Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Did your child ever sleep?

My DD needs more sleep than average. This is not to say she was an easy sleeper as a baby. We did eventually sleeptrain (no rotten tomatoes, please--I was losing it and it worked quite quickly and well).We worked REALLY hard on establishing rhythms and we had strict bedtimes and naptimes. It sucked having to leave stuff early and be home (it actually isn't so great to be stuck home every day during nap) but if we were not strict about sleep, she was a nightmare. (Ha ha.)

DS has been an easier sleeper, but we have had issues with nightmares and fears. He has always done better when sleep-deprived than she does and has already dropped his nap (DD napped till mid-4).

I know this is another way these kids can be tough, but I do think the payoffs are worth it. There are mountains of research out there on the importance of sleep. Some people think some kids who "have" ADHD are mainly sleep-deprived. I also know a LOT of kids who are still not sleeping well at 6, 7, and 8 and they are definitely not all gifted...what they are is kids who have never really had a bedtime or learned to self-soothe. I am not at ALL saying everyone should CIO!!--but I do think it's important to keep trying and not just surrender to the whole "Well, the kid will sleep sometimes, right?" thing. DD would fight sleep like a maniac but man, she really needed it.

Hmm...
I think I've mentioned how DD screams in the car seat, right? Without giving up, too. But not always. She actually naps once in awhile now in the car seat. I had her scream one time for an entire hour ride home. I even stopped once. I was shaking and nearly crying. I didn't leave the house with her for almost a month after that. It was traumatic! She was basically limp and hyperventilating when we got home. I expect CIO won't work with this one.

The longest I was ever able to listen to her cry was 7 minutes (except for her colic - she cried and nothing could help til I got rid of dairy in my diet.) I put her in her co-sleeper and laid on the bed next to her, but she couldn't see me. The crying got worse. I think I tried this once a month for the first few months, right around when I felt like I was going to have a breakdown. Haven't done it lately.

Also, she cries just about every single time when she wakes up. She wakes up from naps and in the morning wailing. Does this mean she is still tired and wants to sleep more? I try to nurse her back to sleep, but it rarely works once she is up.

The thought of enforcing a schedule sounds amazing, but any schedule I make will be crap with DH getting home so late. I've been holding out hoping he gets a normal job. We eat dinner at midnight. It is terrible, but I can't finish dinner without some help usually because the baby isn't asleep and won't sleep (Well, I could if I made hamburger helper, but I won't.)

DS1 used to do this all the time. Once I went to visit a friend and her DS woke from a nap (quietly) and I said "Doesn't he cry when he wakes up?" When she and all the other mums said no I was totally baffled. I mumbled "but how do you know they are awake?"

I liked No Cry Sleep Solution because it seemed to me to be a middle ground that let me try to improve things without CIO that I didn't want to do and really didn't think would work with my DS's personality.

If a schedule isn't you, mabe a rhythm is better. For example we always do the same thing in the same order to get ready for bed, but we don't aslways start at the same time, and the bath might be a quick rinse or a long soak with toys, dependin how tired we all are.

Ok, We are going to try that. We woke up at 9:30 today and DD was still asleep, but I chose to pick her up and wake her. She actually woke up without crying this time.

That is funny, "how do you know they are up?" DD didn't cry one time while napping on the bed and I walked in to find her at the edge looking upset because she couldn't get down / was afraid (But I taught her her how to back off the bed after she crawled off one time at 7.5 months.) I have never used a monitor because she lets me know usually when she is up.

The shocking one for me was talking to a mom of a not-good-sleeper, who said something about crying and waking and stuff. To this point, we'd both thought our kids were pretty similar, that they both woke crying. But it became clear that by crying, she meant what I would have called "fussing" -- a short cry that resolves itself given 5 or 10 minutes. I never really did tell her that DS would cry himself sick on waking unless I was there within a couple of minutes. I did tell her "oh, no, I don't go if he's only crying like that." That was enough, I think, she didn't need to know the rest.

Do some people actually get the NCSS to work without serious crying? When we tried it, we ended up with 24/7 inconsolability really fast. He also cried for hours at bedtimes, getting so upset he had trouble latching on when offered a boob... which was completely uncharacteristic. I didn't find the actual content of NCSS to be distinct from Ferber, from the child's perspective.

The worst story I've ever heard about infant sleep was a friend of mine whose baby (I didn't know them at the time) actually did not sleep. He micronaped, for seconds at a time, but he never actually slept for longer than that. They not only survived, but managed to have a second, and the kid now sleeps "ok." Sleep is hard for everyone, even people whose kids sleep 16 hrs a day at 2.

Oh: and the crying on waking thing... apparently that's a marker for kids who will not cry to sleep/sleep train successfully. I think there are a lot more kids who can't be sleep-trained than people admit. The research I've seen suggests a LOT MORE, like maybe even more than half of all kids. I don't remember the numbers exactly.

I get a bit miserable talking about sleep, but I think it's really important for people to realize that sleep training doesn't always work, that it's hard for everyone, and that there really isn't a great method that's genuinely gentle. Babies should have more alloparents. That's the real solution. We got some very serious flack over admitting our difficulties, despite the fact that similar situations are actually quite common.

Blech. I get mad about this stuff. But I'm too tired of being mad to be actually mad, so now I'm just crabby.

-Mich

If your child cries then you are not doing it the right way... hence the title, LOL! And I have to disagree about it being indistinct from Ferber. It could not be more opposite to that way of thinking!! Whatit aims to do is help to move dependence on mommy for self-soothing to another object/routine. As with anything, it does not work for everyone and requires much patience. With any kind of challenge in child-rearing there are many different approaches. Our job as parents is to pick & choose what works with our own style, often via trial and error. I think that NCSS worked for us because we were absolutely at the end of our ropes and here was a lady with a similar outlook on parenting who had a step-by-step plan to help us work through our problem. When you are that sleep-deprived you are not capable of coherent thought and you often end up reacting out of frustration. Different things work for different families and I try desperately to stay out of 'cry it out' discussions with my peers as much as possible. With DD, letting her cry was just not an option. She spent 75% of the day crying due to colic and being put down occasionally so mommy could use the bathroom or cook a meal, it seemed cruel to move her up to 100% if I could prevent it.

Yes; to equate it with Ferber seems very unfair to the author. I wouldn't say it "worked" for us exactly, but it did help, and did not involve extra crying. In particular, I found the advice about unlatching before DS was completely asleep very helpful, although I also found it took some learning to be sure about when was the right moment. I do remember that during that learning process, there were a few times when I unlatched him too soon and he got distressed. As far as I remember now, I then modified what I was doing so that if that happened once, I took it as my mistake and let him stay latched on until he was completely asleep that time - it wouldn't have seemed fair to risk repeated distress. Once I learned to read him better, though, I could take him off when he wasn't quite asleep but was close enough to it not to mind, and I think it may have helped with reducing the number of times he needed me on waking in the night. This segued pretty naturally into a last feed that wasn't a feed to sleep but was followed by his reading to himself, and then falling asleep by himself. Even when all it was doing was making me lie there for 10 mins instead of 30, it was a help! I think avoiding completely the crying to sleep, and the "stay there in the dark OR ELSE" stuff, has contributed to bedtimes being low stress here to this day. I remember friends being impressed when my toddler would be heard singing to himself and would a bit later go quiet, without needing to be put back to bed multiple times. Though of course, you never know whether anything you did really made a difference, he might have been like that anyway...

I ABSOLUTELY AGREE!

Take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm not a doctor and don't know if what I'm about to suggest will hurt your child.

Melatonin

My daughter was exactly like this until about 9-12 months. One time, on a trip to my wife's family's house,(an hour away), she screamed the whole way there and then kept screaming after we got there. Probably about three to four hours total. We tried everything to make it stop. Eventually the sound of shower water stopped her.