Finding the Transitions
| November 28, 2011 | Posted by Issa under Parenting |
Dylan is just now getting to the age where I have a lot of experience with kids. I’d only ever cared for a couple of kids younger than him, but the older he gets the more experience I have. There are some things that are different about older babies or that I want to do differently with an older baby that isn’t right to do with a younger baby, but I’ve never been through the transition before.
The one on my mind lately is naptimes. I prefer to use routines for mealtimes and naptimes. I’m not talking about a rigid schedule but just a routine flow to the day. It provides a lot of peace for children to be able to predict the flow of time and to be in a consistent rhythm. This involves getting up at a consistent time, having predictable broad activities during the day, and encouraging naptimes at consistent times, all based on the interests and natural rhythm of the child. Now, this isn’t right for tiny babies. For the first few months of life, it’s completely go-with-the-flow while the baby is just settling into ou own pattern. Then sometime later, say at 9 months old, the baby is definitely old enough to be in a routine. Somewhere in the middle there is the right time to start helping create the routine, but I’ve never had to find that transition time before. I’ve always either had babies who already had a set routine or I’ve come into a home where the baby was clearly old enough and was ready to get a routine.
Dylan has been having some fussiness in the evening (especially since the evenings are so dark now), going to bed at night at inconsistent times, and waking in the middle of the night some, all of which I think signals a need for more sleep consistency. I’m sure of it now, but I’ve spent the last month or so thinking, Now? What about now? Any day now… Now? It’s been funny to me to experience being so unsure about whether to start that yet or not. There have been other situations where I’m not confident about where the line is between tiny baby and older baby, and it’s fun to be experiencing this middle ground of baby-hood.
I have seen so many children respond so positively to sleep and meal routines that I don’t think I could be talked out of it. But still, I’m interested to hear your take on sleep routines. Does your kid have a bedtime? Set naptimes? What sets the pace for your days or lets you know when it’s time for sleep?
I have no idea when it all happened, it seems like ages ago. From what I remember, they both had routines, which they pretty much made up themselves. Sometime in there I noticed, “Oh, he usually sleeps at 10am, 3pm and 8pm. Okay, we’ll stick with that. That seems to work.”
Same as Sarah for me. Fin pretty much set his own schedule, and it’s stayed about the same for a few months now. He’s shortened the length of his naps and dropped a nap, but basically he goes down at the same times each day. Other than sleep, though, we have no routine. Seems to be working for now, so I see no need to change that.
Same as the others for me. My two made up their own routines and I just went with it. When the moved from 2 naps a day down to 1 a day they both dropped the afternoon one, I lost count of the amount of people who told me I should ‘change that’. They we both happy with it so why on earth would I change it? Mealtimes have always been at a pretty set time here but that is more for me than them I think. I think a ‘flow’ of the day routine works fabulously for children, let’s them know what to expect but isn’t to rigid. With Lauren I know I definitely tried to do to much and was to rigid and it resulted in me being far more stressed when things didn’t run like clockwork. I soon adopted a more natural flow and found it worked so much better.
I don’t remember when I started the sleep routine with MSC either, but it was the very, very best thing I ever did for her sleeping. We do the exact same thing every single night, and that has been fantastic. She’s a breeze to get to bed now. Of course, she’s 4 1/2. But I started a sleep routine with her when she was much younger, back when I was having a huge amount of trouble getting her to sleep. I wish I would have started even earlier. I think I didn’t really start the routine until she was 1 1/2 and that was way too late.
MSC has been on my mind as I think about what to do with Dylan. I remember how hard her sleeping (not sleeping!) was for you both for awhile there.