\”Mom, what should I do if I can\’t sleep?\” Anyone who has experienced the pain of being coaxed to sleep knows…

My colleague\’s son was hospitalized with hernia, a common disease among boys. However, the reason why my colleague’s son got sick was a bit special. My son is over three months old, when he is at his fattest and most tiring, but my husband has been on a business trip for half a month. She takes care of her children by herself, working around the clock, and eats whatever she wants when she\’s hungry. Tired, sleepy, sleepy, and lonely, she was so tired that she could hardly hold on. That night, it was already 10 o\’clock, and her son was still crying and refusing to sleep. She put him in the crib and lay on the bed next to her. She listened to her son\’s heart-wrenching cries in the dark and cried silently. But I really didn’t have the strength to get up and hold the child. I don\’t know how long it took, but my son\’s crying gradually became quieter, and then he fell asleep directly. The next morning, she found something was wrong with the child and rushed to the hospital. The doctor said that the child cried for too long, which caused the pressure in the abdomen to increase and caused a hernia. My colleague blamed himself and cried all the time. Sometimes, it\’s not that my mother is cruel or that she can\’t control her temper and emotions. It\’s really because – my mother is too tired. My son was also an energetic \”sleepy baby\”. Before he was 3 years old, I would force him into bed almost every night. Then all kinds of requests and troubles came one after another: drinking water, peeing, too hot, mosquitoes, quilt too thick, pillow too hard, and itchy body. The two of us fucked in the dark for two hours. Finally, he got up and said to me who had long since exhausted my energy: Mom, I can\’t sleep! I\’m so angry! The anger started to rise, so I yelled at him, and even if I got angry, I would slap him twice. When my crying son sees me getting angry, he usually becomes honest and falls asleep quickly. I know it\’s wrong, but I still make mistakes. Being a mother is really contradictory and tiring. There is a saying: If the baby doesn\’t sleep, the whole family will suffer. If a child doesn\’t sleep at night, it affects not only himself, but also the mother\’s entire life happiness! We all know how important good sleep is to children. Nighttime is the peak period for growth hormone secretion, and it is also a good time for various body functions to repair themselves. Good sleep is greatly beneficial to children\’s cognitive abilities, judgment, concentration, and emotional self-control. However, nearly 66% of infants and young children in my country have sleep problems under the age of 2. Her best friend said that before having children, she and her husband almost never quarreled. After having this \”sleeping baby\”, the first fight she had with her husband started when the baby made trouble and wouldn\’t sleep. I\’m tired after a long day at work, and I have to work overtime to spend time with my baby when I get home. I fully expect that I can paralyze for a while when my baby falls asleep, but I don\’t want my baby to be unable to sleep. It\’s so hard to sleep with her. Who knows who is with me! Image source: \”The Incredibles 2\” Mom is in a bad mood, dad is in a bad mood, and a small flame can trigger a couple war. The child\’s refusal to sleep is a blow to the couple\’s relationship again and again. Once, my furious girlfriend simply ignored the crying baby and let him cry on his own. Unexpectedly, the baby fell asleep after more than ten minutes. After tasting the sweetness of this trick, she used it frequently and believed that such delayed gratification would produce good babies who could learn to wait from an early age and would not be overly dependent on their mothers. In fact, when babies before 1 year old cry before going to bed, they are often expressing their own experiences: they are cold., hungry, had a bowel movement, peed, felt uncomfortable, or felt insecure. This is the time when they most need timely response and comfort from their parents. The same goes for older babies. Before going to bed is a very important time for mothers and children to cultivate a sense of security, mutual trust and happiness. If you are scolded or beaten because you have difficulty falling asleep, and fall asleep with negative emotions and tears, not only will it be difficult to obtain deep sleep, but the probability of night terrors, nightmares, and easy awakening will also be greatly increased. If the child doesn\’t sleep well, how can he be in a good mood? Many children are very \”angry\” before entering kindergarten the next morning, and may also conflict with their parents again because of this, forming a vicious cycle. For the sake of her children, little Tao Hong, who has studied psychology and motherhood classes for 10 years, once said: A mother’s highest duty is to give her children a sense of security. There are many setbacks in life, but she can learn them when she grows up. What she gets from her mother should be a harbor, comfort, and the best! Therefore, when it comes to the child\’s sleep, no matter how busy, tired, or annoyed the mother is, she must control her emotions and give her child a full sense of security. Sleep is not a trivial matter. Whether or not you sleep well may really affect your child\’s life. The fundamental reason for children who refuse to fall asleep or sleep poorly is that they have not established a regular daily routine. For children, what they do one hour before going to bed is particularly important. Picture source: \”The Incredibles 2\” If you want your children to fall asleep as soon as possible, there are three things you should not do: 1. Eat too much before going to bed. Many parents want their children to gain weight and believe that \”a horse cannot grow fat without night grass\” According to the concept, give your child a meal of milk, meat, biscuits, snacks, etc. before going to bed. In fact, for children with weak digestion ability, going to bed directly after their stomach is crowded and bloated will firstly make them uncomfortable, and secondly, it will aggravate the difficulty of falling asleep and seriously affect the child\’s sleep. Therefore, it is best not to let children eat before going to bed. If you are really hungry, you can drink a glass of milk, some biscuits and avoid meat. 2. Exposure to electronic products before going to bed. Watching an episode of cartoons or playing with an iPad for a while before going to bed is a habit of many children. However, experiments have shown that the blue light emitted by electronic products such as computers and mobile phones inhibits the production of melatonin, which is closely related to whether you can sleep normally. 3. Perform strenuous activities before going to bed. A friend asked me that her son has obviously established a good routine, but recently he has always had trouble falling asleep and makes a lot of small movements while lying in bed. I asked her: Did the child do any strenuous activities before going to bed? She slapped her thigh: Recently, the child has been running at night with his father, thinking that increasing the amount of exercise will make the child fall asleep faster. No wonder. It takes a certain amount of time for a child to go from an excited state to a quiet state, and this time is longer than we think, so it is not surprising that it affects sleep. Image source: \”The Incredibles 2\” So what should you do one hour before going to bed to help your child fall asleep as soon as possible? If parents can do these three things well, they will get twice the result with half the effort. 1. Create a family-like bedtime atmosphere. Under what circumstances are people most likely to fall asleep? That is when the surrounding environment is quiet and you feel safe and comfortable. The same goes for children. Before your child goes to sleep, all electronic devices in the home should be turned off and the lights dimmed.The family members go back to their rooms, reduce conversations, and make some preparations before going to bed, hinting to the children that it is getting late and we are all going to bed. Otherwise, a noisy and lively family environment before going to bed can easily make children think: Why are you having so much fun while I am going to bed? This is not fair! A quiet and soothing home atmosphere can help children accept the fact of falling asleep and fall asleep as quickly as possible. 2. Guarantee of stable mood and rapid fall asleep. American children\’s sleep researchers said: Children have anxiety before going to bed. The most common ones are delay in falling asleep, crying or insomnia. What are they afraid of? For babies, they are often afraid that they will never see their parents again after falling asleep. Sometimes they are very sleepy, but they cry to stay awake. Picture source: \”Ponyo on the Cliff\” For older babies, there will be more anxiety and worries: the homework they did not finish today, the test to be held tomorrow, the quarrel between parents today, etc., will cause their mood swings. hard to fall asleep. Many psychologists suggest that 10 to 15 minutes of parent-child reading before going to bed can help children fall asleep as quickly as possible, and is beneficial to children\’s immunity repair, imagination cultivation, and emotional self-management. 3. A special bedtime ritual to provide more sense of security. Let \”bath – change pajamas – brush teeth – wash face – tell stories\” form a fixed bedtime ritual, which can help children have the awareness to take the initiative to fall asleep. In addition, some special bedtime rituals can also help children fall asleep as quickly as possible. One child told me that every morning when she woke up, she would find a small gift from her mother under her pillow. Sometimes it\’s a small flower folded from paper, sometimes it\’s a paper-cut butterfly, sometimes it\’s a small object she took a fancy to during the day, sometimes it\’s just a piece of white paper with her mother\’s red lip prints printed on it. So, she went to bed early every night, closing her eyes and looking forward to the morning. Image source: \”Baby Bird\” is so good. Such a beautiful parent-child interaction will be a sweet thing that the child will want to remember throughout his life. It represents the love that her mother gives her, the beauty of life that her mother makes her feel, and her intimate attachment to her mother. This is what an educator said: Being a parent requires parental power, but also a sense of rhythm and beauty. Good parents must not only have the ability to lead their children, but also have the skills to guide their children. Even better, they must be able to control their own behavior and emotions and give their children a regular life and beautiful details. And being able to put your children to sleep peacefully is the greatest test of a parent’s skills. Preventing children from crying to sleep and allowing them to wake up with a smile really requires careful thought and great wisdom on the part of parents.