What are the common sleep problems among children, and whose needs are they being met?

A child\’s inability to fall asleep alone, just like a child\’s reluctance to eat, often troubles parents. There are many manifestations of being unable to fall asleep alone: ​​some children just don\’t want to sleep in their own bed and have to go to their parents\’ bedroom; some children only allow their mothers to accompany them to sleep; and some children will wake up at night after falling asleep alone. He would wake up every few hours and look for his parents again. There are various other situations, but they all probably have one thing in common. What do they have in common? I heard the answer from a child. He said, why can mom and dad sleep together, but I have to sleep alone. I think this may represent the voice of many children, because for children, sleeping means being separated from their parents and not knowing what their parents are doing. So going to bed is sometimes an extremely lonely experience for children, but parents are still two people together. They are not alone, but I am the only one left. Therefore, children naturally have a kind of anxiety. What worries them is that they need to be separated from their parents. Moreover, it turns out that I and my parents are independent and different individuals. Falling asleep triggers our separation anxiety. This kind of separation anxiety has been experienced since birth. Winnicott said that there was no such thing as a baby. Babies were always with their mothers. In other words, when you see a baby, you must also see the mother taking care of it. If the baby is separated from the mother, the baby will feel that his life is threatened. From this perspective, sleep and death always seem to have some similarities, just as we usually use words similar to sleep to describe the state of death, such as long sleep. Not only do children worry about being separated from their parents, parents also worry about being separated from their children. This kind of anxiety occurs in many parents, and many new parents have experienced similar emotional experiences. For example, when I see my sleeping baby, I sometimes can\’t help but touch the baby, as if to see if the baby is still alive and check to see if there is any reaction. Many sleep problems are actually manifestations of separation anxiety. Some children will want to sleep in the same bed as their parents. This is not a problem if the child is younger. But some parents don\’t want their children to stay with them. The reason is that parents feel that if the child cannot develop the ability to sleep independently, then the older the child gets, the harder it will be for the child to sleep alone, which makes parents They feel very anxious. In fact, from the moment of birth, separation between children and parents has already begun, so we will develop the ability to be alone as we grow up. Sleeping alone and facing loneliness alone is the first step in developing the ability to be alone. This is the price everyone needs to pay in the process of growing into an independent individual. Anxiety is both the price of growth and the driving force for growth. The premise is that there is a good parent-child attachment relationship as the foundation. There is such a case. There is a 12-year-old boy who has entered junior high school, but is unable to participate in the school’s military training activities. He must be accompanied by his mother at night.to fall asleep. During this period, the mother also tried many methods. For example, get a sofa bed next to the bed in the child\’s room, and she will accompany the child to sleep on the sofa bed at night, hoping to slowly transition to letting the child fall asleep alone. However, children cannot close the door when they sleep, and parents are not allowed to close the door. When the child wants to get up to go to the bathroom at night, he calls out to his parents loudly and asks his parents to take him to the bathroom. Then he has to accompany him back to his room. After watching him go to bed and fall asleep, his parents can go back to their bedroom to sleep. If we just look at the state of this child, we may find it incomprehensible, or think that this child is too troublesome, or we may be too lazy to pay attention to him, scold him, etc. But if you see this kid growing up, you\’ll understand why he\’s the way he is. In the first few months after his birth, the boy mainly stayed with his mother because she was on maternity leave at that time. After the mother\’s maternity leave is over, the child is mainly taken care of by the grandparents from about 4 months to 6 years old, which takes turns every few months. For a period of time, the grandparents will take care of the child, and for a period of time, the grandparents will live in it. . Although the relatives take good care of the child, the child\’s attachment relationship is unstable. This greatly affects the child\’s sense of security. He couldn\’t stay by himself, couldn\’t sleep alone, so that even though the child was grown up now, no matter where he went, he had to be accompanied by someone. This puts great constraints on children\’s independence and sociality. Teenagers still cannot face daily life independently. French psychologist Féliosa said: \”Only with a sufficient sense of security can a child become independent.\” Because a child\’s sense of security comes from the attachment relationship between the child and his parents. Some kindergartens will understand the psychological needs of children at this stage and will ask parents to prepare a piece of mother\’s clothes, a blanket or other items that remind the child of mother when the child enters the kindergarten. Because when a child is restless or sleeping, covering him with a piece of clothing that smells like his mother will bring him a sense of security. It will also give him a sense of connection with his mother when he adapts to kindergarten life. The ability to be alone comes from children\’s trust in their parents. In other words, the child will trust the unknown world after being separated from his parents, and will also believe that his parents will still be around when I come back here. This is what is called internalizing your parents into your own heart and becoming a stable object existence within yourself. Children\’s sleep problems, or the problem of not developing the ability to be alone, are often not caused by the child, but by the parents. On the one hand, it is the unstable foundation of the attachment relationship mentioned above. If you cultivate the child\’s independence too early and require the child to sleep in an environment where he cannot feel his mother\’s breath, skin and skin, it may cause the child to have a fear of abandonment and dependence on others. On the other hand, it can be simply understood that parents cannot live without their children. Ma Yili once mentioned on Weibo that her daughter asked to sleep independently. The reason was that she chatted with her classmates during the day and learned that her classmates slept by themselves, so she also decided to sleep independently without letting her mother accompany her. The process of sleeping in separate rooms went smoothly., and as a mother, Ma Yili said that every time she heard her child breathing evenly and was about to get up and close the door to leave, she felt a little disappointed in her heart, as if she was not ready yet and this day had actually come. Therefore, sleeping in separate rooms is actually a child’s need. When a child cries and refuses to sleep in a separate room, parents must not only look at the child\’s factors, but also be aware of their own subconscious. For example, there is a mother who is worried that her child is not independent enough and cannot fall asleep on her own; on the other hand, she sometimes takes the initiative to let her child come to sleep in their room. Because subconsciously, she knew that as long as the child was in the room, she would have a reason not to have sex with her husband. If the child can fall asleep alone, it will give parents more time together. So, what if the couple doesn’t want to be together? There is a video record of a foreign family therapy case. It is said that a family of three went to a therapist to treat the problem of a child who was unwilling to sleep on his own. The therapist asked the mother to take the child back and let the child sleep in his own room every time he woke up and left the room, and the mother did so as requested. Finally, the child can finally fall asleep alone in his own room. When some colleagues saw the process in the video, they raised a question: I am curious about what the couple will do if they have extra time. Sure enough, after the problem of the child not being able to sleep alone was resolved, the couple separated. After the \”problem\” of the child not being able to sleep alone was solved, the long-buried conflicts between the couple slowly surfaced. The family is a system, and children\’s sleeping problems may sometimes be just a cover. Growth is a child\’s need, and sleeping alone is a child\’s need for growth. Sometimes, we may try to ask ourselves, whose needs are our children\’s sleep problems meeting?