Why change your sleep behavior?
This has to say sleep association
Special statement: self-asleep is not one of the criteria to measure the quality of sleep, sleep continuity is the standard to measure sleep quality. Not all children will have sleep problems because of sleep associations, and not every baby needs to adjust the way they fall asleep.
What is sleep association with the sleep environment
- Sleep association, also known as the sleep environment, is a person or behavior related to falling asleep.
In fact, we can understand it more simply as "need to hold sleep, milk sleep, need adults to sleep with". From our adult point of view, it is a situation like "recognizing the bed, recognizing the quilt".
The sleeping environment does not refer to how the room is comfortably arranged, but the people, pillows, and quilts are all part of the sleeping environment.
- The environment at the time of falling asleep is inconsistent with the environment at the time of waking (partial awakening).
What problems will sleep association cause, the environment when falling asleep is not the same as when waking up, and the change of the environment is easy for children to wake up.
This is actually the innate self-protection mechanism of people or animals, and newborn babies will check whether the environment is the same when they are partially awakened, and confirm whether they are safe. So when you fall asleep, you are holding or holding milk, and when you wake up, it is not such a situation, and it is easy to wake up.
This is the same as when drunk to the break, this many people should have experienced, drunk, wake up if it is in their own room or home, it is more likely to continue to sleep, but if you wake up in a strange environment, it is more likely to be scared to be completely awake.
Adults will also experience a short awakening at night, but this time is very short, and adults have a better sleep ability and can then fall asleep, so many people do not feel this night awakening.
- Long-term sleepiness dependence, resulting in partial awakening when it is necessary (thought) to be coaxed to fall asleep again.
Then if you have developed a habit and have a high degree of dependence on sleep, you will wake up and need to find the same way to fall asleep.
I think this can also be said that children think that sleep is like this, especially for waking up at night very often, you must pick up or sleep with milk.
In fact, partial awakening is not always so awake, especially in the first half of the night, if the frequency of waking up at night is once an hour, or more, it may be that the child has a wrong association with sleep.
Pillow experimentation with security
Farber did a "pillow experiment" in which the pillow was removed after a group of people fell asleep, and 90 percent of people would interrupt their sleep and wake up because the pillow disappeared, and only 10 percent did not wake up. This is the importance of sleep associations for sleep continuity.
"Falling asleep is different from the environment when he wakes up makes him insecure. If the sleeping environment can remain the same, the vast majority of children can sleep soundly, and they do not have to be vigilant to repeatedly check whether the environment has changed" - Faber Sleep Code.
Sleep associations are at the heart of why you should change your falling asleep behavior, because falling asleep is different from waking up, and such a change makes the child insecure and thus gets up.
Therefore, a very realistic thing is that sleeping with sleeping milk may not make the child more secure, otherwise there will be no situation of "can't put it down, wake up on the ground, wake up short and cry".
Repeat this situation again, the baby will begin to be vigilant, and further appear to wake up crying just after putting down the action.
On the contrary, the baby who sleeps in bed can more easily achieve a longer continuous sleep.
The level of appeasement
The intensity of reassurance is from high to low:
Milk sleep and hug shake (milk does not sleep, hug does not sleep)
Milk sleep
Sleep in your arms
Pat to sleep
Sleep with companionship
Fall asleep on your own
The higher the level of reassurance, the greater the degree of reassurance, the easier it is to let the baby fall asleep, but it is relatively more likely to rely on, or cause sleep problems caused by sleep associations.
Note that the way of reassurance is only the intensity of the difference, there is no good or bad, as long as it does not cause sleep problems.
However, if there is a highest level of comforting needs, milk sleep and hug away shaking, that is, milk may not sleep, hugging or not sleeping, it is difficult to sleep, then it is necessary to pay attention.
Recently, I have seen many institutions copying copywriting, saying that it is better not to hold asleep, and it would be better to coax the baby to sleep by squatting or holding away and shaking, and this really does not try.
The soothing force of squats and hugs and shakes is very high, either you can't stop later, cry when you stop, or you will squat to death!
Why fall asleep on your own
Therefore, in order to solve the problem of sleep association, it is undeniable that the best way is to let the child fall asleep on his own.
The most restrictive way to fall asleep spontaneously is that the baby falls asleep on his own in bed without accompanying him.
But this is not necessarily the most appropriate, such as sleeping in the same room or in the same bed, which can actually be said to be superfluous.
Look back at the above mentioned, sleep environment, let the baby fall asleep, adults then return to the room to sleep, adults are still a part of the sleeping environment, so this situation is equivalent to adults accompanying to sleep.
Therefore, falling asleep independently can also be accompanied by adults in the same bed, lying together, without comfort or a small amount of comfort.
The person who divides the bed can be accompanied by an adult, without comfort or a small amount of comfort, and falls asleep in the crib.
If this can be achieved, then the continuity of sleep can generally be well improved.
Completely spontaneous falling asleep does not mean that the baby will not wake up at all, as said before, there are too many reasons that can cause the baby to wake up, not just sleep associations.
To understand how to fall asleep on your own and how to do it, you must first understand the basic baby's sleep mechanism, and what is it? See the next article!
Joe's dad's broken thoughts
Sometimes I actually envy babies who can still sleep well, it's really too easy. It's time for bed, just feed!