Popular Sleep Strategies

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

30 Jul 2006 06:46 AM

Parenting magazine listed the following sleep strategies as among the most popular with parents and children. I want to make it clear that I neither condemn nor endorse any of these sleep strategies. In my experience, every child is different and children need a different strategy to help them learn how to sleep. For months, my daughter would drift off to sleep in my arms and I would put her to bed. Then as she got older, I could lay her down, perform the same routine and tell her night night and she would drift off to sleep. Sometimes she cried for a couple of minutes, most often she didn't.

He'll Get It When He's Ready Strategy

This strategy is one that advocates of attachment parenting most often endorse and it is the one that says you do whatever you need to do to help your baby get to sleep. This may include, but is by no means limited to: rocking, nursing, singing or even bringing the baby into the bed with you.

The Get with the Program Strategy

This strategy focuses on putting the baby to bed when they are sleepy, but not yet asleep. You carry the baby in and put them down. If they cry when you leave the room, give them a few minutes and then go back in to comfort them, but don't pick them up. Settle them again and leave, give them another few minutes. Repeat until the baby goes to sleep.

The Ease Him or Her Into It Strategy

This strategy blends the previous two in order to gradually ease your baby into sleeping on their own. You comfort the baby until they are very drowsy and then settle them into bed and stay with him, perhaps rubbing his back gently but without picking him or her up and holding them. The idea is that you will eventually back off enough to soothe from the doorway, then the hallway and then not at all.

What sleep strategies do you employ to get your little one to sleep?

Related Articles:

The Fussy Baby (Part I)

The Top 10 Ways to Get Your Baby to Sleep

Co-Sleeping Makes Me Happy

Sharing Sleep With Your Baby

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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