Usually the nights get better as the baby gets older. But if you were to ask my mother, that was not the case with me. She told me that at six or seven months old, when I learned to crawl, I would spend the evenings playing with my toys on the floor, while my poor exhausted parents dimmed the bedroom lights in efforts to get me to sleep. All that was in vain as the dark didn't bother me at all and I continued to play into the night.
Fast forward some twenty something years, and R came into our lives. I wouldn't say R wasn't a good sleeper, but he did go to bed later than most other babies I knew. And so with his case of SPD came some sleep issues.
Lindsey Biel and Nancy Peske, authors of Raising a Sensory Smart Child are also the ones behind SensorySmarts.com, which contains a lot of helpful information on how to deal with kids with their various sensory needs. They have a page dedicated to helping SPD kids settle for the night and get them ready for bed.
What really helped for R was the bedtime routine. What we usually did was that we had him in our room by 8 pm. This is the time we would bond and play with him. We'd also spend a short story time as my husband reads to him a short Bible story from his toddler's Bible.
He'll then have a bottle of milk while playing with either the iPad (Candy Crush Saga, Diamond Digger Saga), or watching us play the Wii (currently it's Wii Sports Resort, at times it's Wii Music). Keep in mind though that it's not really recommended to leave the child alone with the gadget, so what we do is that we talk to him about what we see on screen.
I'll brush his teeth, then we'll do OPT. After several bathroom breaks, I'll dress him for bed, put him in his sleepsack. This is really helpful because we've been using them for so long, that he's associated them with sleep time. We'll say a prayer together and then turn out the lights. This is usually between 10 to 11 pm. I'll then nurse him and he'll drift off to sleep.
 |
| Halo and Grobag Sleepsacks |
I don't know how it is now, but I do remember being made to take naps at age 7. The reasoning is always as such- if you don't nap, you won't grow tall. But I hated naps due to the fact that if I ended up sleeping in the afternoon, it was hard to fall asleep at night.
So when do kids drop their afternoon naps?
BabyCenter has an article that says half of kids drop their naps between the ages of 3 and 4, while 25% do so by age 2, and the last quarter by around 5 or 6.
So what to do during this transition?
Basically don't force the nap. If your child doesn't wish to sleep, tell him/her that it's quiet time, lie down on the bed, and give him/her some toys to play quietly with. That way, in case he/she suddenly gets sleepy, all he/she needs to do is put the toy down and drift away to sleep.
If your child missed out on the nap, bump bedtime up to an earlier time, lest you want a cranky kid on your hands. In case of SPD, make sure you're able to wind your child down. Some parents, like myself, use a wind down routine. Others use white noise machines.
So that's what I've been trying to do. R has been fighting his nap for about a week, but there will be days that he would really want a nap.
Point is find out what works to help your child realize it's bedtime. As long as their getting their recommended hours of sleep, not cranky and appear well-rested, they should be fine. Observe your child and follow his or her sleep cues.
If you'd want to know more, you can read the following articles:
What To Expect: Toddler Naps
Baby Sleep 101: Taming Your Toddler’s Sleep Part 1; The Big Kid Bed Transition
Baby Sleep 101: Taming Your Toddler’s Sleep Part 2; The 1-0 Nap Transition
ADDENDUM (05/22/2015): And just a few days after I posted this, R goes back to his usual sleep routine. Looks like it was just a growth spurt and not a nap transition. Oh well.
No comments:
Post a Comment