There are different cases.
Yet, somehow most of the time we think that you should not wake the baby under any circumstances. It’s not okey if we wake him or her up, because sleep is very important. That’s what I encounter most often in counselling, that parents don’t dare to wake a baby or even an older child. Even if he or she goes to sleep at 11 o’clock at night… Because they are not supposed to. It’s just culturally encoded in us, we don’t question it, we just pass it on as if it’s an unquestionable truth. The previous generation left us with this legacy and many other misconceptions.
So it’s worth stopping for a moment and thinking about it:
Why do we think it’s not okey to wake a child? What is behind it? What is the logic in holding on to this concept as a fact?
Perhaps the one thing that is already pretty much in the public consciousness is that if you have a tiny baby who is having trouble thriving, you need to wake him up. Maybe it’s now clear that if you have a sleepy tiny baby, a few weeks old, it’s important to wake him or her up to gain weight.
- The first problem that most often affects babies under 4 months of age is DAY/NIGHT CONFUSION:
So he or she sleeps relatively long during the day, many hours at a time, but is up at night or falls asleep at 11-12PM. Often these babies will sleep longer in the morning, or even sleep through the morning. And the next day they don’t fall asleep again until 11-12PM.
The hormonal background of the biorhythm is formed between 2 and 4 months of age, so this delicate balance is very easily upset during this time. And the other misconception, which we’ll come to, that it’s only sleep if your baby sleeps for several hours without you, without waking, doesn’t help either. Because the family is happy that the baby sleeps for 4 hours in the morning, and it is not obvious that this can come at the cost of being up at night. Because we make it a goal to sleep for many hours, because we think that’s healthy, that’s good and then we call our baby a bad sleeper if he sleeps short.
- The second problem is with older babies or toddlers, even preschoolers
SLEEPS LATE: that is, sleeps until, say, 8-9-10 in the morning and then only falls asleep at 10-11-12 at night. Here we have to see that there is a day mode, the end of which depends on waking up in the morning. So if the daytime mode for a given child is say 13-14 hours and he wakes up at 9 in the morning, he may well not be able to fall asleep before 11 in the evening no matter what we do.
Of course this is also influenced by the amount of sleep he gets during the day, and if and when. E.g. a typical problem in daycare is that the child does not fall asleep in the evening, even though he wakes up early to go to daycare. But in the daycare they put him to sleep for 2-3 hours (which then prevents him from getting enough so-called sleep pressure- i.e. tiredness) and so he falls asleep at 11. The same thing happens the next day and the next day and a rhythm sets in.
LESSON TO LEARN
It would be good to know a lot of details about how the biorhythm (circadian rhythm) works, instead of this myth being coded under our skin.
When your day is upside down, always remember:
IT’S OK TO WAKE A SLEEPING CHILD! It is NOT a crime. It can often be a solution to a sleep problem!
If you feel lost, book
an appointment now!
And we go through every detail to solve your child’s sleep problem.
You can reach me on
whatsup: +36305651759
or by email: babysleepadvice2023@gmail.com