Mother of two Vicki Dawson, 40, knows just how that feels. “My son just didn’t seem to need sleep,” she recalls. “He would be up till late, it would take him a long time to fall asleep and he would keep waking throughout the night.
"I can remember desperately seeking help but getting little in the way of advice. In the end, I just accepted that some children don’t need much sleep, which I now know is wrong.”
Vicki, a special needs teacher from Tickhill in South Yorkshire, retrained as a sleep practitioner and used the nightmare experience with her son, who’s now 13, to set up The Children’s Sleep Charity. She and her team have since helped some 14,000 bleary-eyed and desperate families.
“Sleep is just as important as nutrition, but it isn’t given the same priority,” she points out. “A lack of sleep can trigger depression, irritability and ill health. We’ve had families splitting up, and parents losing jobs and homes because they
were too tired to work, and some even considering putting children up for adoption. Parents crying out for help are often told, ‘Oh, they’ll grow out of it,’ but often they don’t. It just gets worse.”
It’s not just parents who are affected, either. “Sleep deprivation has a huge impact on a child’s development, affecting cognitive function, memory and mood. In fact, hyperactivity is a classic symptom of sleep deprivation.”
Sleep problems are complex, but almost all can be solved with time and consistently applied parenting techniques. Here are Vicki’s tips for helping parents overcome the most common difficulties. It may be a challenge to start with, but hang on in there – it’s worth it.
“I’m not tired”
If your child takes hours to fall asleep, their body clock needs retuning. Keep a diary of when the child does fall asleep – and make that time their bedtime. So, if they are going to bed at 7pm
but aren’t falling asleep until 10pm, then 10pm becomes the new bedtime – temporarily. Get a sleep routine going – small snack, bath, reading – and implement it an hour before the new, later bedtime. Then work gradually backwards from 10pm, moving bedtime by 15 minutes every three nights.
“Mummy don’t go”
If your child insists on having a parent nearby to help them sleep, adopt the “disappearing chair” tactic. Sit on a chair near the cot or bed. Every three nights, move the chair slightly further away. “With some children, you can move fairly quickly; with others,
By FIONA DUFFY
0 comments:
Post a Comment