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Parenting Advice: Helping Your Child Sleep

By: Dr. Noel Swanson...

We can't get a good sleep until we are relaxed. A few things must happen before we get there. We need to feel secure and safe. Any kind of tension, such as abuse, parents arguing, financial problems, trouble with the neighbors, or problems with school or friends, will make it harder for any child to go to sleep.

We also need to feel secure and safe in the bed. Some children with sensory integration difficulties, such as problems with touch sensitivity, body position sense (proprioception), or gravitational insecurity may find lying down on a high bed difficult. Such children may be helped by having heavy blankets that help them to feel more grounded.

When we get into bed it's time to forget about the day's business, shut out environmental distractions, and slow our heart rate and metabolism. As our bodies start to drift, so do our brains. During the day, brain waves might run at 14 Hertz (cycles per second) or more. When they start to slow down, they first go into an "alpha" rhythm (about 10 Hz), and then gradually go into the deep sleep rhythm, called "delta", about 4-7 Hz.

Setting up the environment in the right way can go a long way toward helping us relax. So will keeping to a regular routine. The body gets used to it and knows when it's time to slow down and get ready to sleep. Here are a few ideas:

Some ways to help sleep come more easily, are keeping to a set routine and creating a comfortable environment. Following these suggestions help our bodies pick up signals letting it know that it's time to slow down and go to sleep. Here are some helpful ideas for getting there:

A bedtime story. This helps to push out the anxieties of the day, whilst also giving the child some special one-to-one attention. The child feels loved and valued, and therefore safe and secure. This can be followed by a recorded tape story, to which the child can listen with eyes closed and in a darkened room. But pick a story that is calming, not frightening!

Read your child a story at bedtime. Make sure that there isn't anything frightening in it. Besides having a calming effect, you are engaging in some special time together. Knowing that they are loved and cherished, tells children that their world is safe. When you're finished reading, turn on a recorded story that is peaceful and quiet. Turn off the lights and soon he'll be listening with closed eyes and drifting off.

Since we can't close our ears, relaxing music might help lessen the shock and disturbance of hearing sounds from our environment. Sudden noises and those not expected tend to wake us and cause stress. Some sounds we can't control are a barking dog at the neighbors, a fox or other creature howling, or even lorries passing the house. However, we can take some steps to modify our environment. Using heavy drapes or curtains, double glazed windows and closing doors can aid in keeping out some sounds.

To create a sound environment that promotes sleep, we therefore need sounds that are low in pitch, and have a slow rhythm. A beat of 50 to 60 Hertz, the rate of our hearts when fully relaxed, would be ideal. Where do we find such sounds? Some classical music meets these requirements, so to do some nature sounds such as waves gently rolling onto the beach. My recommendation is to use some of the recordings that are deliberately created for relaxation. Amongst the best that I have come across are the those by Steven Halpern, and also the Sound Health Series CD's called (appropriately enough), "Relax" and "De-Stress". These should be played very quietly in the background, both to drown out the dogs, and to generate a peaceful sound environment in the bedroom. If your child has a tendency to wake easily and frequently in the night, it may be worth putting the CD on continuous play so that it carries on right through the night.

Colour and Light. Not only are our bodies and minds sensitive to the frequencies and rhythms or sounds, we are also profoundly affected by light and colour. This is well know by supermarkets and football teams! The supermarkets use green/blue tinged lights to make the vegetables look greener and fresher, but red tinged light on their meat counters. This is done very subtly, but very effectively. The colours on the product packaging are equally carefully chosen and designed to motivate you to buy. The stores are brightly lit, and may have "muzak" playing. All of this is done to make you feel up-beat and comfortable. The longer you stay, the more you will spend. Contrast that with some dingy shops that you know. In the same way, some football clubs will paint their changing rooms in different colours - red for the home team, as it is activating and arousing; and blue for the away team, as it is relaxing and calming.

Blue is for serenity, green for harmony and peace, pink instills warmth and cosiness. All of these, especially if in muted tints, are ideal of bedrooms, although blue and green may produce too cold an atmosphere. On the other hand bright and vibrant colours such as yellows and reds will rev us up and keep us awake. The effects are subtle and certainly not conscious, but even so are very real.

Think about the colour spectrum. Blue is meant for us to feel serene, green harmonious and peaceful, while pink signals warmth and feeling cozy. These quiet colours are perfect for bedrooms. Be careful with the blues and greens however, as they can also feel cold. Using yellows, reds and other lively colours in a bedroom, isn't a good idea. Even though the effects are subtle, they may get our blood flowing and keep us from sleep. These effects are usually subconscious but that doesn't make them any less real.

Be sure to consider lighting when you design a bedroom. Bright, blue or cold lights tend to wake us up. An example of these are the fluorescents. That's because they imitate the early morning sun. At twilight the sky has the warm colours of orange and red. The most relaxing lights for nighttime come from low wattage bulbs, candles, oil lamps or a nice fire. If you add these lights to pink furniture, soft and slow music, the waves on the beach you get the picture.

Of course it may not be safe to have a candle, oil lamp or open fire in your child's bedroom! So how can we get around this? One option is to use the electrical bulbs that simulate a flickering flame. The other is to use speciality lamps such as fibre optic lamps that produce a low level of light, that gradually changes from one colour to another. They may not flicker at 7 Hz, but the slow and gentle changes are themselves relaxing, as are the colour changes, provided they are not too bright. Other children prefer to simply have a dark room with no lights on. Certainly it pays to have thick curtains that screen out the late night and early morning light of the summer sun.

Our most primitive sense is smell. Think of the times you've sniffed the briefest whiff of something that takes you right back to old memories and emotions. Since they affect our emotional state, some smells can help us sleep. The essential oils of mandarin, chamomile roman, lavender and palma rosa are recommended. If you have children older than five, use neroli, geranium and nutmeg in addition. A mixture of mandarin, chamomile and palma rosa or a mixture of chamomile, geranium and nutmeg are especially good. Put the oils in bath water, or rub it on skin with massage oil. You can even put it in the humidifier water. Remember to use moderately. Your goal is subtlety rather than an overpowering smell.

We often close our windows in winter and leave the heat on. This cuts down on outside noises, but also keeps out fresh air. The heat dries out the air as well, in turn drying out our nasal passages. When we have stuffy noses and air, we will usually sleep poorly. Even opening the window a crack will help.

The humidity can be improved in three ways. One is to simply turn the heating down, and compensate with more blankets ( which may help the child to "feel grounded"). The other is to add some moisture to the air. This can be down with a humidifier (which may also produce some background white noise), or simply by draping a wet flannel over the radiator. Put a couple of drops of essential oil in the water or on the flannel, and you will also provide a gentle aroma in the room.

Waking during the night. It is normal to wake or almost wake several times during the night. The trick is to get back to sleep again. All of the above will increase the chances of this. Along with this it is important not to reinforce a behaviour pattern of waking up during the night by giving it a lot of attention. Infants and young children especially will often cry or make other noises when they wake. Do not immediately rush in to comfort them - this will only wake them up more, and reinforce the pattern of waking in the night. If you leave them alone, most will gradually settle and go back to sleep by themselves. Initially this may take some time, as they are used to getting your attention, but gradually, if you stay firm, this period of time will get shorter.

Of course these are a million other ways to help your child to sleep. Feel free to experiment to find what works for you.

What about you, the exhausted parent? How many days a week do you long to make up some of those lost hours of sleep? How many times in a day do you focus on how totally worn out you are? Do you often wish you could get in a little nap before the kids get home? Those ways of thinking date back to the 19th century and are actually myths about sleep. Read more on this site and you will learn a lot more about sleep that can offer you some major changes in how you think about it. May you sleep peacefully and have lovely dreams.

Article Source: http://www.articlebankonline.com

To get more articles full of parenting advice by author Dr. Noel Swanson, why not check out his parenting advice website?

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