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13May

Have you given your little one a foot rub lately?

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Positive Parenting Sleep
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Boulder Child Whisperer

Man oh man.  When was the last time you got a good foot rub?  Probably way too long ago.  Well, if you aren’t getting any good foot rubs, at least your little one should be.

When my boys were babies, I really really wanted to take a massage for babies class.  I thought that it would validate me as a “good mother”.  But, alas, the cost of the class and the fact that I had two babies got in the way and I never took the class.

So for a while, I felt like a bad mother and kept putting off giving my baby a massage since I didn’t know the “right” way to give one and then one day, I just started rubbing my baby’s foot and his whole body melted in my hands.

Then it started to become part of our bedtime routine.  We couldn’t do it every night due to timing, but most nights that we didn’t do a bath, we did foot rubs.  Then came a time where they didn’t want a foot rub.  They would laugh and kick my hands and said it tickled.  We stopped doing it.

Then I remembered the foot rubs again and it changed the whole energy of the bedtime routine.

  • Foot rubs calm the whole nervous system of the child
  • Foot rubs are a great way of connecting.  If you have had an especially trying or tiring day, it is so nice to end it with a foot rub
  • I don’t know much about reflexology, but I love to imagine all the ailments that I must be curing while I’m giving a foot rub. (“And while I’m rubbing here, the tummy ache is going away…”)
  • They feel so good

So if you are having a great day or if you are having a horrible day, tonight give your kiddo a foot rub!

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12May

What to know about sleep and wake cycles so that your child will be a better sleeper

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Sleep
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sleep-cycles

Before I had kids I had heard of sleep cycles but until I was working with them to become better sleepers, I never really understood the concept.  

Now I do.

We have sleep cycles.  The shortest ones are 20 minutes, then 45 minutes and then 2 hour sleep cycles. These are dependent on what kind of sleep you are in, whether it is light and active sleep or deep and still sleep.

Whether you are co-sleeping or independent sleeping, you will need to help your children through these cycles in order for them to become better sleepers. 

After the first three months of life, you can start to watch your child for their sleep pattern.  Typically, an infant will only sleep about 20 minutes in their crib while they are napping.  They are just in a light active sleep for that time and they will need help transitioning into a deeper sleep.  If you know that your child wakes at the end of that cycle (which most children do) then be there at their side at that 20 minute interval and make sure that they don’t wake much and soothe them into their deeper sleep.  

This will take some time to regulate their bodies but is well worth it!  

Even older children can learn to help their bodies back to sleep if they wake during a sleep cycle.

As children become better and more consistent nappers, you’ll find them lengthening their naps to about 45 minutes.  But for young children, this still isn’t enough sleep for their growing brains and bodies.   This is just one full sleep cycle and they need two.  At this point, the children are a little bit older and can often soothe themselves back to sleep.  If you hear movement or sound, don’t react immediately.  Give them enough time to fall back asleep and if they are getting more agitated  then you can help soothe them back to sleep by either rubbing their tummies, rubbing their backs, finding a pacifier, or whatever works best for your child.   But naps should be at least and hour and a half– up to three hours if they are only taking one nap.

Again, this will take time and there might be some difficult days, but consistency works and once your child realizes that nap time isn’t over then they will learn to take longer naps.  

At night is when I often see the 2 hour sleep cycle take hold.  This starts because young infants need to feed that often and even when children no longer need feedings at night, they may wake at those times and will need help learning how to fall back asleep once they wake up.  

The concept of helping a child back to sleep during this nighttime cycle is exactly the same.    If your child wakes every single night at 10:45pm (and you are no longer feeding at night) then you can go into his room at 10:35/ 10:40 and help your child back to sleep before he really wakes up.  You can make shushing noises, rub his belly/ back.  You can talk sweet nothings into his ear.  Just make sure that they are able to get through their wake cycle without completely waking. 

If they do wake completely, do what you can before picking them up.  Try to soothe them back to sleep while they are still in their bed.  If all else fails, you can pick them up and hold them but the process of them learning to fall back asleep will take a little bit longer.  

Once you realize that children aren’t necessarily saying that they are done sleeping when they are just passing from one sleep cycle to the next, you will be better equipped to help them become better sleepers. 

 

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16Jan

Help! My cat is waking me up every night…

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Sleep
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cat1

So it turns out I need a cat whisperer.  

After months and months of our cat waking us up every night to be let out, my husband had had enough.  So I looked up online to see if there is anyway I can get the cat to stop waking us up.  I really had to laugh.  It is my job to help parents with the same thing and I never thought to transfer the same ideas over to the cat.

Consistency and Routine.

HAHA!

It is what I preach everyday and I even knew it, but I wasn’t doing it.  Which makes me think about how many parents are aware of what they are supposed to be doing, but aren’t doing it.

So with routine, the website says, “Be sure that you set up a routine for your cat.  Feed him at the same time every day, have play time about the same time everyday.”  So I was feeding my cat whenever I got around to it, and sometimes not at all if I forgot.  I have two little ones and sometimes they would want to feed the cat in the middle of the day and I thought, “Hey, why not?”  I know why not, it breeds insecurity, apparently with cats as well.  

With consistency, the website says, “If you consistently interact with your cat when they are meowing at night, then they will continue to meow.  But if you stop interacting with them, then they will stop meowing at night.”  It is hard to be consistent because I know that if I just let my cat outside, then I can go back to sleep.  But if I don’t, then he will continue to meow for the next hour or so.  But the website then says, “Inconsistency will lead to your cat continuing to wake you at night.  If you are consistent with not interacting, then your cat will no longer wake you after 10 days to 2 weeks.”

So we are on night three of my new plan.  I have been feeding my cat at 8 am and 5 pm for three days straight and he has meowed for about a half an hour for two nights and we didn’t interact with him.  It hasn’t been too bad because now we have a plan.  Before, it just drove my husband crazy because it felt like we didn’t have control, but now we have a plan and we are a united front!

Lessons learned:


1) You get into a rut and think that what you are experiencing is the only option.  But it’s not.


2) Inconsistency breeds insecurity and unwanted behavior.


3)  Making a plan is the first step to changing behavior


Turns out, all I needed was a cat whisperer!



This article is © Copyright – All rights reserved http://boulderchildwhisperer.com

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15Dec

“Don’t wake the baby!” How to keep one sibling from waking the other

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Siblings Sleep
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siblings

When you have one child, you do just about anything to not wake the baby.

But then you have another child.  And now you have extra work to not wake the baby.

Here’s the thing:

Children learn how to sleep.  


So a child who is born in a really hot humid climate, will know how to sleep in a hot humid climate. (My children cannot sleep if it is over 75º however…)

A child who is born into a noisy household, will know how to sleep though all the noise.

A child who is born with a barking dog, will know how to sleep even when the dog is barking all of the time.

A child who is born with a twin will be able to sleep though the other child’s wailing.

It is a common frustration for mothers with toddlers and babies to feel like they need to indulge the toddler’s every whim to keep them from waking the baby, but they aren’t doing anyone a favor.  The new baby will learn how to sleep with the other child crying/ screaming.  And when I say “learn” I am implying that there will be times that the baby does wake due to the noise.  These times will be super frustrating, but just like anything and everything with having children, “this too shall pass.”

So when your older child is screaming because you have set the limit of no more milk at bedtime, then stick with that limit even though it will wake the baby. 

And when you have a bunch of people over to your house, let the older children be loud even though that will wake the baby.  

When you stop breast feeding one child at night which causes a lot of tears and might wake the other child, stick to your new plan even though it creates a lot of disruption.  The other child will learn to get through this as well.  

We can do hard things and we can learn new things.

I was fortunate enough to have two babies that woke each other and I learned from watching them, that they learn to sleep through each other’s screams.  Did they wake sometimes from the noise?  They sure did, but then they also learned to sleep through the noise and eventually became great sleepers.  It taught me that we have trained the adults to create a sterile sleeping environment that doesn’t emulate real life and once we realize that kids can learn to sleep through anything, then we can hold boundaries for our other kids. 

So the take away from all of this- is that you will wake the baby. The baby will survive and everyone will eventually get sleep.  And babies who learn to sleep through all of the noise often become better sleepers in the end.  

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2Dec

I missed the pumpkin pie! (but I kept my word..)

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Positive Parenting Sleep
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pumpkin

Thanksgiving came and went and of course was delicious and relaxing.

We were still at my mother’s house a couple of days later when my boys were still having difficulty going to bed.  There was so much going on during bedtime, that every night it took an hour or more of them wanting mom or dad before finally falling asleep.  After three nights of this, we had a little talk.

“I know that it is harder to go to bed with so much going on, but Mama needs to help clean up so I can’t spend too much time in here with you guys.  So tonight I can lay down with you for ten minutes, and then I need to go and there won’t be any fussing. Ok?”

“Ok.”

So I laid down with them for about ten minutes and then I got up to go.

“Mama no go! Mama lay down!”

“I’d love to lay down with you longer, but I need to finish cleaning up the kitchen.”

“Ok.  Mama clean up kitchen and then mama come back and lay down.”

So I said “Ok, I’ll clean up and then I’ll come back to check on you but I won’t be able to stay”.

I left and they didn’t fuss at all.  I went back to the kitchen and of course, everything was cleaned up already so I just put a couple of toys away and sat down and relaxed for a minute.

My mother was getting the leftover pie ready for our last go at it and I could have left the boys because they were quiet, they were happy and they probably would have fallen asleep on their own at this point.  But I told them that I would come back.   I sat there for a moment, seriously pondering my choices: hang out with the adults and eat the leftover pie or go back in and probably create more of a problem when everything was going just fine.

So I kept my word.  I went back into the boys’ room.  Both of them were almost asleep and I pretty much woke them back up.  But I built trust that evening.  It took another 15 minutes to get out of there again and it took them even longer to fall asleep.  But for that one evening where I missed eating the pie (and my ice cream was mostly melted) I gained many more years of trust.

This article is © Copyright – All rights reserved http://boulderchildwhisperer.com

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21Nov

The two hour (three hour, four hour..) bedtime routine

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Sleep
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We all know it, we have either been there, heard others talk of it, or are dreading the future inevitability of the two plus hour bedtime routine.

It starts out with the parent in charge: 

Put your pajamas on.  Brush your teeth.

And then about 45 minutes in, the children take over:

“One more story.”  “Mom?  Mo-oooom!”  “I need another drink.”  “I’m not TIRED!”  

You end up giving in to each demand because at the back of your mind, you are thinking, “If I don’t give them what they want, it will be two hours of screaming and and I just do this last thing, they will go to bed.”

But we also know in the back of our mind, that they won’t go to bed, they will just ask for something else.

Then we lay down with the children knowing that at least they will eventually fall asleep this way and at 10:30 pm we will finally have some time to ourselves.

But this is no way to live, for us or for the kids.

So what to do?

First, tell the kids that things are going to change.  Talk about the bedtime routine and even make a schedule with pictures and words.  Tell them that this is the only routine that you will have and there won’t be any additions or subtractions.  Then post the schedule somewhere where everyone can see it and everyone is on the same page.

Second, (and this is the HARD part), follow the routine.  Don’t stray like you previously have done.  Whenever your child starts to ask for something more, remind them, “Sorry, it’s not part of our routine.”  Kiss them goodnight, and then close the door and leave.

Will your child be happy about this?  Possibly, but probably not.  They may yell and scream.  They may try to leave the room.  You have some options here depending on your parenting styles.  But you don’t have the option to give in to their demands.  You can rub their back for a minute and leave them be for ten minutes and continue the one minute rub/ten minute break until they fall asleep.  You can close the door and stand guard.  You can lay down on their floor for two minutes.  But whatever you do, know that it will take a couple of days to two weeks for you to see any changes in behavior   They are used to getting what they want and you need to remind them that the routine has changed.

Stick to it!  Consistency is key.

Talk about their good behavior.  If they did really well on one thing (like brushing their teeth, or only asking for one story) then talk about how awesome that was even if they cried for 45 minutes after that.  

Talk about the new schedule with them (again!!) and tell that that they are going to do really well with it tonight.  

Stick to it!  The change won’t happen overnight.  It will take a while for them to get used to it, but they will get used to.  Children can adapt to anything. 


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15Nov

Children want order (even though all they do is create chaos)

Posted by: Suzy Burger Categories: Behavior Positive Parenting
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order

If you have children, you have chaos in your life.  They turn our whole lives upside down even if (especially if) we prefer order in our lives.  

But here’s the thing: Children want and need order in their lives too.

They need the same thing over and over and over in their lives.

They need the same bedtime (ish) every night.  

They need the same story read a zillion times.

They need the same food in front of them about 15-20 times before they feel comfortable with it.


They need the same people in their lives as much as possible.

They need the same song over and over a trillion times.

They need to know where the toys belong (box for cars, shelf for books, basket for food, etc)

They need the same consequence that they are done eating every time they throw their food.

They need to have the same holiday traditions every year until they are doing it for their kids as well.




They need toys that have all their pieces, aren’t broken and are organized. 

They need the same calm reaction to their tantrums that lets them know they are safe.

When children have order in their lives, they feel more secure.  When children feel more secure in their lives, they have fewer behavior issues. 

This article is © Copyright – All rights reserved http://boulderchildwhisperer.com

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