut down in face of extensive distress-stop growing, stop feeling, stop trusting (Henry & Wang, 1998).

Trust is undermined. As Erik Erikson pointed out, the first year of life is a sensitive period for establishing a sense of trust in the world, the world of caregiver and the world of self. When a baby's needs are met without distress, the child learns that the world is a trustworthy place, that relationships are supportive, and that the self is a positive entity that can get its needs met. When a baby's needs are dismissed or ignored, the child develops a sense of mistrust of relationships and the world. And self-confidence is undermined. The child may spend a lifetime trying to fill the inner emptiness.

Caregiver sensitivity may be harmed. A caregiver who learns to ignore baby crying, will likely learn to ignore the more subtle signaling of the child's needs. Second-guessing intuitions to stop child distress, the adult practices and increasingly learns to "harden the heart." The reciprocity between caregiver and babu is broken by the adult, but cannot be repaired by the young child. The baby is helpless.

xzanti

Thanks for the reply Sharrow but I don't see what 'Crying it out' has to do with this thread?

Did you misplace that piece?

qwertytlk

Ughh, other people and their 'advice'. Iv had it myself and ended u wondering was i doing things wrong etc. Now i just nod my head, smile and agree;)
Your routine seems perfect to me.. And more importantly it suits your and your family. If he was going to bed at 8 or 9 he would probably wake at 8 or 9, but as you said your an early riser anyway so it doesn't bother you. Plus you enjoy your bit of peace and quite in the evenings so id say leave things the way they are if you and your baby are happy with it!
Also jus because the people who told you the baby should sleep later in the dark winter mornings, doesn't mean its true as every baby an every family are different. At the moment my little guy will go asleep around 9 or 10pm (sometimes later) and wake at 10 or 11 in the Morning. I would prefer your type of routine but i feel at 6 months he is still a small baby and if he doesn't change his sleeping habits himself naturally(as he previously did when he was a bit younger) then in the next few months i will try keep him awake, maybe miss a nap or something so that he will be tired earlier etc. But i just feel at 6 months he is too young to try and 'keep awake' etc now... But of course The inlaws have plenty to say about this, and everything else lol!
Good luck and keep up the good work cos it sounds like you have it all sorted out and working well:)

Morag

sorry I had a few tabs open and I guess I pasted this into the wrong thread.