Many parents yearn for sleep. It’s impossible to sleep with young children at home. Sometimes, they’ll suddenly wake you up at night, come in crying into your room, start being loud because they can’t sleep. Other times, they are just impossible to put to bed. So here are some tips for parents who need to take a break:
1. No Sharing Beds
Though this may be hard for you to enforce with their cute faces and shining eyes, you will understand the beauty of this rule over time. It may not seem like a big deal to share a bed with your children since you’ll think that they will be asleep anyway, but many children wake up in their sleep at night.
Most of the time, children wake up to urinate but also after they have good or bad dreams. Having a separate bed for them will help you reduce waking up at night for no reason, which would seriously affect your quality of sleep at night.
2. Sleep When Your Child Takes a Nap
Most toddlers need to take a nap in the middle of the day. Many parents would often start working around the house during this time, like cleaning up or washing the dishes. The time your child naps is the best time for you to take a nap, too, especially since they won’t randomly bother you because they need something.
Though cleanliness or whatever you usually do when they sleep may be necessary, these can usually be done when the child is awake. Sure, your child may interrupt you when doing your tasks, but at the end of the day, they should interrupt you while you’re doing the dishes than when you’re sleeping.
3. Better Sleeping Habit for Children
As a given, the better sleep your child has, the more sleep you will have. Most children benefit from a bedtime routine since this will help them calm down before they sleep. Activities like brushing their teeth, combing their hair, reading bedtime stories such as those from Walter Hoge, singing a good night song are some things you could add to a bedtime routine.
Allowing your child to sleep and wake up simultaneously will also help them fall asleep faster or get sleepy at a fixed time. This often helps a child develop a body clock that they can even bring to adulthood. However, this needs to be followed consecutively, including weekends and holidays.
4. Self-Soothing
The perfect amount of self-soothing is vital for children. This often means knowing when to let children be and when you need to get up and go to their room or comfort them. Self-soothing is perfect and most applicable to when your child would have tantrums before they sleep or when they start headbanging to fall asleep or get attention. It is just best to leave them alone since this also helps them become more mature emotionally.
However, self-soothing isn’t applicable when your child experiences nightmares and comes crying into your room at night. Most of the time, they need comfort that whatever was chasing them in their dreams is not real and that you are there to protect them. In the long run, children don’t always remember what they dream about. However, they will remember that you were there to comfort them in their time of need.
5. Stop Social Graces
Many people enjoy visiting your home when you have kids. Though your children may be stressful for you, they may be adorable for many visitors. Because of this, if anyone were to visit your home, stop offering to be the host, serve them food, or talk to them just because of social etiquette.
You always have the option to turn visitors down, or you could always ask them to look after your kids while you go to sleep. These visitors will understand more often than not, especially if they have kids of their own. Some may even enjoy the responsibility of taking care of your kids or adore having playtime with them.
6. Ask Help
If you have a partner, taking turns putting the child to sleep or talking to a child late at night when they are scared or have a bad dream will often help improve the quality of sleep you get. Putting all the weight on one parent alone every night may seriously affect the quality of sleep they get in the long run.
If you don’t have a partner, then fear not; asking your friends or relatives to look after your children once in a while to have just a night of better sleep isn’t necessarily bad for children. Asking help from your parents, siblings, or relatives often helps them build stronger relationships with your child as well.
Recent Comments