Crawling into parents’ bed
Children already able to fall asleep in their own beds sometimes develop the habit of waking up during the night, walking to their parents’ bedroom in a semi-conscious state, then crawling into bed with them to sleep there the rest of the night.
Problem or not?
Some parents do not view this habit as a problem. Others are disturbed by it, particularly if bed space is limited or if the child’s sleep is restless and disturbs others.
Help your child understand that being able to sleep through the night in his own bed means learning the skill of going back to sleep if he happens to wake up during the night.
The skill of falling asleep again
To overcome this problem, children need to develop the skill of learning to fall asleep again in their own bed if they happen to wake up during the night. Kids’Skills can help children develop this skill.
Motivate
Explain to the child why you want him to learn to fall asleep again in his own bed when he wakes up during the night. Tell him also why this important skill is one that all children learn. Let your child name the skill, recruit supporters and choose a power creature (such as a teddy bear) to be his helper. Discuss with your child how you’ll celebrate when he has learned the skill, and agree on the number of whole nights he needs to stay sleeping in their own bed so that this celebration can be held.
Practice
Help your child understand that being able to sleep through the night in his own bed means learning the skill of going back to sleep if he happens to wake up during the night. Children can learn this skill, and it’s also one they can practice before they go to sleep. Ask them to go to bed, to pretend that it’s night-time, and then imagine that they have woken up. Playing this game enables your child to experiment with different ways of falling asleep again in his own bed.
Try asking him: “What can you do to help yourself fall asleep again?” Common ideas include hugging a teddy bear and whispering something comforting to it. Your child could, for example, say “Oh darling, you woke up. Don’t worry. Close your eyes. I’ll stroke you gently like this so you can go back to sleep. There you go. In just a few moments you’ll be sound asleep again.”
Consider hanging a calendar next to his bed to which, together with your child, you add a mark (or some agreed token) to record occasion when the child succeeds in sleeping right through the night in their own bed. Try agreeing with him that once he has managed to collect a given number of whole-night-in-your-own-bed stickers, you’ll celebrate his achievement as a family.
Synopsis
For children to learn to sleep through the night in their own bed, the skill they need to learn is how to fall asleep again in their own bed if they happen to wake up.
Kids’Skills can help children learn this skill. They can practice by playing a game in which they pretend to wake up in their own bed during the night, then experiment with ways of soothing themselves back to sleep.
This article is owned by: Kids’Skills http://www.kidsskillsapp.com/
