Hi everybody, I got a question from Mango Coco.
She has a two and a half year old boy, he sleeps on his own in the crib no problem,
however, he insists on having her stay there and be with him until he nods off to sleep.
So she doesn't have an issue with having her baby still be in her bed while not wanting
him to still be in her bed, but yet he refuses to go to sleep on his own.
And her question is, what can I do to wean my child from this habit?
So Mango, and I love your name and by the way I love mangos and coconut is my favorite
flavor of ice cream and anything else so great name and I love it.
You basically are experiencing a form of sleep training.
This isn't about not co-sleeping with your baby when you no longer feel that that's what
you want to do, but basically this is a form of sleep training because you have to break
your child of a habit that has become very ingrained and you want your child to have
a more independent sleep routine.
The first thing I would do would be to make sure his bed is as warm, welcoming and social
type of environment as you can muster up.
A mobile, a cool poster on the wall, you know your baby's beyond the sort of SIDS risk age
so stuffed animals, you know friendly types of creatures that he really likes, his buddies.
Make going to bed his time to like hang out with his buddies in his cool crib where there's
a lot of you know fun and interesting stuff going on.
And try not to have your child be in his bed, you know, other than for naps and whatever,
don't make it the place where he plays because you want him to associate the bed with going
to sleep.
One thing your child might be doing is trying to have a bonding time with you that he's
not otherwise finding during the day.
So it could be that his time with mommy, his bonding time is when he goes to sleep.
And he's with mommy by having mommy stay there while he goes to sleep.
Well what about if you come in earlier into the scene and you bond with your child by
having your child on your lap, reading to your child which is so important, we all want
to try to read to our kids at least 20 minutes a day or as much as we can.
Talking to your child, interacting with your child and that's part of the sleep ritual.
If you say, you know, we finished dinner, we did our bath, our teeth are brushed, now
we're going to have, you know, the mommy time we're going to read and if you're a very,
very good boy and you go right to bed on time, you know, on your own, I'm going to let you
have another special book.
And you sort of work that whole thing into it, all the while anticipating, you know,
saying ok this is the last book and after that we're going to bed so that your child
is used to the idea that he's got this great time with mommy and then he's got this time
when he's going to be going into his own bed.
Now you can negotiate a bit, I mean this doesn't have to be like house of cards but you can
work things out with your kids.
I tried this quite a bit and so after the last book and they're still saying no, no
I said ok, let's make a deal.
I'm going to read you one more book and if you're really, really good and you go right
to bed, you know, then that's going to work for me.
And then you read that one last book and hopefully at that point they feel they sort of won something
and they've even gained a little more time with you and then they're happy to head off
to bed.
The main idea is to give your child a lot of love, a lot of bonding time, time with
mom that he knows he can count on so he feels secure and so that bedtime isn't a scary thing
for him.
Now, I have another ritual I've done with my kids.
They each get these two songs, um, I'm not going to sing them for you guys because they're
kind of silly and they're really personal.
They're very short, but these kids, you know, even the older ones really love their two
songs and I have sung these songs to them, you know, for their whole life so often times
I just really can't go to bed, get them to go to bed unless they've had their two songs
and so even if I haven't had a lot of time to read or hang out with them, singing these
songs is sort of part of their ritual and it's kind of worked for us so try that one
as well.
I hope these tips have been helpful, best of luck getting your child to go to bed on
his own.
Let me know how it goes and thank so you much for writing in to CloudMom.