As babies, both my children fought sleep, getting so overtired and fractious that they would hardly take milk at feeds. Why do some babies insist on trying to stay awake?
鈥� After raising three children and consulting with thousands of mothers of infants, my suggestion to parents of such children is simple: they must use their own insight about what they know about their own child to figure out what to do, rather than following any of the millions of advice books.
Kids have trouble falling asleep for the same reasons as adults, including the need for comfort in the arms of a parent, alarm and anxiety, hunger, pain, not feeling sleepy, and more. What to do so everyone in the home gets enough sleep may be more complex, and there is never just one solution.
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For children under 2, who are developmentally only capable of attaching through the senses to their primary caregiver, the need for physical and emotional closeness with their parents is pre-eminent and requires frequent refuelling. If they have experienced more separation 鈥� including while asleep 鈥� from their parents than they can manage, then they will resist sleep until the need is met. Similarly, many adults cannot sleep when their partner is away. Just because society now says our kids should be independent of us does not mean their brains are equipped to cope with it.
鈥淔or children under 2, the need for physical and emotional closeness with parents is pre-eminent鈥�
鈥淪leep training鈥� techniques for babies may be shown to work in the short term but could have serious negative consequences for child-parent relationships in the long term, according to my colleague Gordon Neufeld of the Neufeld Institute in Winnipeg, Canada, which researches childhood.
Elizabeth Hatherell, Neufeld Institute, Winnipeg, Canada
鈥� This refusal to attempt to sleep is something my sister鈥檚 eldest daughter persisted in until she was nearly 8 months old and was the cause of much discussion in my family. There were at least 10 of us including my father, who is a family doctor, so many points of view were aired. The idea that prevailed after more than a little reading around the subject was that this dislike 鈥� which is almost fear of sleep 鈥� in some young babies arises from a fear of releasing the conscious world.
At a very young age, children often believe that when something is not visible and physically available, it no longer exists and never will. It is similar to the way in which a child screams for its mother or father or a favourite toy when they have only been out of the room for a few seconds. So the same could apply to sleep. A child does not want to sleep for fear that when it closes its eyes and relinquishes its hold on the world, none of the familiar comforting sights and sounds of its short life will be present.
Until a child becomes used to the concept of the world having substance even though it is not currently visible, it will fear the loss of consciousness.
Our secondary theory was the idea that some children just don鈥檛 want to sleep, because they will lose valuable playing, eating and general mess-making time.
Frederick White, Ashford, Kent, UK