2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
When a child grows up, the question of sleeping with his mother in the same bed, as a rule, disappears by itself. But often the boundaries between the private area of parents and their children are blurred, turning the life of a couple into a chain of misunderstandings, discomfort, fatigue and lack of attention to each other. Is it possible that all these serious consequences, up to divorce, can be provoked by the behavior of a child who stubbornly does not want to fall asleep alone? Yes it is.
Causes of the problem - fears and attention deficit
The reasons why such a situation arose in the family, although they lie on the surface, but they must be clearly formulated:
- The mother's fright for the child ("He will have a psychological trauma", or "He is still small and cannot fall asleep on his own - he is scared").
- The inability of a married couple to show firmness (parents succumb to childish tantrums: "Okay, today you can be patient").
- Unwillingness to act together (dad accumulates resentment against the child for “pulling the blanket” - the mother’s attention and affection - on himself, and the mother thinks that the partner is an egoist, therefore, subconsciously begins to feel hostility).
Having figured out which of the reasons creates the situation, it is easy to start systematically solving the problem when the child refuses to fall asleep alone. It is enough to follow simple guidelines to wean your child from this habit.
A game
An effective way to change the situation is to explain to the child that the room of mom and dad is only their territory and you need to respect it. There is no need to prohibit going there, you just need to point out the boundaries. After such a serious introduction, you need to move on to the game proposal: let the child choose one day of the week when he will not enter the parents' bedroom. Play out the story that sleeping in a baby bed is a great success. Let him win this prize.
Gradualness
You can not allow stress in a child and go to extremes: "From now on, not a foot to us!", and the next day - “I can't do that: my heart hurts for our baby. He is still small and let him sleep with us. " Before going to bed, you can sit with your child, talk a little, calm down and tune in to safety and sound sleep. During this period of adaptation, it is worth leaving the night light on in the nursery, reading fairy tales before bedtime and showing that the parents still love their child and nothing has changed in their attitude towards him.
Hardness
After all the rituals, only sleep. You can not give in to the complaints and persuasions of the child. In their manipulations, children go very far and can come up with more and more fears, just to pity their parents and get under their side. After fairy tales, conversations and a kiss on the forehead, you should immediately leave and no longer go to the children in the room, even if they are indignant. You need to make it feel that although the parents love them, the contract must be fulfilled, so no one will sacrifice all their space and bed.
Subsequence
Often, an adult child sleeps in a bed with his parents only because they could not, together and in stages, convey to the child the idea of personal space. It is very important not to get lost halfway and gradually rebuild the child's psychology, accustom him to the thought of sleeping in his bed as the only norm. This is not easy, because pity and fear of hurting a child takes precedence over logic. However, you cannot give in. Let in such moments support the idea of the benefits of these changes for children. After all, the sooner they get rid of the emotional dependence on sleeping with their parents, the easier it will be for them to adapt and develop further.
Mode
This seems to be the most obvious and overlooked point. However, as child psychology shows, it is the most effective. Repeated activities every night bring order and structure into children's lives. It is necessary to gradually reduce the territory in which the child "reigns": first he plays in all rooms, then only in the nursery, then reads near his bed, and then falls asleep in it. This is unobtrusive, but effective management of the child's behavior: within a week, changes will be visible. The sequence of these actions will be a signal for the child's psyche, the activity will come to naught, and the child will become sleepy.
If you follow these simple rules, then soon the child will no longer feel the need to sleep with his parents. At the same time, neither the child's psyche, nor the married life of the parents is harmed.
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