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Sleep solutions for all ages
Learn how anxiety may be behind your child's sleep problems and get age-by-age strategies to help your little one (and you!) drift off
When Felicia Dewar’s son, Khrystian, was eight, he didn’t sleep. He simply couldn’t. Dewar would check on him at midnight and find him wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Khrystian had usually been awake for hours — not playing or reading, just staring.
She did everything she could think of to help him — a long bedtime routine, exercise, no television or computer two hours before bed. And then there was the yelling, pleading and cajoling. They wound up in the paediatrician’s office, desperate for a solution.
“It turns out he’s a worrier, just like his mom,” Dewar says from her home in Edmonton.
North American studies show up 40 percent of children deal with sleeping problems — difficulty falling or staying asleep. Just as in adults, worries are at the heart of many children’s sleep troubles. “Anxiety and sleep are very closely connected,” says Laurel Crossley-Byers of Burlington, Ont., who runs a life-coaching practice for families and often helps young people work out their sleep issues. “When children can’t go to sleep, they know they’re supposed to go to sleep, and so then their anxiety level goes up. You get this cyclical thing happening.”
Given how tricky it is to put anyone’s worries to rest, a child’s sleep difficulties can be particularly difficult to fix. So we asked experts for their tips on helping anxious babies and kids find dreamland.
Six months to two years
What’s likely keeping them awake Separation anxiety. Even a baby who was once the world’s best sleeper might start to get upset when you leave the room.
How you can help If you’ve been rocking your daughter to sleep or allowing her to conk out on your chest, you’ll likely find she expects you to keep it up — and isn’t too jazzed about sleeping by herself. Instead of waiting until she’s out cold to put her in her crib, sleep experts suggest putting her to bed drowsy — but still awake — so she gets used to falling asleep on her own. Be sure to make this a gradual change. “Don’t just leave them,” says Jodi Mindell, associate director of the Sleep Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “You can check on them briefly and reassure them that everything is fine. Even if there are a few tears, be clear that Mommy or Daddy is right here and will come back.”
Keep in mind it’s normal for babies to rouse briefly several times a night. When this happens, resist the temptation to pick your baby up and rock her back to sleep; even if she’s fully snoozing when you put her down and leave, she might wake up crying because she recognizes the change, says Penny Corkum, an associate professor of clinical psychology at Dalhousie University in Halifax who specializes in children and sleep.
Read on for sleep tips for toddlers and preschoolers>
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