Dr. Estiville's method reviews. How to teach a child to sleep. The revolutionary method of Dr. Estiville. Greetings from Dr. Edward Estiville

The method of the Spanish doctor Estivil, described in the book "SLEEP QUIETLY" (FATE LA NANNA), Part One. Retelling by Polina Gelfreikh
What to do if your baby starts to burst into tears as soon as you say it's time for bed? What to do if your baby wakes up 5-10 times a night? What to do if you think that the child sleeps too much or too little?
The answers to all these questions are given in his book by the Spanish doctor Estiville, a specialist in sleep disorders. All examples in this book are taken from real life. The author of the book is a renowned professor at the Barcelona Center for Research and Treatment of Sleep Disorders.
My experience
CHAPTER 1

The child does not sleep, respectively, we do not sleep either. What happens to those who don't get enough sleep? A baby is not a machine, and when you are discharged from the hospital, you are not given instructions for it, as, for example, when buying a washing machine. Then everyone starts giving advice to parents (relatives, friends, neighbors, etc.), especially if they hear the baby crying. Many say: "We must wait out the first months, then she will sleep like all children, where will she go." Many come up with reasons: at first he does not sleep, because he is too small, then because of his tummy, then because of his teeth, etc. Some give advice: "Leave crying, in the end he will calm down and fall asleep." Parents come up with all sorts of individual methods: carry in the car, leave to sleep under the TV, etc.
We must finally admit: sleep is a serious thing, and it must be treated from a professional point of view, since not all children learn to sleep on their own without outside help.
Effects of childhood sleep problems on young children
- often crying
- often in a bad mood
- feels not loved enough
- overly dependent on parents/grandmothers
- growth retardation is also possible
For a student
- lower performance compared to abilities
- lack of confidence as a personality trait
- timidity
- character problems
For the parents of such a child
- self-doubt (are we doing the right thing?)
- feelings of guilt (poor thing, maybe she is not sleeping because she is suffering from something, and we cannot help and then get even more angry)
- mutual accusations of parents that the other spoils the child
- Feeling confused about a problem
- Feeling like nothing can be done
- deep physical and moral fatigue
That is, the consequences of poor sleep are manifested in the behavior and character of the child.
The child does not sleep well - does not rest well - feels anxiety, small children do not calm down due to excessive fatigue, but, on the contrary, are excited. A tired child who wants to sleep almost never asks himself to go to bed, but on the contrary, he may show increased activity and excitability - he cries often and for no reason, easily gets into a bad mood and wants more attention from his parents - begins to depend too much on who cares for him. In the future, this can lead to the formation of an insecure and timid character, problems in communicating with others, reduced academic performance, etc.
The impact of poor sleep on health is not yet fully understood, but it has been clearly established that sometimes poor sleep can also lead to growth retardation, since growth hormones are produced during sleep (during the first hours of sleep)

Critical age 5 years. If a child has not learned to sleep well before the age of 5, in adulthood he has a high chance of having insomnia, 5 years is the border. At this age, the child already understands well what parents want. Many children at this age go to bed, do not cry, do not call their parents, but the problem is not resolved, as they continue to fall asleep with difficulty and wake up often, only now they keep it to themselves. In the worst cases, the child has nightmares and other nighttime problems and cries that he does not want to go to bed. From adolescence, insomnia remains for life.
Sometimes parents do not even understand the seriousness of this problem, it seems to them that everything will pass with age. In fact, 35% of children suffer from sleep problems before the age of 5. But these data are underestimated, since many parents believe that it is normal if a child from 6 months to 2-3 years old (and sometimes even further) does not want to go to sleep, wakes up 3-5 times at night, explaining this by hunger, the desire to drink, write, etc. Therefore, surveys often do not give correct results. 35% - the statistics of our center for the treatment of sleep problems.
From 6-7 months, the child is able to sleep alone in his room, in absolute darkness and for 10-12 hours without waking up and without requiring the presence of adults.
If your child is not sleeping as described above, it is natural for you to ask yourself: what is going on, what is wrong? Why isn't our baby sleeping then?
Forget the excuses you used before: gas (passes by 4-5 months), teeth, hunger, thirst, too much energy, went to kindergarten, etc. The reason is 98% the same: Your child has not yet learned to sleep! Like this? -you ask. - What does it mean?
You will discover this in later chapters. If you literally follow all our instructions, then in less than one week your child will turn into a night sleeper.
Before you start reading the other chapters, you should convince yourself of the following things:
- your child is not sick (if he sleeps poorly, this is not a disease and it cannot be treated with medicines: valerian, motherwort decoctions, etc.)
- your child does not have any psychological problems (excuses like: wakes up because he feels parting with his parents, etc.)
your child is not spoiled (even if everyone tries to convince you otherwise). If he does not sleep well, this is by no means the consequences of being spoiled, even if this is expressed in the fact that he constantly requires the attention of his parents, wants to be lulled, rocked, carried in his arms, read to him, etc.
-If your child does not sleep well, it is not your fault.
Our book will help you teach your child to sleep.
The 3-4 hour cycle of an infant consists of the following elements; food-sleep-hygiene (change diapers, etc.) The order may change (hygena-sleep-eating). Sometimes there are anarchist newborns. They do not even follow this simple pattern, that is, they fall asleep and wake up without any logic.
At about 3-4 months (sometimes even a little earlier), babies usually begin to adjust to a 24 (25) hour cycle, the so-called solar cycle. So he starts sleeping more at night. At first, the baby is able to sleep only 3-4 hours at night without waking up, then 5-6, then 7-8 and, finally, 10-12 hours. ATTENTION: there are no clear rules for the ratio of sleep duration with age, it all depends on the individual characteristics of your baby. This addiction to the adult cycle is associated with the development of a certain area of the brain, conventionally called the "internal clock".
To properly adjust this internal biological clock, certain external stimuli are needed (light-darkness, noise-silence, a meal schedule, certain habitual actions, etc.). Therefore, it is better for a newborn to sleep during the day with light light and little noise, and at night in silence and complete darkness. So the child begins to get used to the difference between night and day.
Thus, the child must be surrounded by certain external stimuli for correct orientation. Briefly, it boils down to two aspects:
Parental behavior
-feeling of confidence
- calmness
- patience and desire to teach the child to sleep
- repeatability in evening procedures
External elements
-bed
-pacifier
-toy (bear, dog, doll, etc., with which you can sleep)
Parental behavior
The child is very sensitive to the internal psychological state of the parents. He perfectly understands if mom is nervous or worried about something. Therefore, when you put the baby in the crib, try to be as calm as possible for these half an hour and demonstrate with all your behavior that it cannot be otherwise, that it is natural and wonderful to go to sleep. You can't change the way you put him in the crib. Everything should always be almost the same (within reason). That is, at a certain hour, everything should be repeated: you bathe him, then feed him, then change his diapers for the night, put him in the crib, turn off the light, wish him good night and go out. The order of your actions may be different, the main thing is that it should be repeated every evening.
Repeatability gives the child confidence. He knows what will happen in 5-10 minutes, then in half an hour, and he feels safe. The kid is not alert, does not expect unforeseen surprises, and therefore calms down. If on different days the child is placed in the crib by different persons (mother, grandmother, etc.), adults should agree among themselves not to change the order of procedures and try to do everything as much as possible in the same way.
External elements
The child must associate certain things with sleep. If you put a baby to sleep by rocking him in your arms, he understands that rocking is a dream. Accordingly, as soon as you stop pumping it, it wakes up and in order to fall asleep again, it needs to be rocked. If the baby falls asleep at the breast, he gets used to the fact that food is a dream. And he will fall asleep only at the sissy or with a bottle in his mouth. Accordingly, as soon as he feels that there is nothing in his mouth, he will wake up. At night, everyone, adults and children wake up for a few seconds. Usually, a person then falls asleep and in the morning does not even remember about it. In older people, these awakenings can last longer than 30 seconds and reach 3-4 minutes. In a normal situation, a person remembers that he woke up only under exceptional circumstances. A normal child wakes up at night (for a few seconds) 5-8 times, and a child with problem sleep and more. If the child, when he opens his eyes for a moment, finds everything the same as it was when he fell asleep, he automatically falls asleep and sleeps on. If he is used to the fact that sleeping means riding around the house in a wheelchair, he will expect to be in a wheelchair and go around the house. If he fell asleep at his mother's breast, he will look for the breast. If he falls asleep in his father's arms, he will look for his father, etc. If, opening his eyes at night, the baby does not find exactly the same situation in which he fell asleep, he gets scared and cries to call his parents. In the worst case, he will not be able to fall asleep without repeating his favorite situation.
An example for you: you fell asleep in your bed. Open your eyes for a second at night and see that you are on the sofa in the living room. You jump on the couch: what happened??!! Why am I here??? The same happens with the child. As you understand, the child needs external elements, and here - attention - the mistake of most parents is that they choose elements that require their presence. The child cannot make his own bottle, he cannot walk around the house in a stroller, etc. Therefore, these are incorrectly chosen elements.
Therefore, it is necessary to choose elements that can stay with the child all night and that do not require our intervention. It can be a teddy bear, a pacifier, his pillow, a blanket. The child should always fall asleep only in his own bed, etc.
Let's talk about this in more detail later.
Things to Never Do When Trying to Put a Baby to Sleep (over 6 Months)
-sing
- rocking in the crib
- swing by hand
- rocking in a wheelchair
- carry by car
-touch him, give him a hand, let him touch us
- caress, pat on the head
- put parents in bed
- let him jump around the bed / room to exhaustion in the hope that then he will fall asleep faster
-give food and drink
Bottom line: never actively help your child sleep. He must learn to fall asleep on his own.

A newborn sleeps differently than a 4-month-old baby, and he does not sleep like a 2-year-old baby. Sleep patterns develop over time with age. In this chapter, we will explain to you what to expect from your baby at a certain age. If you pay due attention to sleep and falling asleep from birth, you will not have problems in the future.
How to teach a newborn. The main thing you need to know is that the newborn sleeps as much as he needs - no less, no more. He can fall asleep anywhere and with any noise. As mentioned above, his cycle is usually 3-4 hours. Ate, slept, pooped, changed, etc. If your newborn doesn't follow any pattern, don't worry - it's completely normal. At this stage, food and sleep are closely related, so the baby wakes up because he wants to eat and falls asleep because he is full. However, you need to be careful here: if the baby is crying, this does not necessarily mean that he is hungry (many mothers breastfeed right away, as this is the easiest way to calm the baby, but this is wrong). First (if the child has recently eaten - the interval should be 3-4 hours) try to find other reasons: is he hot? Cold? is he wet? wants to handle? tired of noisy society? tummy hurts? Only then give him the breast. If you breastfeed him every time he cries, the baby will get used to associating the breast with sleep and comfort. He will get used to the fact that in order to calm down, you need to eat. In just a few weeks, babies are able to eat more than they need. If you give him your milk, there is no medical problem, but it still leads to bad habits, since the feeling of sleep and hunger are controlled by the same part of the brain. In addition, such children grow up into adults who, when nervous, begin to eat everything in order to calm down. If you feed him artificial milk, too much feeding can lead to obesity in early childhood or adulthood.
It is not yet the time for hard scheduling. However, we advise you to show your child the difference between sleep and wakefulness. If he is not sleeping, take him in your arms, play with him, talk. If he is awake, try not to keep him in the crib. This will help him understand that the crib is a place to sleep (see the previous chapter on external elements).
During the day, put him to sleep in a light light, and at night do not leave a nightlight on. So the child will learn to understand the difference between night and day.
During the day, do not tiptoe, even if the baby fell asleep, but at night try not to make noise behind the wall or in the same room. During the day, you can vacuum, play the piano, etc. In the evening, when the baby is already in the crib, turn down the volume on the TV, etc.
Bathe it before bed. Some parents prefer to bathe their baby in the morning, but if you are more comfortable doing it in the evening, the baby will have another external element associated with sleep. He will quickly get used to the fact that after the bath he goes to sleep.
Give him maximum sleep comfort. If he has just eaten, hold him upright so that he releases air from his stomach. Change his clothes, check that the crib is not too cold, that the room is about 20 degrees.
From birth, the baby should get used to sleeping on its own. Try not to rock him in your arms. Try not to associate food too much with sleep. However, if at this age it still doesn’t work out, don’t be upset. Your baby is still too young. Be guided by common sense. In any case, it is useless to leave the baby to cry for hours.
Many children start sleeping 5-7 hours a night and earlier, but by 3-4 months, all children should do this. At this age, the biological rhythm changes. If initially you did not follow any rules (rocked the child, gave him the breast to put him to sleep), now the time has come to gradually change these habits.
Remember:
- you must be calm at the time of laying the baby
-help him connect some external elements with the hour of going to bed, you need to do the same actions every night before going to bed. Remember that for a child, repetition means a sense of security.
This is the age when it is already necessary to decide at what time the baby should go to bed. From a biological point of view, sleep in children is easiest in the summer between 20.30 and 21.00, and in winter - from 20.00 to 20.30 Choose daily routines that you will then repeat every evening: bathing, diaper change, 10 minutes of calm games with dad, etc. Pay attention to how your baby reacts to bathing - if he does not like water or is too excited, spend only short baths before going to bed, or move them all into the morning. It is better not to let the baby eat next to the crib to separate food-sleep. Spend a few minutes with the baby in another room (where he does not sleep), talk to him, play quiet games, etc. Then put him in the crib with his things - you can choose what you want; teddy bear, doll, pacifier (preferably a few, then it will not be difficult to find at night, for example, tie 4 nipples to the edges of a large handkerchief) The main thing is that what you give him can stay with him all night and does not require your repeated intervention. Kiss the baby, wish him good night. Then leave the room while the baby is still awake.
If you do everything right, the baby will enjoy the time before bedtime, he will recognize him and go to bed without any problems. However, if your baby, despite your efforts, does not lend itself to "education", do not worry: it is too early to talk about childhood insomnia before 6-7 months. It's just that your baby needs more time to transition to an adult cycle.
If he wakes up frequently during the night, check:
- are you sick?
- Too bundled up or cold?
- peed or pooped?
- Don't eat before going to bed? (if he is hungry, he should not eat at night, but the last meal should be larger)
Did your baby have gas (colic)? If so, he is used to waking up with stomach pain.
Help him. You can shake it, caress it and put it back in the crib. However, remember that your goal is to teach him to fall asleep on his own.
Attention: in the first weeks of life, the child never cries for no reason. Therefore, we must immediately try to understand what is the matter and help him. However, you will soon notice that the baby has different types of crying: he protests, he is hungry, he is wet, he is angry, he is bored, etc. Once you learn to distinguish crying for serious reasons from simple whimpering, do not run to the baby every time because of nonsense. Wait a few minutes - maybe he can fall asleep again.
From 6 months, any child should sleep less during the day (usually twice: after breakfast 1-2 hours and after dinner 2-3 hours) and more at night. At 7 months, the child should already have a meal-sleep schedule (eating 4-5 times a day, sleeping 10-12 hours at night without waking up).
If your baby is 6-7 months old, and he is not used to such a regime yet, start "education".
Good for a 6-7 month old baby
- established regular meal-sleep schedule
- eat 4-5 times a day
- sleeps 10-12 hours at night
- goes to bed willingly and without problems
If your child fits this description perfectly, don't get too carried away, as all sorts of small details can easily ruin a good sleep habit in a young child. Try to maintain the regularity of food-sleep and the repetition of activities before going to bed.
From the age of 7-9 months, the baby will no longer fall asleep if he is too tired. At this age, children know how not to fall asleep, even if they are very tired. Sometimes because they want to stay longer with their parents, sometimes because they are too tired or excited, etc. Don't let yourself be persuaded. Put the child to bed at the same time, repeating the same actions. Try not to stretch your actions to put the baby to bed for an hour (baby's dream). Children who already know how to speak quickly learn to bribe their parents: one more kiss, read another fairy tale, just one, etc., I'm thirsty, I want to write ... If the child insists on one more fairy tale, read him a well-known fairy tale in a monotonous voice. Do not read anything interesting and exciting to him at night! It prevents him from falling asleep!
After a year, the baby gradually moves from two daytime naps to one. This is a difficult time, as there is a period when one dream is not enough, and two is a lot, but the problem disappears in 1-2 months. After dinner, the child should sleep until 4 years old, and preferably up to 5-6. Many parents and caregivers allow a child not to sleep as early as 3 years old. This is too early. A child at three years old is able to stay awake during the day, but in this case he is too tired in the evening, he has too deep sleep, which in turn can lead to various problems (nightmares, etc.).
When we understand that the child has learned to sleep. The child can sleep well at 10 months, without visible problems. However, at least until the age of 5, one must be careful, as some event (moving, the appearance of a brother, etc.) can destroy good habits. As soon as you notice problems, apply the method described in Chapter 4. So our advice is: even if your child can already sleep, be careful, follow the evening procedures and schedule.
Last note: be realistic!!!
Many parents do not know how to be realistic and want the impossible from their children. If your child in the first month of life slept less than the norm for his age, then in three years after applying our method, he will sleep less. If he has learned to sleep, he will go to bed without problems, will not wake up at night, will sleep for 10 hours. But he will not become a dormouse if he is not a dormouse by nature!
Many parents rejoice when their children get a lot of sleep during the day (finally, you can mind your own business!). The child cannot sleep 4-5 hours after dinner and 12 hours at night! Even if you are very pleased that the child is sleeping, wake him up after 2-3 hours of sleep. A child should never sleep during the day without waking up for more than 3 hours!
Other parents put their baby to bed at 8 pm and want him to wake up at 10 am. A child is not a clockwork robot! He has his own biological rhythms, they must be respected, not destroyed!
The ideal pajama is one in which the child is not hot and in which he can sleep without a blanket. Little children always open up at night
CHAPTER 4

Let's start from the beginning, or how to fix a child's sleep habit. What is normal for a baby and what is not? When can we talk about childhood insomnia?
Many parents consider it normal to get up at night 2-3, or even 4-5 times to a one and a half year old child to give him a bottle. But this is NOT NORMAL, just like the case when an 8-month-old baby does not sleep until midnight without any signs of fatigue, or when a one-year-old baby starts screaming loudly as soon as mom puts him in the crib and wants to leave the room.
From 6-7 months of age, all children should be able to:
- go to bed without crying and with joy
- fall asleep on their own without help alone in the room
- sleep 10-12 hours without a break
- sleep in your own crib (and not in your parents' bed), in the dark without a night light on
This description applies to all healthy babies as long as they don't have colic (which usually goes away by 4-5 months), milk intolerance, colds, bronchitis, etc. If your baby is already 6 months old and is not sick but has not yet learned to sleep through the night, he may have problems with childhood insomnia in the future.
Children's insomnia is explained by:
- in 98% of cases, the wrong habit of sleeping
- in 2% psychological problems (see end of chapter)
Children's insomnia caused by wrong habits has the following characteristics:
- the child is unable to fall asleep without assistance
- wakes up at night (from 3 to 15 times) and cannot fall asleep again on his own and requires the help of parents (sickness, bottle, etc.)
- superficial sleep - the slightest noise can wake him up
- sleeps fewer hours than indicated in the table for his age
In such cases, parents resort to auxiliary methods: shake the baby, pat on the head, give food, drink, etc. The baby eventually falls asleep, but the problem is that when he wakes up again, you have to start all over again.
If you decide to change this situation, you must follow the following rule: you must strictly follow our instructions, follow them literally, the slightest deviation or change can lead to failure!
What does it take to develop a good sleep habit? Let's repeat the general rules:
- parents should be calm and confident in what they are doing, and also always follow the same pattern in behavior when laying the baby down, create a ritual.
- the child should associate sleep with external elements that can stay with him all night: a crib, a bear, a pacifier, a favorite blanket, etc.
So, let's forget the past and imagine that our baby was born today.
Let's start by choosing the outer elements. Remember that they should stay with the baby all night (that is, they should not be dangerous, too small for him to swallow, hard so that he does not hit in his sleep, etc.) and that they should not require our presence (for example, a bottle of tea is not suitable, since someone has to fill it at night). With a child of 2-5 years old, you can prepare a drawing to hang over the crib. After dinner, dad (mother) says to the baby: "Let's go to the room, draw a beautiful picture." The kid can draw the sun or a cloud over the house himself, and dad can add a bird or a tree, etc. Mom can prepare a carousel to hang over the crib (just cut out a doll, an airplane from paper, make a ball of shiny paper and hang it over the crib with a rope or elastic band). You don't have to create masterpieces, you can just buy something suitable. The main thing is that the child has something fundamentally new, which was not there before and that he likes.
If before every night you put him to bed in a different way, now you need to create a ritual. Decide for yourself what is more convenient for you: swimming, dinner, half an hour of play and in bed. What you decide now, you will have to do the same every evening.
Let us give you some advice. In accordance with natural biological rhythms, it is best to give the child the following schedule for eating: breakfast around 8 o’clock, lunch around 12, afternoon tea around 16 and dinner around 20. Try not to deviate too much from this schedule, as these are the biological rhythms of children. In any case, if for some reason you cannot adhere to this entire schedule, remember: the child falls asleep most easily in winter at 20.00-20.30, and in summer at 20.30-21.00. This is due to the peculiarities of the work of the brain of babies.
The first day of re-education. So, you are all set, the schedule and the evening ritual is selected. After dinner, dad (mother, grandmother) play calm games with the baby for 10-15 minutes, then they hang the drawing together over the crib. They explain that this is a poster, and that he will sleep all night with the baby. If the baby is still sleeping with a pacifier, buy him a few, spread them around the crib so that it is easy for the baby to find at least one in the dark. If you don't think this through, your baby will wake you up at night so you can help him find a pacifier and then - goodbye, re-education!
The second step: mom or dad chooses a toy from those that the baby already has and gives him a name. After that, they say to the baby: This is your friend Mishka (Petya, etc.). He will sleep with you all night. Do not let the baby choose: remember, we know how to sleep and teach him, not he us, now you decide. Even if your child is 4 years old, in this situation we must treat him like a newborn who still does not know and does not know how.
If you must deprive your baby of something that he had before (a bottle, etc.), explain to him that his new night friends replace the old ones and that they will stay with him all night and in the morning when he wakes up they will still be with him.
Remember
- the requests and demands of the baby at the time of bedtime can affect the correct sleep habit
- the child should not tell his parents how he should sleep and what he needs for this, in this situation, parents are teachers, and children learn to sleep, and not vice versa. The calm, confident tone of the parents should show this to the children.
So, it's time to put your baby in the crib. Act like you do it every day. Calmly change your baby's clothes, put him in the crib and cover. Do not expect the baby to close its eyes, turn on its side and snore. Firstly, the baby has not yet been "reeducated", and secondly, he has already realized that you have prepared some kind of surprise for him. Most likely, he will immediately jump to his feet and start screaming in a wild voice as soon as he realizes that his mother wants to leave the room. Don't try to put it down right away. Sit next to the crib or take him on your lap and tell him: "Kitty, mom and dad want to teach you how to sleep. Look, you are not alone: your bear, drawing, etc. are with you. They will all sleep with you all night." This speech will take between 0.5 and 2 minutes. Depends on what you include in the list (curtains, bike next to the crib, etc.). The main thing is not to get annoyed and speak calmly. It does not matter at all whether the child understands well what you are saying to him. Most likely, during your entire speech, the child will scream like a cut in the hope that he will be able to return to the old days. Ignore the crying, keep talking. These are moments that require willpower and courage from you. Your kid will be ready for anything not to lose his "privileges". Here is just a short list of what children in our practice were capable of in order to pity their parents and return "their happy past": children sobbed, made sad faces, asked to drink, write and eat, threw tantrums with hiccups, caused themselves to vomit, poop, etc.
Despite all this performance that your baby will suit you, you must not lose your calm and remember: you teach him to sleep, not he teaches you. You are doing this for his future, for his health, and for your nervous system.
After your short speech above, put the baby back to bed.
Attention: after this point, it cannot be touched until the next morning. If he gets up again, don't mind. Say, "Good night, fish (pussy, etc.)", turn off the lights and leave the room. Leave the door almost completely closed (small crack to hear what's going on).
Attention: there is no difference what age the baby is: 6 months or 5 years. The only difference is how he can fight you. A six-month-old baby can only cry, and a 4-5-year-old can talk, scream, beg, get out of the crib, etc. In this case, we advise you to organize some kind of barrier to exit the room.
Do not lock the door, etc. This may terrorize your child! Do not be afraid if he falls asleep on the floor, etc. Firstly, children rarely do this, because they love convenience, and secondly, even in this case, the goal is achieved - the baby fell asleep on his own. All you have to do is put him on the bed.
Up to this point we have considered the point of view of adults. But how does the baby feel in such a situation?
Children communicate with adults according to a certain pattern: action-reaction. Children do certain things because they expect certain reactions. Consider the situation: a six-month-old baby. They put him in the crib, he begins to sing "ah-ah-ah-ah" and clap his hands. What will mom and dad say? "What a bunny!" And they will mind their own business. But the same baby starts screaming like a cut one, becomes brown-red or purple, hiccups. What are parents doing? They run: “Bunny, are you ill? What happened to you? Do you have a stomach ache? Cutting teeth? Kitty, now mom (dad) will shake you (scold on the handles, etc.) ”. What does the baby like more: lying alone in the crib or being the center of attention of all relatives? What will the baby do the next time he wants the attention of his parents? And what will a child of 4-5 years old do? He has enough imagination to make his parents back down first!
Let's go back to the bedding process. What will our 4 year old baby do when we give him his teddy bear? Maybe throw it on the floor. If you pick him up and give him again, what will he do? Throw the bear on the floor again. If we continue like this, who will win? Baby!!! Because he made a certain action and achieved the desired reaction. You fell for his bait! If your baby threw a teddy bear, a pacifier, a blanket, a pillow on the floor, and you continue to talk calmly, then collect everything, put it in his bed, turn around and leave the room despite his wild cries, who will win?
Another example: you put the baby in the crib, and he immediately rises to his feet. You put it down again, it rises again. You do not want to put him to bed all night, but he wants to continue this game for as long as possible, because in this way he completely owns your attention. So put him in the crib and leave the baby alone. If he wants to go up, let him go up as much as he wants.
What else can a baby do to get your attention? “I want to drink”, “ah-ah-ah”, “bo-bo”, etc. The child may even make himself vomit. Don't worry, nothing happens to him. Wash it, change the sheet and put it back in the crib. You can be nervous (but don't show it outwardly). Remain outwardly calm and determined: your child must learn to sleep. The kid can also scream and cry like a cut (then tell the neighbors that his ears hurt, poor thing). In such a situation, the baby can cry so loudly that the windows of the neighbors opposite can ring. But you take courage and hold on: your "war" has just begun, and fortunately it will last only a few days. However, we cannot leave the baby to cry for long. Why? Because "re-educate" does not mean to punish. Usually parents are advised to leave the baby to cry until he falls asleep from fatigue. Never do this!
When you first leave the room, take a look at the clock: until the baby falls asleep, you will have to return to his room from time to time. REMEMBER: you are not returning to comfort him, and not to make him stop crying, and not to put him to sleep. But only to show him that you have not abandoned him. How often should you return to the baby? Consider the table below, it all depends on the day of re-education and what time you return. The table shows the intervals in minutes.
How many minutes should I wait before returning to the room where the baby is crying?
1 day -1 min (1 time) 3 min (2 times) 5 min all subsequent times
Day 2 - 3 min (1 time) 5 min (2 times) 7 min all subsequent times
Day 3 - 5 min (1 time) 7 min (2 times) 9 min all subsequent times
Day 4 - 7 min (1 time) 9 min (2 times) 11 min all subsequent times
Day 5 - 9 min (1 time) 11 min (2 times) 13 min all subsequent times
Day 6 - 11 min (1 time) 13 min (2 times) 15 min all subsequent times
Day 7 - 13 min (1 time) 15 min (2 times) 17 min all subsequent times
Note: This table should be used both in the evening and at night if the baby wakes up at night.
What should a parent who returned to the baby do? I must once again tell him in a calm voice: “Golden, you need to sleep. Mom and dad will teach you how to sleep now. You will sleep with your teddy bear and pacifier etc. Good night.” If the baby has crawled out of the crib by this time, you need to put him back there. If the baby is not able to get out, we need to stop far enough from him so that he cannot cling to us. After this little speech, you should calmly leave the room. When you return to the baby, do not turn on the light. If the baby is crying, do not react, continue your speech, and then exit.
Never wait longer than indicated in the table; for a baby, the worst thing is to think that his parents do not love him and that they abandoned him. At the same time, try to gather all your strength and, although your heart will shed tears, try to gain strength for a few days and follow all the instructions: the results will exceed all your expectations!
Your returns will help the baby understand that he will not achieve anything with tears and screams and then that going to bed is not so scary. How long can your baby cry? Depends on the specific case. The most persistent, however, usually do not scream for more than 2 hours. Many give up after an hour. If the baby wakes up at night, everything must be done as in the evening. The child does not understand schedules, does not understand the difference between night and evening, so you have to go in and out again, and say the same words
Psychological problems - 2% when the method does not work. The reasons can be temporary, such as: divorce, parents are especially nervous due to some serious problems, they moved to sleep from their parents' room to a separate one, a brother was born, went to kindergarten, saw a scary movie on TV, etc. You need to determine what the reason is and try to eliminate or weaken it. Because of the movie, the first day in kindergarten, etc., the child may not sleep well for 2-3 days. Problems that last for a long time should be treated by a psychotherapist or neurologist. For more details, see chapter 7.

How long should a baby sleep? Children are all different. There are dormouse among them, there are those who sleep much less than the norm. Here are the average data - how many hours a day your child should sleep: 1 week ... 16-17 hours, 3 months ... 15 hours, 6 months ... 14 hours, 12 months ... 13 hours 45 minutes, 18 months ... 13 hours 30 minutes, 2 years ... 13 hours, 3 years ... 12 hours, 4 years ... 11 hours 30 minutes, 5 years ... 11 hours.
Your child can sleep up to two hours more or two hours less. If the baby does not meet the specified standards, pay attention to the following points.
The baby sleeps less than normal and:
- easily irritated
- capricious
- sometimes looks sleepy
- has difficulty concentrating, often seems inattentive
- he has moments when he looks at one point with an absent look
If the baby sleeps less than normal and he has any of the above behaviors, then he should sleep more. If he sleeps less than normal, but he does not have any of the above signs, then everything is in order and your child just needs less sleep.
The baby sleeps more than normal and:
- gains in height and weight according to the norms
- attentive
- active when awake
If you answered "yes" to all three questions, don't worry, fate gave you a sleepy baby." If you answered "no" to at least one question, talk to your pediatrician about it and check the child's health.
How to change the baby's daily routine? There are babies who sleep a lot during the day, but little at night. Or those who willingly go to bed at 7 pm, but at 5 am they already wake up. In such cases, you can gradually change their mode in accordance with your wishes.
If the baby sleeps a lot during the day and little at night, do not let him sleep a lot during the day, even if it is convenient for you. Find in the table how much sleep should be according to age, estimate how many hours you want him to sleep during the day and how much at night. Make a schedule. In any case, it is better not to let the baby sleep more than 2-3 hours during the day (if he sleeps only 1 time during the day). Ideal - 10-12 hours at night, the rest during the day. For example:
18 months - daily sleep 13.30 (night 11 and day 2.30 or night 12 and day 1.30)
If your little one falls asleep at 7 pm and wakes up too early, you can move his schedule forward by sending him to bed half an hour later in the week. That is, the first week he will go to bed at 7.30, the second at 8.00 and the third at 8.30. In any case, it is better to put him to bed no later than 8.30 - 9.00. Again, even if it is convenient for you, the habit of going to bed late for young children can develop into serious problems in the future. See the previous chapters for the ideal schedule. If half an hour is too much for the baby, shift sleep by 15 minutes a week (7.00 - 7.15-7.30, etc.). Everything else (evening procedures before bedtime) should remain as before.
CHAPTER 6

Nighttime disturbances may or may not wake the child. This is a half-sleep state: sleepwalking, nightmares, phobias, bruxism, nocturnal delirium, rocking movements. In childhood, these problems are usually not pronounced, the critical age is from 3 to 6 years.
Somnambulism (sleepwalking). A classic example: a five year old gets out of bed, turns on the light, goes to the bathroom instead of the toilet and pees in the tub or shoe, goes back to bed, turns off the light and goes to sleep. He doesn't remember anything the next day. Usually occurs in the first half of sleep. The causes are unknown, and there is no cure. It is usually inherited and resolves by adolescence. At night, the child automatically repeats the actions that he does during the day. He does not have clarity of consciousness and therefore "mistakes". But this is a harmless deviation.
We just need to take precautions. The lunatic never throws himself out of the window, but can get out of it by mistaking him for the door. Don't wake the child. If he wanders around the apartment, try to put him to bed again without taking him out of his state. Talk to him in simple phrases like: "Come here, lie down in the crib." Remember: even if his eyes are open, he is deeply asleep.
Nightmares. Occur in the second half of sleep (if the baby goes to bed at 8 pm, then after 2 am). These are terrible dreams. The child wakes up screaming, all frightened, but can explain what frightened him: "I was bitten by a dog, Vasya beat me," etc. Parents can reassure him: "Sleep, you see, there is no dog here." Usually these phenomena are associated with events in the life of the baby that bother him. Usually passes in a few days. If the problem remains in life, the nightmares remain. For example, if you force the baby to eat and for him every meal becomes torture. If your child has nightmares, you should not go to the doctor, you should try to calm him when he wakes up, and then understand what caused them and try to eliminate the cause. Do not take the baby to your bed.
Night phobias (fears). In the first half of sleep. The baby suddenly starts screaming, it seems that something is tormenting him very much. Parents find a baby pale, sweaty, not recognizing his parents. If parents do not know anything about these problems, they may think that the baby is dying. It usually lasts from 3 to 10 minutes. The baby does not understand what is happening, as he sleeps deeply. You need to stay with him, waiting for the attack to pass. He doesn't remember anything the next day. If the baby recognizes you and immediately calms down, then this is either a bad dream or a trick to get your attention.
Bruxism (teeth grinding). Ask your dentist if this is dangerous for your teeth. Although this is impressive for parents, this is not a problem, it will go away on its own with time.

Night nonsense. In the early morning, the baby may laugh, talk, cry and scream in his sleep. It's not scary, the only problem is that such cries can wake up the baby himself.
Swinging movements. Example: beats his head against the pillow, lies belly down and sways. Usually 9 months to 2 years. Usually nothing to worry about. If it swings like this during the day, check with a psychotherapist.
Snore. 7% to 10% of children snore. If in a dream this makes it difficult for the baby to breathe and he sleeps breathing through his mouth, contact a specialist.

CHAPTER 7
Questions and answers,
or how to resolve common problems.

When is the best time to start re-educating a baby? Now and only now. Of course, only under certain conditions:
Both parents agree to see things through
-both parents carefully read the book and understood each action well
Both parents have a good idea of how to react at any moment.
If either parent doesn't feel ready, it's best not to start, as success requires confidence and peace of mind. We repeat: children perfectly feel the mood of adults nearby. It is not necessary to start training at the time of the move, at least the first 10 days the baby should always sleep in the same place. Other reasons for postponing the event: guests who live in your house. Because there is nothing worse than comments from visiting relatives and friends: "Poor thing, how toil. Are you absolutely sure what you are doing?" or: "Now young people want everything easy. There is no patience at all. In our time, parents knew how to endure and not sleep if it was required for a child. He is so small!" As an obstacle, there are also neighbors who can go from caustic remarks and sympathetic sighs to threats: "We will call the police that you are mocking a child!"
For neighbors, we recommend doing this: select the most actively intervening in your affairs and call them in advance. Say, "Our poor little one has got otitis, we want to apologize in advance for his nightly crying. The pediatrician said he's going to be in a lot of pain for a few days and won't be able to sleep."
Who should do the sleep re-education? Mother? Dad? Grandmother? Nanny?
It doesn't matter who. It is important that those who put the baby to sleep (day or night) are well acquainted with the instructions. Adults can change (grandmother in the afternoon, mother in the evening). It is important that everyone works the same way. In the evening, you can take turns: once mom enters, the other - dad.
Can a child sleep with grandparents?
Parents are created to raise children, grandparents are created to pamper their grandchildren. This means that at least 10 days must pass from the beginning of re-education before leaving the baby with the grandmother. Don't try to convince grandma to act the same as you: it's usually useless. This is logical, given that their role is different. Only the basic rules need to be explained to the grandmother: what time does the baby go to sleep, that you don’t need to put him to sleep, and that you don’t need to forget all his things (bear, pacifier, etc.). Grandmothers usually do what they think is right anyway. Don't fight them over this. Kids are much smarter than they seem: they immediately understand that grandma's rules are different than at home. When the baby sleeps in your house, act like you always do.
However, if the baby sleeps with the grandmother every day, she will have to familiarize herself with these rules and follow them, otherwise it will not work to accustom the child to sleep.
Everyone who takes care of the baby every day must follow these rules.
What if the baby makes himself vomit or poops/pees to keep his parents at his crib?
Children often induce themselves to vomit in order to gain the sympathy of their parents. Even if this has never happened before, don't worry. DON'T BE ANGRY (or at least don't show it). Our goal is to teach the child to sleep, not to punish him. Change your baby, put him back in the crib, say something like: "See bunny, you are so angry that we teach you to sleep that you even ... peed / pooped / made yourself throw up. Look, here are your toys, your teddy bear, your pacifier, they will sleep with you all night." And leave the room. Do not stop, even if during all this time the baby yells like a cut. Act as if nothing strange is happening and the baby is calm. Remember: all the actions of your baby are aimed at getting extra attention. He wants to drink, sit on his hands, etc. Do not give him the desired result. Be calm and continue your line.
Do not change it immediately, wait a few minutes. Otherwise, the baby will begin to write every three seconds. Pees - mom runs, changes clothes - the baby gets attention right away - his goal is achieved!
Is it possible to re-educate a child if he is sick or fell ill after the start of education?
If the baby is sick, it is better to leave him alone and wait until he gets better. If he gets sick after the start, you will have to go to him every time he cries, especially if he has a fever. Give him some water to drink. But remember; you give him a drink because he has a fever, not to put him to sleep. Then repeat to him all the words about the bear and the pacifier and try to leave the room before you fall asleep. If you wake up, do not wait for minutes on the table, go to him immediately. As soon as the temperature, severe runny nose and cough that make breathing difficult, proceed to re-education according to the scheme. Remember, your little one will try to keep the privileges gained during the illness. Be calm, affectionate, but determined.
Why do some children sleep without problems from birth, while others become a horror for parents? Is this due to heredity?
The baby is born with a built-in "sleep-wake" mechanism set to 3-4 hours. Gradually (usually in the region of 2-3 months), this mechanism, called the biological clock (special brain cells) changes, adjusting to a 24-hour regimen. For some children, this process of restructuring occurs with problems, that is, it needs outside help, in setting up (schedule, external elements). Problems occur on average in 35% of cases. In the same family there can be children with and without problems. There is no exact scientific information as to why this happens.
Everyone knows that you can’t drink coffee at night, are there any bans on other children’s drinks or foods?
In the evening, it is better not to give the baby anything exciting to drink, since in difficult cases even the smallest pathogens can affect sleep. Better to avoid before bedtime: coffee, coca-cola, cocoa, chocolate, meat in large quantities. In the evening, it is better to give cereals, pasta, cookies (not chocolate).
Should I bathe my baby before bed?
You can bathe him whenever it suits you. This is an acquired habit and it is up to you how your baby gets used to it. If you bathe him in the evening, this could be another sleep-related item. It is important to wash the baby at about the same time. Try not to excite him by bathing. A relaxing swim can help you relax.
Can a toddler watch TV before bed?
Watching TV is not harmful to the child, just as it is not harmful to listen to the radio or music. It is harmful to watch a lot and without control. The kid can watch TV for no more than half an hour, it is better if in the presence of parents, who, if necessary, can explain what is happening. It is better to watch TV between 18 and 19 00, before starting the bed-laying procedures (dinner-bath-play-crib). You can not leave him in front of the TV after dinner or just before going to bed, because what he sees can excite him or he can fall asleep in front of the TV if he is very tired, which is unacceptable for the correct development of the sleep habit.
Our baby is afraid of the dark...
It just means that you have been doing a lot of things wrong so far. If the baby is used to sleeping with little light, he may wake up at night because the light is off. The kid realized that if he says: "I'm afraid" - the light will appear again, and most importantly, he will get the attention of his mother. It is necessary to make sure that the baby is not psychologically ill (it is easy to check: if he has serious psychological problems, he will be afraid of the dark at any time of the day, and not just when he needs to sleep). The problem at other times of the day manifests itself as follows: afraid to go to the toilet alone, watch TV if no one is in the room, afraid to go shopping with mom, etc. Fortunately, this type of problem is rare, usually the baby uses it as a trick to attract attention.
Once you've made sure your baby doesn't have any serious psychological problems, follow the instructions in Chapter 4.
What can cause insomnia in a child?
Change in habits and habitual course of life. For example, the appearance of a brother completely changes the life of the firstborn, who is no longer the favorite baby of the whole house. The same can happen due to the beginning of kindergarten attendance. Parents, first, should try to give enough attention to the baby during this difficult transition period and try to ensure that the arrival of the second child does not affect the sleep schedule of the first. That is, there is no need to make another common mistake: rocking the firstborn, putting him to bed in a special way, etc. You need to explain to him what changes have taken place and act as before. Usually, if the parents are attentive enough to the problem, the child will start sleeping well again after a few days. The same goes for moving to a new apartment. Explain to the child that he will have a new home, but that his crib, doll, etc. will continue to sleep with him in the future.
If you're already having problems, go to Chapter 4 and do another series of sleep training.
My baby sleeps more during the day than at night...
This means that your baby's biological clock has not yet been set. See chapter 5 for instructions.
Every night my 14 month old daughter wakes up and asks for water. I give her a bottle. Sometimes she doesn't even touch it, sometimes she drinks and then falls asleep. How can this behavior be explained?
Often children ask for milk or water at night, drink and eat, but this does not mean at all that they are really hungry or thirsty. Many babies realize by the age of a few months that if they cry at night they will be given a boob or a bottle. In most cases, babies just want human warmth, the presence of their parents, but they still do not know how to speak to explain this. They drink or eat a little to be with mom or dad, then fall asleep. Usually, this behavior of children leads to the fact that parents give them a drink for every night of crying. When these kids grow up, they learn to use this trick with even greater dexterity. They force parents to get up to them almost every night, as they now associate the bottle with sleep. Remember: the mere fact that a child asks for water does not mean at all that he is thirsty.
The child should drink during the day, not at night. A normal child, if he drinks enough during the day, does not need extra water at night. The same applies to sleep: if the baby eats well during the day and grows according to the norms, from 6-7 months he no longer needs night food. If he wakes up and demands food and drink, this only shows his poor sleep habit.
The only exception is when the baby is sick and has a fever. In this case, he may need to drink at night. But remember, you are giving your baby water to drink because he has a fever, not to put him to sleep.
My toddler goes to bed after 11pm as my husband comes home late and wants to see him. Can it harm our baby?
This situation occurs frequently and is easily explained. However, if you try to be sincere with yourself, you will understand that keeping your child up late to be with him or because it is convenient for you is a rather selfish measure. If you remember, in the chapter on schedules, we already said that the ideal time for going to bed, according to the biological needs of the child, is 20.00 - 20.30 in winter and 20.30 - 21.00 in summer. Therefore, it is useless to put the baby late during the day in the hope that he will last longer in the evening. It will only mess up his biological clock even more. It is also not true that if you put him to bed later, he will fall asleep and sleep better due to fatigue. Too tired children sleep worse.
So my advice is: Don't be selfish. Try to follow the natural biological needs of the baby. Remember that between the ages of 6 and 7 months, your baby should be helped to develop a proper sleep habit. Otherwise, in the future, he may have psychological and physical health problems.
How to understand if the baby is crying because of colic (abdominal pain, gas)?
Colic goes away between 3 and 5 months. Remember that calming a baby with a stomach ache is a rather difficult task. If you take the baby in your arms at night and he calms down in 2-3 minutes, then this is not colic. Colic does not appear only at night, the baby must cry during the day and in the evening for the same reason. So if your baby is over 5 months old, don't run to him as soon as he starts crying. Otherwise, the baby gets used to crying as loudly as possible to attract attention.
My baby doesn't sleep well because he's teething... This is one of the most common excuses for poor sleep. It is widely believed that the teeth give such pain that the baby cannot sleep peacefully at night. So: it has not been scientifically proven that the appearance of teeth is a painful process. If your baby wakes up "because of the teeth", most likely he woke up earlier (due to "colic", "hunger", "thirst", etc.) If your baby did not sleep well before, calm down about the teeth and start "re-educating".
We have twins. Can they sleep together?
Two children can safely sleep in the same room, subject to certain conditions. If both sleep well, no problem. If they are 6 months old, you can put them together. But if they sleep poorly (or one of the two sleeps poorly), it is better to separate them during bedtime. If you don't have that opportunity, train both together.
My son doesn't want to sleep during nap time. Maybe it's better to give it up? For a quiet hour, you need to behave in the same way as when laying the baby at night. If we feed a child for breakfast and for lunch with a spoon, I also don’t see the difference between going to bed in the afternoon and in the evening. Many children stop sleeping during the day by the age of three, when they start going to kindergarten. If a 3-year-old child does not sleep during the day, he will be too tired at night - his nightly sleep will be deeper - problems such as nightmares, sleepwalking, enuresis, etc. may appear.
The child should sleep during the day for at least 4 years, and preferably longer.
If for some reason your baby goes to bed later than the recommended time (at 21.30 or even at 22.00), we advise you to move the bed to an earlier time. Remember: it's about your baby's health! The recommended schedule is explained by biological rhythms ("biological clock"). If these clocks are not set correctly in early childhood, the child is at great risk of having various types of problems in the future (from poor school performance, problems concentrating, to poor growth and insomnia in adulthood). Some parents put off going to bed until later because the father comes home late from work and wants to see the baby. Don't give in to that temptation! These are your selfish tendencies, which in the future may turn into problems for your child.
How to retrain him to go to bed earlier? First, start waking him up early in the morning, don't let him sleep until 9-10 am if he goes to bed late. In no case do not skip daytime sleep in the hope that in the evening you will want to sleep earlier. In the evening he will be too tired to sleep well. Let him sleep during the day, but not too long: 1.5 - 2 hours. Put to bed earlier in the evening, do the same the next day, and so on until the desired schedule is reached.
How to teach a child not to disturb parents early in the morning?
Small children do not feel the time and they are not very interested in it. They wake up in the morning because they don't want to sleep anymore, not because "it's already 11am". Many children wake up early. If the baby woke up and cries, calls you, it is better to immediately go to him. It's no use pretending you don't hear.
If the baby is awake and talking to himself or playing in the crib, do not approach him, even if you are already up. So he will get used to occupying himself a little. Sometimes it helps to give the baby a bottle or a toy, dress him up and give him something interesting and maybe you can get another hour of sleep. If your child is already older, analyze why he wakes up so early. Did the tram outside the window wake him up? Lantern light? He is cold? Hot? If the baby wakes up for one of these reasons, try to eliminate them. If he wakes up because he has already slept, come up with some activity prepared for him in the evening: leave it on a chair next to the bed at night, so that he can get it himself, coloring and pencils, a bottle of tea, a glass of water, a toy, some surprise, etc. The kid, when he wakes up, will find what you left and do it for a while.
If your child is three years old or older, they may already be working with you. We offer you a method that will teach him the days of the week, hours and help you sleep longer on Saturday and Sunday. Draw on paper or buy a calendar where you can see the whole month (or by week). Explain to your child what a calendar is. Explain the names of the days of the week. Every day, together with the baby in the evening, put a cross or a circle on the calendar and say: today is Monday, Monday will end, tomorrow will be Tuesday, etc. Tell him that there are two special days a week when not his parents wake him up, but he will have to wake up his parents. This is Saturday and Sunday. Highlight them on the calendar in a different color. Buy your kid a wall clock or use the ones you already have at home. Hang a clock in front of his bed. The kid still can't read the clock and you need to help him. Attach the 10 o'clock sticker to the clock. (If you want to get up at 10, and your baby wakes up at 8.00) When the baby returns from kindergarten on Friday, tell him:
"Look, today is Friday. Tomorrow will be a special day, tomorrow is Saturday and tomorrow you will have to wake us up." Look at the clock. When the big hand covers (touches, gets under, etc.) the sticker, it's 10 o'clock. You'll have to wake us up and you'll get an interesting surprise." What a surprise? Depends on your imagination. You can hide a balloon under your bed, buy a kinder surprise, organize a pillow fight, etc.
You do not need to buy something new every time, it is important to make something that your baby likes. You can’t answer him at 10 o’clock: “Wait a little, now we will play with you.” If he waited for 10 hours, you should also keep your word and show him a surprise (play a game) right away.
How to make it last up to 10 hours? A few tips: on Friday, go with him to the store to buy him breakfast for Saturday (Sunday).
It is very important to do this with him, so the baby feels involved. Place breakfast on a table/stool next to his bed. When the baby wakes up, he can eat on his own. Buy him a toy (make, etc.) that you will only give him on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Leave her on the chair next to the crib. On the first Saturday, the baby will wake up at 8.00 and at 8.05 will be already at your bed shouting: “It's time to get up! Where is the surprise?
It is normal that this happens, he has not yet learned to wait. Then proceed as you would at night. Take him to bed. Explain that it's still early. Show the clock and explain again when the time is correct. If he protests, return to him according to the time table in chapter 4. This time, not to put him to sleep, but to teach him to wait and play himself. Remember that the baby is still small and it is difficult for him to wait so long, if he wakes up at 8.00, and you want him to wake you up no earlier than 10.00, first you have to cheat: turn the arrows forward. When the baby wakes up, in reality it will be only 8, but the clock will already show 9.00. He will only have to wait an hour. Encouraged by success, he will have more desire to wait for the appointed hour. And you gradually set the clock to the correct time. So the baby can wait longer and longer.
Be realistic, don't ask a 3 year old to play by himself for 2.5 - 3 hours in the morning. Good luck!
Difficult cases.
Since the publication of this book (1996), we have received a huge number of letters from parents. Most of them are expressions of gratitude and appreciation. However, in some there is a description of the difficulties that the parents could not overcome. Now we will consider the imaginary and real difficulties of accustoming to sleep. We decided to trace the process of accustoming to sleep and identify what problems parents face. The following is the result of an analysis of the sleep training process of 823 children aged 6 months to 5 years.
Analysis of the application of our method and its results:
- 96% of children learned to sleep without disturbing their parents at night
- in 4% parents encountered difficulties that they could not overcome. Some children never learned to fall asleep on their own, some at first learned, but after a while they began to wake up at night again.
We analyzed in detail the reasons for the failures. There are objective and subjective reasons. Objective:
- parents did not quite understand our instructions
- the book was read by only one of the parents
- the child is cared for by several people who could not act in the same way
- a third person lives in the house (grandmother, aunt), who influenced the application of the method
- the child fell ill during re-education
- global changes took place in the child's life during the period of accustoming to sleep: parents divorced, a brother was born, moving, went to kindergarten, etc.
- one of the parents has serious psychological problems (anxiety states)
- the family sleeps away every weekend
- a trip with a change in the child's schedule or time zone
The method was not understood absolutely correctly.
We have tried to make this book as simple as possible. However, some parents did not read it completely, but only selectively, separate chapters or pieces. They only read what was important to them. Therefore, when applying the method, parents either felt insecure or applied it incorrectly. Again, both parents should read the book, especially chapters 2 and 4. If necessary, read it 2-3 times. When you start re-educating your baby, you must remember very well how to behave in which situation.
A good knowledge of the method will give you confidence. Before the first edition of this book, we distributed printouts to families with children with sleep problems. We have specifically checked that reading does not take more than 2 hours, as we understand that parents never have enough time. Is it really too much to get rid of getting up at night with the baby?
The book was read by only one of the parents.
Often the father has too little time and lacks enthusiasm. Therefore, only my mother reads the book and then briefly explains it to my father. During the week, if the father comes back when the baby is already in bed, it's not so bad. But on weekends and holidays, the father can ruin everything simply because he does not know the method. The father should also read the whole book. If there is a third family member who sometimes puts the baby to bed, he should also familiarize himself with its contents. Remember: the kid is so unwilling to lose his privileges that he is capable of any scene. How can a father or grandmother feel watching a baby who is choking with sobs? Especially if he/she does not understand the ultimate goal of "this suffering". In critical moments, the "observer" can spoil the whole thing by rushing to the baby or simply accusing you of cruelty and heartlessness. On the other hand, think about yourself. Won't your heart break into pieces when your favorite baby, after an hour of sobbing, starts to hiccup or, worse, vomit? Will you have a desire to give up everything so that the child does not "suffer" like that? Do you feel powerless? Do you think that this method is not for your baby? The most difficult moment lasts a little: from 2 to 5 days. Then your baby will sleep like a groundhog. All night long. You will only need to be attentive to possible problems caused by changes in the baby's life, and follow a specific evening program. Isn't it worth a try? But critical moments can overtake you anyway. Therefore, you will need the psychological support of another person. Therefore, the father should be an active participant in the upbringing of the baby, at least for moral support. The order is not important (today dad, tomorrow mom), but it is important that both parents understand what they are doing.
Several people are taking care of the child.
If both parents work, then often a third person (grandmother, aunt, nanny, etc.) is engaged in bedding (at least during the day). Therefore, this person should carefully read the book, agree with the parents on the procedures for laying down and act exactly the same with them. If a child always eats the same way (at the table, on his chair, from a plate, with a spoon, etc.), why do many people think that you can put him to sleep in different ways? Imagine what happens if you feed your baby today at the table with a spoon, tomorrow in the toilet on the potty with a snow shovel, the day after tomorrow on the windowsill with Chinese sticks, etc. The baby will no longer understand what is happening. The same thing happens if he is put to bed in different ways. So let your nanny/grandmother/aunt read the book, or at least give them precise instructions on what to do. Otherwise, the method will not work.
The third person living with the parents influences the application of the method.
Usually parents, regardless of where they get acquainted with our method - in our clinic or from a book - understand well what needs to be done and follow the instructions correctly. But in some cases there is a third person in the house - most often it is a grandmother or grandfather. Parents have read the book, studied the method well and believe that it will help. It's different with grandparents. Sometimes because they find it difficult to see a crying baby, sometimes because they have prejudices against "all sorts of methods", sometimes simply because their parents did not introduce them to the book - for any of these reasons, a grandparent may not follow the rules necessary for teaching sleep at all.
A classic example: after listening to the sleep training technique from her daughter, the grandmother says: “And you went to the doctor (read the book) just for this? What nonsense! Now young people have no patience at all. We knew how to raise children in our time. You just have to wait until you grow up. Do not quarrel. Understand: in your parents' time, the words "biological rhythm" or "biological clock" did not make any sense. That is, the grandfather / grandmother either does not know anything on the topic, or cannot understand why these schedules, "external elements" are needed, why watch strictly by the clock when you can enter the room to the crying baby. If the parents do not feel confident in the application of the method or are weak in character, one remark like "Well, what will change if you take a crying baby in your arms for two minutes? Look how tearing!" - this is a gross mistake: one concession and goodbye, success!
As soon as the child understands that if he screams louder and longer, the grandmother takes his side, she will try to arrange a spectacle for you not for the faint of heart. Our advice: ask your grandparents not to interfere. They can provide you with an invaluable service in other things: help bathe the baby, change him for the night, play before bed, feed him dinner. But at the moment of laying - the hour of parents comes. If it is unavoidable to avoid the participation of third parties in the laying down of the baby, ask them to at least formally adhere to the requirements of the method. Do not allow third parties to influence the application of the method. They are full of good intentions and adore your baby, but if you listen to them even once or let them interfere, you have lost!
The baby fell ill during the process of accustoming to sleep.
A simple rule of precedence applies here. It is much more important to cure the baby than to accustom him to sleep. Therefore, during an illness (especially if the process of accustoming is not completed), you can make concessions according to circumstances. After the baby has recovered, it is necessary to start accustoming to sleep from scratch, as the baby gets used to the privileges.
There have been major changes in the baby's life (moving, etc.).
- talk as much as possible with the baby, explain to him what is happening
- do not start the application of the method if you know about the upcoming changes (birth of a brother, etc.)
- if the baby stopped sleeping well, apply the method as for the first time
One of the parents suffers from psychological problems (depressive states, etc.). Sometimes a child's insomnia is not related to the problems of the child itself, but to the problems of the parents. If one of them suffers from depression, states of insecurity, despair, etc., the method does not work.
My son is very nervous and therefore does not sleep well.
Error. It is true that many nervous children find it more difficult to get used to certain things, but it is also true that if a child does not sleep well, he gets tired and, accordingly, seems nervous to those around him, because fatigue in children excites them, and does not calm them down. Understand: it is wrong to think "my son does not sleep well because he is nervous." More correctly: "My son is nervous because he does not sleep well." If your son sleeps 12 hours at night and 2 hours at 1:30 a.m. quiet time, and is too excitable during the day, then you can say that your son is nervous. If he does not sleep well, often wakes up, then the problem is not nervousness, but bad sleep. Nervous or calm, any child can learn to eat with a spoon, brush their teeth, wash their hands, etc. Also, any child can learn to sleep well. If his parents teach him to.
Our little one needs to eat at night.
When we ask parents, "how do you know what your baby needs to eat at night?", they usually answer: "He wakes up and cries. If you give him milk to eat, he calms down and falls asleep."
Logical, but wrong. The baby's body already at 6 months is able to manage the glucose curve (blood sugar level). Therefore, if the baby eats well 4-5 times a day, he absolutely does not need nightly nutrition. Therefore, when he wakes up at night and cries, and his mother gives him a breast or a bottle, the baby eats. BUT HE'S NOT HUNGRY. He is very pleased, because once again he managed to achieve attention from his parents.
Our baby wakes up because something is bothering him.
It is natural for parents to find an explanation for the nighttime awakenings of the baby: the tummy hurts, he is cold, the poor thing is hungry, he wants to drink, his teeth are growing, etc. In fact, nighttime awakening is not necessarily caused by some kind of problem. It is correct to check if the baby has a temperature, if he is not cold or hot, etc. But if there are no these reasons, and as soon as the parents take the baby in their arms, he calms down, then your baby suffers from childhood insomnia caused by improper sleep habits.
As we already know, everyone wakes up several times a night for a few seconds. Most people don’t remember this later, but a baby who can’t fall asleep on his own will not fall asleep until you help him with this. If this is your case, reread chapters 2 and 4.
Good luck!

From chapter notes:
- Children with sleep problems usually start talking early. They need it to attract the attention of their parents at night. Who refuses to give a glass of water to a kid who plaintively asks for a drink? The problem is that most likely he does not want to drink.
- Babies older than 6 months who don't sleep well at night are at risk of lifelong insomnia. If this is your case and your baby is under 5 years old, don't worry, you can still teach him to sleep well.
- Some parents, in order to lull the baby, try to make him very tired. The method usually does not work: to fall asleep, the baby must be able to relax. If he is too tired, he will be too excited and will not be able to relax. Even if he falls asleep, he will not sleep well.
- If the baby wakes up only 1-2 times a night, this is not childhood insomnia. You shouldn't panic. However, this does not mean that you cannot try our method on your baby. If you do everything right, your baby will stop waking up. In this case, you need it more, since parents also have the right to rest.
- For the success of the method, you must convince yourself that what you are going to do is right and will work. Think: our method works 96% of the time! Why don't you join them? Problems arose only in families where the parents felt insecure or where the family could not unite to achieve the goal.

How to teach a child to sleep. The revolutionary method of Dr. Esteville

Edward Estiville

Child and care for him (Eksmo)

Is your baby unable to sleep? Do you wake up 100 times a night, feel overwhelmed in the morning? Do not know what to do with the growing tension in the family? Forget about these problems. The book of the famous Dr. Esteville will help you and your baby sleep with pleasure all night long! His method of teaching the skill of sleep helps in almost every case, even the most neglected, because his main principle is to act with love for your child.

Edward Estiville

How to teach a child to sleep: Dr. Estiville's revolutionary method

Dr. Edward Estivill

El Metodo Estivill para ense?ar a dormir a los ni?os

Translation from Spanish

Reviewer's Preface

Dear reader!

Raising children is a very laborious, multifaceted and time-consuming process. In addition, it must be manageable, therefore, it requires additional knowledge and proven skills from parents.

The book "How to teach a child to sleep" contains the most important information of an applied nature. It teaches not only the understanding of the process itself, but also - and most importantly - the action. The method by which you can achieve the result is explained step by step and therefore seems easy and understandable. This is a distinctive feature of both Estiville's method and the book as a whole.

Dr. Esteville's method combines the foundations of medical, psychological and pediatric neurophysiology knowledge. The basics and specifics of the anatomical and physiological needs and abilities of the child echo in him the needs and psychological characteristics of the parents.

From this point of view, this method has just been developed, or rather, assembled by the author in order to become a kind of "manual" for parents. And this fully confirms the fact that the process of education requires great patience from parents, tremendous endurance and constancy in performance: only the methodical and regular implementation of certain actions will lead you to the desired result.

The main advantage of the book is that it follows the basics of learning, clearly sets out what needs to be done, how to do it and why.

Raising a child in general and individual skills in particular is a systemic process. All family members are involved in it, and everyone takes part according to their social role. Sometimes this participation can be passive and consist only of a "background presence", but this is enough to make the process of education several times more effective. The formation of any skill takes time, but if you have this book in your hands, a positive result is guaranteed in no time! And I wish you this with all my heart.

Marina Grigoryan,

pediatrician, psychologist-psychotherapist

Gratitude

To all of you parents and caregivers who have used and continue to use my method to teach children to sleep, thank you for making my method better.

Greetings from Dr. Edward Estiville

Fifteen years ago, I first published advice on how to teach children to sleep. You parents have taken to calling this collection of guidelines and methods your own, the Estiville Method, but I must remind you that this is not my invention. All this time, as a scientist, I have simply demonstrated and propagated, in simple, understandable words, the knowledge of neuroscientists, psychologists, pediatricians and sleep medicine specialists obtained over the past forty years.

It is with great satisfaction that these methods have benefited more than three million parents and caregivers worldwide.

Thanks to advances in science, today we know even more and can instill in children the habit of good sleep. Therefore, once again I publish in this book medical recommendations that will help parents and caregivers to better understand the intricacies of children's sleep.

Everything I write about below is confirmed by the global scientific community. The American Academy of Sleep Pathologies, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Spanish Sleep Association make the same recommendations.

For parents who want more information, I publish a bibliography of the most important articles on this topic at the end of the book.

Here we are not talking about dogma, but about the advice that is necessary to teach a child the habit of sleep, and which are obtained as a result of scientific research. To use them or not is your personal choice. My goal is to guide parents who decide to follow my method.

Teaching a child to sleep is not easy. My clinical experience with over 3,000 patients, the studies that I will talk about later, and the feedback from parents and pediatricians who have used the Method say that if the Method is studied and then strictly followed, it works. “Strictly” means “scrupulously”, “meticulously”, without forgetting a single rule.

Parents, if you decide to follow this Method, remember that it should be followed by everyone involved in raising your child: moms, dads, grandparents, nannies, etc. You will find a lot of new things in the pages of this book, I will insist on teaching the child to sleep, starting from birth; we will understand how we sleep already in the womb and how we can learn to sleep at any age and in any circumstances, even if we are talking about special cases: for example, if you have twins or during an illness.

Hope to help you in the future.

Dr. Edward Estiville.

September 2011

Introduction

My child does not sleep himself, and does not give me. And we need to rest. What to do?

Here is the story of a happy couple. Sarah is 33 years old, Pedro recently turned 36 years old. They have been together for four years and have just learned the important news - they will have a baby.

The first months of pregnancy are perfect, the rest are the same - no vomiting, no nausea, no dizziness. Sarah sleeps peacefully and gains a kilogram every month. Her gynecologist is amazed at how a woman's pregnancy proceeds classically, like a textbook.

Exactly nine months later, their desired and most beautiful child is born, the best baby in the world. Height is fifty centimeters, weight is three and a half kilograms, according to the results of all examinations of newborns, he is all right. When brought to the breast, he immediately takes the nipple without any problems and does not even lose some of the weight that other babies lose. To say that the parents are happy is to say nothing, they are overjoyed.

However, even at the maternity hospital, the nurse noticed to the parents that their son was very good, but restless: “He is so lively, he hardly sleeps.” Young parents look at each other affectionately and exclaim: “How could it be otherwise, because this is our son.”

So, they are discharged from the clinic and sent home. The baby is growing and gaining weight, only at night he does not sleep in a row for more than one to one and a half hours. The child is constantly waking up. Sarah feeds him by the clock and thinks everything is going well.

After three months of constant night vigils happy

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The couple's mom is dating one of those acquaintances you always find around new moms. A friend assures her that everything is fine, and the child does not sleep because of the colic that all babies have in the first months of life. “These colics keep your baby awake. Do not worry, in three months the colic will pass and the baby will turn into a little sleepy groundhog, ”the new friend reassures Sarah.

By this time, several self-help books have already been read (from the most “serious” to “alternative”, in which answers are usually sought). Repeated consultations with a pediatrician, numerous advice from friends who have children, and instructions from worried relatives could not help in the urgent problem.

Months pass: the third, fourth, fifth, but at night the parents still do not sleep and take turns going up to the baby fifteen times. Sarah sees her tired face in the mirror, and Pedro is so busy concentrating at work that he is already thinking about getting himself a vasectomy. The child, so loved and so long-awaited, made their life hell.

Six months later, they again meet a friend and tell her that the child eats and grows, and everything is fine, only he does not sleep day or night. A friend reassures them and says that this is probably because teeth are being cut and this pain does not allow the child to sleep. When they erupt, the child will surely sleep peacefully.

The child turns eight, ten, twelve months old, his mouth is full of teeth and a perfect smile, but the baby still does not sleep. Parents again encounter a friend, and she voices a new spell that the baby is about to be a year and three months old, he will learn to walk, he will be very tired and then he will definitely sleep well at night.

Pedro and Sarah are waiting for the first steps of their offspring, and then one day at nine in the evening at home they stand at different ends of the corridor and start calling: “Little one, go to your mother; sweetie, go to your dad." It's already ten in the evening, and the child is still walking from one to another, and Pedro is sure that everyone will sleep well today, hoping that the baby will get tired.

At eleven o'clock at night they put him to bed and have the worst night they have ever had. The child wakes up twice as often as usual, and they do not close their eyes. Sarah is already on the verge of collapse, Pedro is barely holding on, the child is very excitable and so attached to his mother that he does not even let her breathe.

One of her friends at the meeting advises Sarah to send the child to a nursery, maybe the baby will be taught to sleep there. Sarah doubts, because she thinks about who will need her child, who himself does not sleep and does not give to others, he is a real demon and does not obey anyone. Surely he will be returned home on the first day.

Finally, the parents decide to send the baby to the nursery. A week passes, Sarah does not ask the teachers anything. Bringing and taking him away, she lowers her head low and leaves quickly so that the teachers do not notice her. Two weeks pass, Sarah does not understand why she is not spoken to. In confusion, she can not stand it and decides to talk to the teacher. She assures her that the child sleeps well and even twice a day: once in the morning when he is brought in, and the second time after dinner. “But this is impossible,” says Sarah, “at home he does not sleep even on Saturdays and Sundays. How do you do it? The teacher replies that it is very simple: they use the most common method: “We have a room with beds. On the first day, we explain to the children that this is a room specifically for sleeping. On the first day, four of them were screaming, three were crying, two were coughing, and one was jumping. We again explained to the guys that in this room they should sleep and it's good for them. On the fourth day, those who were screaming stopped screaming, those who were crying stopped crying, two of them stopped coughing, and the one who was jumping became quiet. A week later, everyone was already sleeping peacefully.

That's the whole story, dear readers. It is, of course, fictional, although it may be familiar to many of you. This is just a story about a child, healthy and without pathologies, but who does not have the skill of restful sleep.

Could our couple have imagined that their wonderful life would suddenly turn into horror with the arrival of a new family member?

In this book, you will learn that some children need to be taught the habit of healthy sleep.

The book clearly outlines the Method of teaching such a dream, for each age its own nuances are described. With this book, you will be able to:

Understand what rhythms a newborn lives in and ensure a sufficient amount and quality of his (and yours too) rest.

Continue to teach this skill or wean a child from a bad habit of not sleeping from 7 months to 5 years.

In addition, the book discusses sleep disorders and their treatment, as well as answers to your questions, provides the most useful tips and bibliography.

Nothing is perfect, but we have the ability to learn and teach. Most importantly, we know that we can teach our child to sleep well.

Part one

Fundamentals of the Estiville method

Sleep education and childhood insomnia

Of course, it would be ideal for parents to start teaching their baby to sleep from the first day of his life, but most likely this book will fall into your hands when your baby is more than six months old. Undoubtedly, you have a healthy child growing up, cute and cheerful, maybe even well-fed, but when it comes time to go to bed, trouble begins. You are in despair. The thought of having another child at this moment seems ridiculous. You are ready for anything, even the most incredible things, as long as your baby sleeps. You want your child to get enough sleep because it is necessary for his normal development, and besides, you yourself need rest. Of course, you have already tried everything you can and applied all the advice that close people and just good friends gave you, you listened to a large number of opinions and read all the books on this topic. However, everything turned out to be ineffective.

I understand you perfectly.

Your child is the most precious thing you have. It's understandable that you want to be the best parent in the world, but you feel like you're the worst. That is why I want to help you.

I can well imagine what you feel with a sleepless baby in your arms. The feeling of helplessness is terrible, it seems to you that you are the most miserable, you do everything worse than others, and you are never destined to sleep for eight hours in a row. However, in reality, everything is not so.

You are the best parents in the world, and the only thing you need to do is to streamline the way you teach your children to sleep.

Don't feel guilty. You haven't done anything wrong. Perhaps you are not doing something as well as you would like, but this, you see, is completely different. At the very least, your actions are not suitable for teaching a child to sleep. Can you be at fault in this case? No! After all, no one taught you this. All these accusations that "young parents do not take good care of their children" are completely wrong. It's just that someone should guide them on how to teach children to sleep.

Your child, like you, also suffers from the effects of poor sleep. Sleep is a very important period in our life, because in order to have a good day, you need to get enough sleep.

From excessive fatigue, small children do not

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calm down, but, on the contrary, excited. A tired child who wants to sleep almost never asks to go to bed. On the contrary, he may show increased activity, cry often and for no reason, get into a bad mood easily and require more attention from his parents - in other words, he becomes too dependent on who takes care of him.

After parents, using my method, taught their children to sleep well, they changed their minds about their children, and now I often hear the following statements: “He even changed his character. He has become more calm, he can play by himself for a while. He's even become more handsome, and he's in a good mood." In fact, the child was like that.

Good sleep is important for one simple reason: no one can live without sleep, not even fish and bats. During sleep, the body produces everything it needs to stay awake the next day. Sometimes poor sleep can lead to stunted growth because growth hormones are produced during the first hours of sleep. If the child is not sufficiently rested, he will feel tired, irritable, nervous and sleepy. Good sleep is essential for your mental and physical health.

Consequences of childhood insomnia

for infants and young children:

- irritability, bad mood

- frequent crying

- dependence on parents / caregivers

- growth retardation

for school children:

- bad study

- lack of confidence and timidity

- hard character

for parents:?

- fatigue

- self-doubt (are we doing everything right?)

- guilt? (maybe he is awake because he is suffering from something, and we cannot help and then get even more angry)

- mutual accusations of parents that the other spoils the child

- Feeling confused about a problem

-feeling like nothing can be done

- deep physical and mental fatigue

If you have read up to this point, you have probably noted for yourself that you have already experienced some of the listed consequences.

Before proceeding directly to the Method, I would like to dwell on the following general advice.

First of all, you must think carefully and firmly decide to apply the Method. When addressing in the plural, I mean the whole family - mom, dad and everyone who will communicate with the child (nannies, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, etc.). It is imperative that everyone read this book and learn by heart the norms of behavior and uniform criteria for all difficult situations that will inevitably meet on your way. If you learn all this at the very beginning, you are guaranteed a successful result.

The method must be applied strictly according to the scheme, without any changes for yourself. Such changes almost never bring the desired result. If you ask your friends how they managed to achieve the result, they will surely answer you that they strictly adhered to the rules of the Method.

Before you start using the Method, make sure that the child is not sick. To be sure, I would even advise you to visit a pediatrician specifically. First of all, it is necessary to exclude all possible diseases (the most common in this case are otitis media, milk intolerance, reflux), as well as problems of a psychological or psychiatric nature.

Be sure to make sure that there is no physical or psychological reason that the child is not sleeping.

Parental Behavior That Affects Child's Sleep Deprivation

- the presence of parents when falling asleep

- undemanding parents

- no borders

- Misconceptions about baby sleep

– too fast laying process

- excessively strict attitude towards the child

Medical causes of childhood insomnia

Starting from infancy and up to 2-3 years, it is necessary to consider:

gastroesophageal reflux

Allergy

epileptic seizures

the following diseases:

Asthma, bronchitis, nasal congestion, sinusitis, pneumonia

Acute viral infections

Eczema, psoriasis, excessive sun exposure, burns

Pain for various reasons

Dyspepsia, gas, constipation, diarrhea

Environmental factors:

Noise, bright light, sweltering heat or extreme cold

Deviations in development:

Autism, mental retardation, various shaping syndromes, Asperger's syndrome, etc.

from 2-3 years old, it is necessary to consider:

Snoring and apnea

restless leg syndrome

Headache

Nightmares, night terrors, somnambulism. ?

Exciting substances:

Nicotine (inhalation of tobacco smoke)

Excessive consumption of foods high in sugar

Side effects of certain drugs

Psychological problems:

Emotional trauma caused by the process of parental divorce, sexual abuse, stress (change of school or place of residence, new job of parents, spending less and less time at the parental home, financial problems in the family, the arrival of a new family member - a brother / sister or grandparents), bullying at school, death of a family member.

Psychiatric problems:

depression

Anxiety, etc.

What is a skill and how is it reinforced? starting point of the estiville method

All children are different. Each of them is a separate person. Some are harder to learn, others are easier. Some children are calm, others have a more lively nature. This is noticeable from birth, but does not mean at all that certain babies will not sleep.

Sleep is as much a skill as reading or eating. We all learn this, despite the fact that we have different characters. Some succeed faster, others achieve success a little longer, but in the end everyone succeeds.

You should not adhere to the misconception that if the child is nervous, then it is more difficult for him to fall asleep. It may be harder to teach restless children to sleep, but if you do everything right, the child will eventually learn it.

You are teachers and you will teach your children to sleep. They cannot learn it on their own. Children need you to teach them proper sleep habits. You must be the best teachers. My Method gives you all the tools you need to teach your child to sleep. However, before proceeding directly to the study of these tools, we will define what sleep is.

Recall that the biological rhythm is a systematic repetition of the activities of our body (for example, sleep - stay awake, sleep - stay awake).

When a baby is born, its biological rhythm is 3-4 hours. In other words, every 3-4 hours a newborn goes through several stages - he wakes up, he is washed, he eats and sleeps - all this makes up one cycle.

As soon as one cycle ends, another similar one begins - the baby wakes up again, he is washed, he eats and sleeps. It's the anarchist type

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After 6-7 months, the cycle becomes diurnal. Thus, every 24 hours we repeat and alternate activities during wakefulness and sleep.

From the 3-4th month of life, the biological rhythm of the child begins to change more and more. The baby moves from a 3-4 hour anarchic cycle to a 24-hour "adult" cycle. Children increase the time of the first night's sleep: it happens that it can reach up to 6 hours - and this is a small gift to parents.

Already from 6-7 months of age, children should be able to sleep for 10-12 hours without a break (awakenings still happen, but the child should immediately fall asleep on his own, without adult intervention). Three small afternoon naps should be added to this rest during the day (one after breakfast - at 9-10 o'clock, the other after lunch - at 12-13 o'clock and at 15-16 o'clock - the third, the shortest, after afternoon tea).

These changes occur due to a group of brain cells that work as a biological clock. Their task is to adapt all the needs of the body to the 24-hour biological, that is, to the solar rhythm. But these hours also need to be wound.

In 70% of newborns, it is possible to start the biological clock with the help of daily rituals (take the child in your arms, put it in the crib, wish him good night, shake him, sing him a song). At 6 or 7 months, such children sleep well, which parents are very happy about, saying: “It’s lucky with the child that he sleeps so well.”

However, in reality there is no lottery here. The remaining 30% of children can sleep as well as the top 70%, and it is important to understand that such children need to “wind the clock” more strongly or apply more precise rituals in preparation for sleep. These babies don't have any medical or psychological problems, they just need to adjust their sleep-wake rhythm because their clocks are more anarchic. This feature is easy to fix, but you need to do it as early as possible, because the older the child, the more difficult it is to change something.

You can set the children's clock with the help of external stimuli.

Increasing the contrast between:

light (day) and dark (night)

Noisy (during the day) and quiet (at night).

Thus, the child has an understanding that light and noise occur during the day, when awake, and silence and darkness occur at night, when everyone is sleeping.

With the help of meals, followed by the next one in the schedule: sleep (night or daytime).

Teaching your baby how to sleep. In other words, by showing him how to fall asleep on his own, without the help of others.

How a skill is learned

Key question: what is a skill?

A skill is something that we initially do not know how to do, but what we learn by repeating certain actions over and over again.

Skills always have something to do with culture: for example, brushing your teeth, eating soup with a spoon, riding a bike or skiing are all skills.

They can be performed in different ways, as is the case with food. For example, in Japan, children eat sitting on the floor with chopsticks from a cup. We, on the contrary, sit at the table and eat with a spoon from a plate. Both habits are correct, although if a Japanese child comes to our country and wants to eat Japanese, he will have certain difficulties. He will do everything right, but he will need some time to adjust to the new style of eating. The same thing will happen to us if we end up in Japan.

Skills differ depending on the culture of a particular country, only that they can be taught and trained is invariable.

Everyone once dreamed of returning to childhood, to those happy days when it was not necessary to appear at work early in the morning, and also go to meetings of residents discussing leaks in the roof. In the first years of life, our only responsibility was to eat and sleep to satisfy two basic needs: food and rest.

Of course, we do not remember this, but even eating and sleeping was not an easy task for us, at least in the beginning of life.

We all had to learn to do it right. If no one had taught us how to use a spoon and fork, then we would probably still be poking at cutlets with a rattle.

So let's recap:

Eating right and eating right are not the same thing. As well as sleep and sleep well. It is clear that your child sleeps a certain number of hours a day - no one can live without sleep. Another thing is how he does it, right or wrong, and how many of the recommended hours for his age he sleeps.

Sleeping like eating can be learned. Sleep is a skill and needs to be mastered.

Sleep is essential for the body. Good sleep is a skill we can teach our children.

How is a skill taught?

First rule: create ritual and associations

The child learns by repeating the same action and associates external elements with the skill we are teaching him.

I will explain how to teach any skill, using the example of nutrition.

When it comes to feeding time, the parents always perform the same repetitive actions, as if it were a ritual. They seat the child on a chair, tie a bib and take a cup and a spoon in their hands. These elements (high chair, bib, cup and spoon) are always present when the child eats his porridge, that is, exactly when he uses his feeding skill.

It would never occur to anyone to exclude any of these elements until the end of the procedure (for example, while there is still porridge in the plate, the child is not taken away from the spoon and told to sip directly from the plate).

After some time, the child already knows this process so well that, when he sees a cup, he begins to wave his arms cheerfully, because he knows that it is time to eat porridge. At the same time, he feels confident and will do everything right.

When it comes to sleep, parents are no longer so confident in ritual. As if it’s not entirely clear to them that for proper feeding, you need to put the child on a high chair, tie a bib and help him eat with a spoon from a cup. Let's imagine that one day they knit a raincoat instead of a bib, and instead of a cup they take a motorcycle helmet, put a child in a basketball basket in the yard and try to throw porridge at him from the kitchen window. Absurd, isn't it? Now imagine what parents are ready to do when a child starts yelling in the middle of the night: take him by the hand, rock him to sleep, take him in his arms so that he falls asleep, sing to him, put him to sleep next to him, roll him around the house in a stroller, drive him around the garden in a car around an apple tree, put him on a dryer or washing machine so that she automatically swayed him ... Yes, all this was told by the parents, they were ready to do anything to make the child fall asleep faster. You can't even imagine how we understand you. We all experienced something similar when we did not know how to teach a child to sleep.

But what actually happens when we take a child by the hand so that he sleeps? It turns out that the hand becomes a direct association with sleep. What do we do when the baby falls asleep? We're leaving because we can't spend the whole night holding the baby's hand. The child immediately wakes up. In fact, he wakes up not because of some health or mental problem, but because we all wake up at night for a short time and do not remember this, as we quickly fall asleep again. Waking up, the child again demands that from now on

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he associates with sleep with the help of his only but powerful weapon - crying. What do we do in this case? Everything that is possible, if only the baby fell asleep. We run to him and give him water or rock him, take him in our arms, put him in our bed ... In general, we perform a thousand and one actions, just to help the child fall asleep.

In fact, this approach means that we are constantly changing the associations associated with the child's learned skill, thereby confusing the baby and taking away his confidence in the acquired skill. The poor child thinks: “When will they decide and stop changing everything?” He wants to grow up quickly and learn to speak so that he can tell his parents: "Stop at any one action and teach me." In fact, all these fictions and changes in the association of the skill are broadcasting your insecurity to the child. He feels that adults are disoriented, do not know what to do, so they invent different things. In addition, over time, parents get annoyed and give up. It is quite understandable that in such an environment it is absolutely impossible for a child to feel confident and learn the skill of sleep.

The baby will not learn to sleep until his parents stop changing associations endlessly and give him the confidence he needs to understand that his crib is a place to sleep, and not for circus acts.

Second rule: be confident

The child perceives everything that we pass on to him. That is why we must behave confidently and reliably. Children are smart creatures. Just because they are small doesn't mean they are stupid. Never forget this. Always remember that children perceive everything that we broadcast to them. All the sensations that the child experiences are transmitted to him from us, all good and bad. The child never hurts himself. There is always someone or something that hurts him.

From the first days of life, the child perceives everything that his parents say to him, according to their tone. He does not need to know the meaning of words to understand whether his parents are happy or angry. In this sense, the baby does not care what they call him, "fat" or "snotty", if at the same time the voice sounds affectionate. But the baby will be frightened if he hears the phrase: “You are handsome, baby!”, Pronounced in a rough and dry tone.

If, at the age of crawling on all fours, he gets to the outlet to stick his fingers in there, and we, with a smile on our lips and a gentle voice, will tell him: “Ai-yay-yay! I will scold you!” - the baby will not feel the danger, because we do not inform him about this. In fact, you need to make it clear to the child in a serious and firm voice that this cannot be done, because it is dangerous.

Have you ever seen a three year old sitting on the couch, looking up at the ceiling and saying, “Ayyyyyyy, this hurts me!” Funny, is not it?

In fact, a child never gets hurt just like that, out of nowhere. There is always someone either hurting him or punishing him (problems at school, problems with his parents, abuse against him, etc.).

In the same way, a child is able to feel the confidence of his parents in what they are doing. If the parents doubt, then the child will doubt when he has to do something.

No one would think that a child can be “injured” by forcing him to eat yogurt with a spoon, right? Of course, because we accustom him to this gradually and naturally, and not through punishment. No one will say: “And now, as a punishment, you will eat soup with a spoon!” We do not give the child a sense of punishment, and he will never perceive this training as traumatic. For the same reason, children are not traumatized by the fact that they sleep in a crib or go to kindergarten.

When parents teach a child to eat porridge, they do it calmly and confidently. Children easily understand everything, because they see that parents have no doubts about how to eat porridge in this part of the world, parents have not even a shadow of uncertainty - they always do it the same way, because they are sure that it is right to do so. Parents are so convinced of the correctness of their actions that they would not even listen to the most famous pediatricians on TV talking about the benefits of new revolutionary methods of feeding children on the floor and through a straw.

Parents will never allow their children to eat differently than they teach them to eat. If a child puts his hand in a bowl or spits apple juice, the parents will explain to him what he is doing wrong, and then show him how to behave, just as they taught him to eat soup and yogurt with a spoon.

When it comes to sleep, we act differently. Maybe you once had to say: “If you misbehave, you will go to bed!” Often parents punish their children by forcing them to go to bed and sleep. Thus, they ensure that the child associates his sleeping place with punishment, something negative, and even something that traumatizes him.

Third Rule: Remember the Action-Reaction Principle

As we have said, children are very capable. From the moment of birth, they observe adults incessantly and train themselves in order to receive reactions from their parents. As the baby grows older, the ability to communicate with adults increases.

From 6 to 18 months (when babies are just starting to talk), the way a child communicates is to do something that provokes an adult reaction.

The child may:

- smile, say “boo-boo”, clap your hands. By this, the baby achieves that the parents are excited and puffed up with pride, like frogs. However, after the twentieth "boo-boo" parents no longer listen to him.

- crying (read about crying on page 47), screaming, tearing, knocking on something. With the help of this effective repertoire, the child gets his parents to run to him to keep him company and pamper him.

In fact, nothing happens to the baby at such moments, he just wants to attract attention and not be left alone.

It is important to understand that the child cannot harm himself, and when he realizes that you are not paying attention to his “performance”, the baby will stop his “performance”.

From 18 months to 5 years old, children acquire a new weapon - speech. However, they use speech differently than we adults do. For a three-year-old child, a word is another action. Children understand that when they say one of the words, their parents immediately do something. After numerous experiments, kids know that:

- the phrase "mama-coca-cola" at two in the morning will not have a single chance of success.

- by repeating "dad-drink" twenty times in a row at two in the morning, on the twenty-first time you can get dad to go get water. And despite the fact that the baby did not really want to drink, he still drinks a glass of water. He'll do it just to make his parents think he was really thirsty, poor thing. Thus, if he uses this method during the day, he will be noticed again.

- the words "mom-tummy-bo-bo" work flawlessly. Any mother will rush to the child to make sure that everything is fine with him.

Weeping language

From birth, crying is the child's first and natural form of communication. Thus the baby tells us: “I am here. Pay attention to me."

He uses crying in an unknown environment (when there are strangers around him) or when receiving

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new experience when he is first brought to kindergarten and left with new comrades and a teacher. In such cases, the child may cry for several hours in a row, but the parents endure it. Although the baby's tantrum breaks their hearts, they know that visiting the kindergarten will only benefit the baby.

Some wise grandmothers believe that crying develops the baby's lungs. Despite the fact that it is not scientifically proven, these words show that grandmothers consider crying to be something natural, and it will not hurt the child at all if he cries from time to time.

Today we know that there are two completely different forms of baby crying:

The child may cry from discomfort, for example, if he has an injury or feels physical or psychological pain (when the parents or caregiver do not pay attention to him for several hours). Such crying is very typical, parents and caregivers react to it immediately.

Then there is the cry of action, a cry rarely accompanied by tears, but which has an immediate effect on mothers. In this case, nothing happens to the child, he just wants his mother or father to react to him. As soon as the baby is picked up, caressed or done what he wants, the child immediately becomes silent.

CONCLUSION: What will a child do to get parents to run to him during sleep training? It is understandable that he will use the most disturbing and compelling words, albeit for no reason, and sometimes without even knowing exactly what they really mean. These can be the following words: “I want to drink, I'm afraid, I want to pee, kiss me ...” The child will say anything, so that the adult reacts. In addition, the baby knows exactly who to contact: for example, the child feels that “wee-wee” has a better effect on the father, and “I want to drink” - on the mother. Children are so intelligent that they use these little tricks from the first months of life.

Very important: If until now something from the theoretical descriptions presented above has remained unclear to you, I recommend that you slowly re-read everything again, point by point. In applying the Method, it is important to take your time and act confidently.

Sleep training step by step

It's time to discuss how we will apply the theory we have already learned. Before you start learning, you should clearly understand one thought for yourself - it does not matter what age your child is: nine months old or four and a half years old.

Remember that a skill (eating, sleeping, brushing your teeth, riding a bike or skiing) can be mastered at any age.

More importantly, your confidence in the readiness to use the skill correctly. I suggest that you take a test, according to the results of which you can check whether you are ready and whether you know everything to use the Method. Circle your answers on the test. The more “yes” answers you get, the less ready you are.

Are you ready to use the method

(Adapted test by Dr. Gonzalo Pina)

Perhaps, at the beginning of the journey, the test will show that you are not at all ready to use the Method - that's okay. I urge you to read the entire book and pay attention to the research findings below. If you think that your efforts will harm the child, it is very important that you try and make sure that this is not the case.

Step #1: Start from Scratch

Let's say your baby was born today. He doesn't have any habits yet and we have to start from scratch anyway. It doesn't matter how your little one has slept so far. Forget about the ways you invented to put your baby to sleep.

From now on, you do what I recommend to you, and remember: if I do not say to do something, it is not out of forgetfulness, but because it should not be done. If, for example, I am teaching you how to feed a child born in Japan who has moved to a Western country, I would advise you to forget about bowls, chopsticks, and feeding on the floor, and advise you to place him on a high chair and let him eat with a spoon from a plate.

Step #2: What to do before bed

Set a clear schedule. It has been proven that the brain of a child is able to perceive sleep most easily if we accustom him to sleep between 20 and 21 o'clock in winter and between 21 and 22 o'clock in summer. In some countries, this schedule may change according to tradition or existing routines.

Considering these and other factors, we can conclude that the best dinner time for a child is eight o'clock in the evening (remember that food helps us "set the biological clock"). If you didn't bathe your baby in the morning, it would be good to do it shortly before dinner.

In any case, once the child has finished eating, parents should remove all external items that are associated with food, including a glass of milk, juice, cookies, fruit, and so on. In this way, the child learns that there is also a time for dinner and that he should not ask for food or drink when he is alone in his bedroom, and even more so in the crib. Everything has its time.

Therefore, we give milk to the baby during meals, and not so that he falls asleep. The milk bottle is food, we should not associate this element with sleep. If the parents believe that the baby still needs bottled milk, it will become another association with sleep. Think carefully about whether you really need it.

The mood of the "mentors". Remember, you must be unwaveringly confident in what you are doing.

As in the case of the skill of eating, the main thing is that the child sees and feels that the parents know exactly what they are doing.

While reading this book, you will discover the scientific method for teaching your child how to sleep, and you will not doubt that you are doing everything right, but will concentrate on doing the step-by-step actions of the Method.

Believe me, you will learn a lot in the process of introducing the Method into your regimen, and it will be especially effective if you do everything slowly, correctly and patiently.

Step #3: Emotions and Communication Skill

After dinner, parents should set aside 10-15 minutes to spend time with their child in some pleasant, soothing activity. It is recommended to work out the skill of emotions in the living room or another room, but not in the bedroom.

Thus, we denote that the child's room is intended only for sleeping. Ideally, every time you should warn the child that such communication always lasts a certain time, and when mom says, “it's time,” then you need to go to bed.

It is up to the parents to set the time and the rules. The child should never be allowed to determine the duration of this activity.

Among other things, the external elements of the skill of emotions and communication can be fairy tales, caresses, songs or quiet games. You can easily choose classes according to the age of the child.

While communicating with the baby, exchange smiles, kisses, grimaces, etc.

Remember what good things happened during the day, discuss plans for tomorrow or something else.

The child will look forward to these moments with joy. Watching TV, playing with the remote control, or doing anything too exciting before bed is not recommended.

Think of activities you can do with your child.

You must let the baby know how much you love him and how happy you are with him. Important,

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so that the child knows and feels it by the time he learns the skill of proper sleep.

Step #4: Teaching Baby to Sleep

1. Preparing subjects for training

Let us choose the external elements of learning that will accompany the child throughout his stay in the cradle or crib until he learns the skill.

You are responsible for the selection of such items. Do not let the baby do this: remember, we know how to sleep and teach him, not he us. Even if your child is 4 years old, in this situation we must treat him like a newborn who still does not know and does not know how.

Choose a toy that he will always sleep with. It can be one of those that your baby already has or a new one. Once you've made your choice, give the toy a name if it doesn't already have one. For example, Vanka is a simple name for a child, but if dad's name is Ivan, then it is not recommended to repeat it.

If the baby is still unable to live without a pacifier, distribute several nipples in the crib so that if he wakes up at night, he can easily find it.

Think of something that the child can immediately see only when they open their eyes. For example, dad can cut out the moon and attach it to the wall, mom can hang a mobile or some kind of moving structure: all this should be at a safe distance so that he cannot reach out and rip these things.

If it is necessary to deprive the baby of some unnecessary association with sleep (bottle, etc.), explain to him that his new night friends replace the old ones, and that they will stay with him all night and in the morning when he wakes up, they will still be with him.

From the age of seven months, the baby becomes more mobile and easily throws off the blanket. This is absolutely normal and means that the baby is developing as expected. Pick the perfect pajamas for him, in which the child will not be hot and in which he can sleep without a blanket. This way, the baby will always be warm, and you will not have to constantly run to the bedroom to cover him.

Like a cup and a spoon, all these external elements will soon become associated in the baby with sleep and will become necessary for him to fall asleep. In addition, the child will need them every time he wakes up at night. That is why it is so important that you yourself do not become those external elements that the baby associates with sleep. You need to leave the room before the child falls asleep. You should not help your baby fall asleep by rocking him, caressing him, or making faces. If you do this, the baby will demand your presence after each awakening, and you will have no choice but to set up a chair just outside the door and carry guards in it.

Sing songs to him

Rock him in your arms;

Rock him in the crib (if he wakes up at night, he will need someone to rock him);

Give him a hand;

Ride him in a wheelchair;

Ride in a car;

Touch him or let him touch our hair;

Clap your hands or caress him;

Give him a bottle with a pacifier or breastfeed;

Lay him in your bed;

Let him run until the baby falls from fatigue;

Give him a drink.

2. We enter his room

Having finished with the skill of emotions and communication, you lead (carry) the child to his room and dress him in those very versatile pajamas.

In the baby's room, toys that we have prepared for him, nipples (if he still uses them), and a hanging carousel are already waiting. You do not need to create masterpieces, you can just buy something suitable. The main thing is that the child has something fundamentally new that he likes.

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Notes

Reflux is the reverse flow of the contents of hollow organs. - Note. transl.

Dyspepsia is a violation of the normal activity of the stomach, difficult and painful digestion. - Note. ed.

Asperger's Syndrome is a form of autism. - Note. ed.

We call "anarchic" the first rhythm at 3-4 hours of sleep and wakefulness and "circadian" - the 24-hour rhythm. - Note. ed.

End of introductory segment.

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When it becomes difficult to put the child to sleep, when almost every laying is accompanied by whims, when at night, the mother gets tired, loses all hope and thinks how to change the situation. How to teach your baby to sleep better, how to teach him to fall asleep on his own? After all, the child grows, it becomes harder to rock him and harder to keep him in place. And then parents look on the Internet for all sorts of ways to put the child to bed with minimal adult participation.

This article will focus on one of the methods of teaching children to sleep - the method of Dr. Esteville or the method of controlled crying.

Who is Estiville?

Eduardo Estiville is a Spanish doctor, professor at the Barcelona Center for Research and Treatment of Sleep Disorders, who developed the Ferber method and published his book on children's sleep, "Sleep well" (1996). We will try to tell objectively about the essence of this method, about its pros and cons.

Efficacy studies

There have been a number of studies that have explored the use of behavioral techniques to treat primary childhood insomnia (insomnia/sleep disturbances). The “method of eliminating crying” (“let it roar” / “cry it out”) was recognized as ineffective, because. it causes stress for both the parents and the child.

One of the topics of studying the effectiveness of teaching a child to fall asleep on his own was the “method of controlled crying”. The technique was first proposed by Amos Rolider and Ron Van Houten as a more parent-friendly alternative to the CIO method. "Cry it out" was slightly modified and popularized by Richard Ferber in his book for parents (1985) and Douglas (1989).

A little later, Ferber's approach was slightly modified by Dr. Estiville. Variants of the "controlled cry method" were evaluated in 14 studies with 748 children. The results of studying the effect of the method showed a decrease in problems when laying the child down or a reduction in the frequency of night awakenings. Also, 5 studies were devoted to a similar principle (ignoring the child and leaving the room), but without a clear procedure for checking the child. Nevertheless, the researchers concluded that the “controlled crying method” is not inferior in effectiveness to the “crying exclusion method”.

Description of the Estiville method

Dr. E. Estivil states that from 6 months the child can sleep alone in a separate room, when there is absolute darkness around, and not wake up until morning. According to the author, 6-7 month old healthy children should be able to:

go to bed without crying and with joy
fall asleep alone in a room without help
sleep in your crib in the dark without nightlights
sleep at night for about 10-12 hours without awakening.

Application scheme

The author pays a lot of attention to rituals and sequential actions before going to bed, to which the baby gradually gets used. He says that you can leave the toy and the pacifier - they can help the baby cope with the lack of adult support. And then he suggests putting the baby to bed at about the same time in the evening, indicating that it is at this time that the child will fall asleep easier.

According to Estiville's approach, the mother should put the baby in the crib without motion sickness and unnecessary assistance. It is fair that the child, having felt the departure of his mother, will strive to keep her: he may begin to act up, get up in bed, pull his arms to his mother.

At the same time, it is proposed not to run to the baby in order to put the child back to sleep, but to sit down to him and soothe with his voice, explain that "mother will teach you to sleep." And after that, the mother must go out, be patient and wait for time while the baby is alone.

According to the proposed method, the mother starts the exit from 1 minute, and on the same day, subsequent exits should be 3-5 minutes each. After returning to the child in the room, it is recommended in no case to take him in your arms, but simply to seem “here I am, I have not gone anywhere, I am returning.” And then exit again. So with each entry into the room, the time outside the door increases by 2-4 minutes a day according to the scheme proposed by the author - up to 7, 10, 12 minutes and so on. When waking up at night, it is proposed to do everything in the same way as in the evening when falling asleep.

Pros and cons of the Estiville method

Application from 6 months
Taking into account the health of the child
Attention is paid to rituals for falling asleep
Urgent help for families where the mother is already losing control of her emotions and is afraid of harming the child.

Abrupt change of conditions
Almost no adult help
The technique is not suitable for children who have increased excitability and who are not prone to complacency
Sleeping in a separate room, which is unsafe under 1 year old
Often causes stress to the parent, who cannot ignore the crying of the child for a long time
It has a bad effect on the formation of attachment between mom / dad and child.

Comparison of Estiville and Kim West methods

Imagine that the baby is used to it, and then the mother abruptly changes her plan of action. She just puts the baby in the crib. But he is not yet ready for this, he is waiting for the usual conditions of laying. Therefore, if you have always used motion sickness, then first you need to reduce them.

Let's say mom paid attention to reducing motion sickness over a period of time. And he is already putting the baby to bed and decides to go out without waiting for him to fall asleep. What happens to the baby at this moment? He is scared, it is not clear why his mother “left” him, why she left and does not return. In such stressful moments undermined, gently soot, trust in the world. The child learns to do something himself to cope with his emotions ... But at what cost? After all, a new situation or conditions are perceived as stressful. In such cases, the child most of all needs his mother: her attention, look, reassurance, voice. This is what is familiar, familiar, and therefore stable and safe. It is not even important that the child cries. And that no one comforts him, does not support him at such a “tragic” moment for him.

Psychologists believe that in order to form a healthy and secure attachment, it is very important to be with the baby during times of stress and help him cope with his emotions. Mom is the one who processes emotions, mirrors, understands, sympathizes and helps the baby cope with them, being nearby.

And the mother leaves the room and does not return to the crying, tantrums, whims of the baby and does not react in any way. As if accustoming him to the fact that the time of her absence will increase. Therefore, shout, do not shout, and you will have to fall asleep sometime. But what happens when a close significant adult does not respond to the needs of the child and at the same time leaves, then a completely logical question arises: how will attachment (emotionally close relationships) be formed between mother and baby? If the child calls, and the mother leaves. And it’s not about the fact that you need to jump around the baby or immediately rush and take him in your arms. But at least participation, empathy, comfort with a voice, regret ... These are really important elements in parent-child interaction.

According to, which represents in Russia - the mother is nearby and gradually helps the baby learn to fall asleep with her minimal help, and only then increases the distance.

The Spanish scientist pays special attention to the psycho-emotional state of the mother at the time of bedtime. And this is really important. After all, a baby at such an early age is very sensitive to the emotions of his mother: he tracks them, feels and is charged with them. We also agree with this. That is why it is so important to pay more attention to your rest and try to control your feelings at the time of bedtime.

As for the age of learning to fall asleep on your own. Indeed, children's specialists, since the child is not yet physically ready for this - he still needs the help of his mother to calm down and fall asleep. In addition, the nervous system is not yet developed enough to cope with sedation on its own. We also recommend starting self-sleep training after 6 months and after pre-training.

Estiville writes that, according to his method, a baby can sleep in his own room from 6 months, separately from adults. We think it's at that age. And we recommend: after all, up to 1 year it is better to sleep in the same room with the baby. Secondly, sleeping in a separate room from 6 months is found in some cultures and this is normal, but this is not suitable for our mothers. Because there are cultural differences and peculiarities of education. In the West, a child becomes more independent faster, our mothers have warmer relationships with children and are more protective. Therefore, for our mothers, a sharp distancing from the child leads to internal contradictions and often to a lack of results. Therefore, the “Sleep, baby” team adapted the American method of slow distancing for Slavic mothers. We pay a lot of attention to the psychological readiness of mother and baby.

Estiville claims that children can sleep through the night without waking up. Yes, indeed they can. But with a small caveat. The author stubbornly excludes the psychological causes of sleep difficulties. But still, sleep is a complex state, it depends on many factors and reasons that are important to consider. Children during periods of stress (leaving breastfeeding, mother going to work, moving, starting to attend children's classes or kindergarten), growth spurt / regression, during exacerbation of fear of separation from mother (during periods of psychological separation), during periods of illness or poor health, may wake up at night and need attention from mother or show the so-called "periodic checks" about "whether mother is near". And that's okay!

How to choose a method for your family?

It is important to understand that there is no magic in learning to fall asleep on your own. Preparatory steps, patience and sequence of actions of an adult are important here. BUT teaching a baby to sleep with minimal adult help is possible if you approach this issue thoroughly. And to begin with, it is important to go through all the preparatory steps before you decide to use the soft distance method with Sleep, Baby consultants or on your own (for example, by reading our articles on this topic and watching our webinars). To get started you need:

Establish and create a pleasant atmosphere for falling asleep: silence, airing, etc.
Pay due attention to preparing for sleep and
(morning rise, laying down for a night's sleep, daytime sleep), choose a comfortable wake time for your baby, taking into account his signs of fatigue.
Get away reduce motion sickness, get away from sleeping in your arms or in a wheelchair, reduce the “food = sleep” association.
Learn to sleep in your own bed. Get away from (car, wheelchair). Try to put the baby in his crib, not only sleeping, but sometimes sleepy.
And only the last step before learning to fall asleep independently (according to the soft distance method) is the gradual reduction of the adult's help in falling asleep. Already here the child can begin to sleep better.

After preparation, you can proceed to the stage of learning to fall asleep on your own and start the soft distance technique. This is the gradual teaching of the baby to calm down with minimal help from an adult. Yes, there are tears too. But they are not about the fact that the baby is in pain, but about his protest against new unusual conditions. At the same time, the most important thing is that at the time of training, the mother is nearby and with her presence, voice and dosed touches helps the baby get used to the fact that he will already fall asleep in his crib with minimal help.

In any case, the choice of method is always up to mom. But remember that childhood cannot be returned. And while we can help our children cope with emotions, gradually they will learn in such a safe environment - next to their mother - to cope with stress. And it is also an important skill for child development.

The method of the Spanish doctor Estivil, described in the book "SLEEP QUIETLY" (FATE LA NANNA), Part one.

Retelling by Polina Gelfreikh

What what to do if your baby starts to burst into tears as soon as you say it's time for bed? What to do if your baby wakes up 5-10 times a night? What to do if you think that the child sleeps too much or too little?

The answers to all these questions are given in his book by the Spanish doctor Estiville, a specialist in sleep disorders. All examples in this book are taken from real life. The author of the book is a renowned professor at the Barcelona Center for Research and Treatment of Sleep Disorders.

CHAPTER 1

The child does not sleep, respectively, we do not sleep either. What happens to those who are not enough sleeping?

A baby is not a machine, and when you are discharged from the hospital, you are not given instructions for it, as, for example, when buying a washing machine. Then everyone starts giving advice to parents (relatives, friends, neighbors, etc.), especially if they hear the baby crying. Many say: "We must wait out the first months, then she will sleep like all children, where will she go." Many come up with reasons: at first he does not sleep, because he is too small, then because of his tummy, then because of his teeth, etc. Some give advice: "Leave crying, in the end he will calm down and fall asleep." Parents come up with all sorts of individual methods: carry in the car, leave to sleep under the TV, etc.

We must finally admit: sleep is a serious thing, and it must be treated from a professional point of view, since not all children learn to sleep on their own without outside help.

Effects of childhood sleep problems on young children

- often crying

- often in a bad mood

- feels not loved enough

- overly dependent on parents/grandmothers

- growth retardation is also possible

For a student

- lower performance compared to abilities

- lack of confidence as a personality trait

- timidity

- character problems

For the parents of such a child

- self-doubt (are we doing the right thing?)

- feelings of guilt (poor thing, maybe she is not sleeping because she is suffering from something, and we cannot help and then get even more angry)

- mutual accusations of parents that the other spoils the child

- Feeling confused about a problem

- Feeling like nothing can be done

- deep physical and moral fatigue

That is, the consequences of poor sleep are manifested in the behavior and character of the child.

The child does not sleep well - does not rest well - feels anxiety, small children do not calm down due to excessive fatigue, but, on the contrary, are excited. A tired child who wants to sleep almost never asks himself to go to bed, but on the contrary, he may show increased activity and excitability - he cries often and for no reason, easily gets into a bad mood and wants more attention from his parents - begins to depend too much on who cares for him. In the future, this can lead to the formation of an insecure and timid character, problems in communicating with others, reduced academic performance, etc.

The impact of poor sleep on health is not yet fully understood, but it has been clearly established that sometimes poor sleep can also lead to growth retardation, since growth hormones are produced during sleep (during the first hours of sleep)

CHAPTER 2

Critical age 5 years .

If a child has not learned to sleep well before the age of 5, in adulthood he has a high chance of having insomnia, 5 years is the border. At this age, the child already understands well what parents want. Many children at this age go to bed, do not cry, do not call their parents, but the problem is not resolved, as they continue to fall asleep with difficulty and wake up often, only now they keep it to themselves. In the worst cases, the child has nightmares and other nighttime problems and cries that he does not want to go to bed. From adolescence, insomnia remains for life.

Sometimes parents do not even understand the seriousness of this problem, it seems to them that everything will pass with age. In fact, 35% of children suffer from sleep problems before the age of 5. But these data are underestimated, since many parents believe that it is normal if a child from 6 months to 2-3 years old (and sometimes even further) does not want to go to sleep, wakes up 3-5 times at night, explaining this by hunger, desire to drink, write, etc. Therefore, surveys often do not give correct results. 35% - the statistics of our center for the treatment of sleep problems.

From 6-7 months, the child is able to sleep alone in his room, in absolute darkness and for 10-12 hours without waking up and without requiring the presence of adults.

If your child is not sleeping as described above, it is natural for you to ask yourself: what is going on, what is wrong? Why isn't our baby sleeping then?

Forget the excuses you used before: gas (passes by 4-5 months), teeth, hunger, thirst, too much energy, went to kindergarten, etc. The reason is 98% one:Your baby hasn't learned to sleep yet! Like this? -you ask. - What does it mean?

You will discover this in later chapters. If you literally follow all our instructions, then in less than one week your child will turn into a night sleeper.

Before you start reading the other chapters, you should convince yourself of the following things:

- your child not sick (if he does not sleep well, this is not a disease and it is not treated with medicines: valerian, decoctions of motherwort, etc.)

- at your the child has no psychological problems (excuses like: wakes up because he feels parting with his parents, etc.)

-your child not spoiled (even if everyone tries to convince you otherwise). If he does not sleep well, this is by no means the consequences of being spoiled, even if this is expressed in the fact that he constantly requires the attention of his parents, wants to be lulled, rocked, carried in his arms, read to him, etc.

- if your child does not sleep well, This is not your fault .

Our book will help you teach your child to sleep.

3-4- the infant's x-hour cycle consists of the following elements; food-sleep-hygiene (change diapers, etc.) The order may change (hygiene-sleep-eating). Sometimes there are newborn anarchists. They do not even follow this simple pattern, that is, they fall asleep and wake up without any logic.

At about 3-4 months (sometimes even a little earlier), babies usually begin to adjust to a 24 (25) hour cycle, the so-called solar cycle. So he starts sleeping more at night. At first, the baby is able to sleep only 3-4 hours at night without waking up, then 5-6, then 7-8 and, finally, 10-12 hours. ATTENTION: there are no clear rules for the ratio of sleep duration with age, it all depends on the individual characteristics of your baby. This habituation to the adult cycle is associated with the development of a certain area of the brain, conventionally called the "internal clock".

To properly adjust this internal biological clock, certain external stimuli are needed (light-darkness, noise-silence, a meal schedule, certain habitual actions, etc.). Therefore, it is better for a newborn to sleep during the day with light light and little noise, and at night in silence and complete darkness. So the child begins to get used to the difference between night and day.

Thus, the child must be surrounded by certain external stimuli for correct orientation. Briefly, it boils down to two aspects:

Parental behavior

-feeling of confidence

- calmness

- patience and desire to teach the child to sleep

- repeatability in evening procedures

External elements

-bed

-pacifier

-toy (bear, dog, doll, etc. with which you can sleep)

Parental behavior

The child is very sensitive to the internal psychological state of the parents. He perfectly understands if mom is nervous or worried about something. Therefore, when you put the baby in the crib, try to be as calm as possible for these half an hour and demonstrate with all your behavior that it cannot be otherwise, that it is natural and wonderful to go to sleep. You can't change the way you put him in the crib. Everything should always be almost the same (within reason). That is, at a certain hour, everything should be repeated: you bathe him, then feed him, then change his diapers for the night, put him in the crib, turn off the light, wish him good night and go out. The order of your actions may be different, the main thing is that it should be repeated every evening.

Repeatability gives the child confidence. He knows what will happen in 5-10 minutes, then in half an hour, and he feels safe. The kid is not alert, does not expect unforeseen surprises, and therefore calms down. If on different days the child is placed in the crib by different persons (mother, grandmother, etc.), adults should agree among themselves not to change the order of procedures and try to do everything as much as possible in the same way.

External elements

The child must associate certain things with sleep. If you put a baby to sleep by rocking him in your arms, he understands that rocking is a dream. Accordingly, as soon as you stop pumping it, it wakes up and in order to fall asleep again, it needs to be rocked. If the baby falls asleep at the breast, he gets used to the fact that food is a dream. And he will fall asleep only at the sissy or with a bottle in his mouth. Accordingly, as soon as he feels that there is nothing in his mouth, he will wake up. At night, everyone, adults and children wake up for a few seconds. Usually, a person then falls asleep and in the morning does not even remember about it. In older people, these awakenings can last longer than 30 seconds and reach 3-4 minutes. In a normal situation, a person remembers that he woke up only under exceptional circumstances. A normal child wakes up at night (for a few seconds) 5-8 times, and a child with problem sleep and more. If the child, when he opens his eyes for a moment, finds everything the same as it was when he fell asleep, he automatically falls asleep and sleeps on. If he is used to the fact that sleeping means riding around the house in a wheelchair, he will expect to be in a wheelchair and go around the house. If he fell asleep at his mother's breast, he will look for the breast. If he fell asleep in his father's arms, he will look for his father, etc. If, opening his eyes at night, the baby does not find exactly the same situation in which he fell asleep, he gets scared and cries to call his parents. In the worst case, he will not be able to fall asleep without repeating his favorite situation.

An example for you: you fell asleep in your bed. Open your eyes for a second at night and see that you are on the sofa in the living room. You jump on the couch: what happened??!!! Why am I here??? The same happens with the child. As you understand, the child needs external elements, and here - attention - the mistake of most parents is that they choose elements that require their presence. A child cannot make his own bottle, he cannot walk around the house in a stroller, etc. Therefore, these are incorrectly selected elements.

Therefore, it is necessary to choose elements that can stay with the child all night and that do not require our intervention. It can be a teddy bear, a pacifier, his pillow, a blanket. The child should always fall asleep only in his own bed, etc.

What you should never do when trying to euthanize a baby (over 6 months old)

-sing

- rocking in the crib

- swing by hand

- rocking in a wheelchair

- carry by car

-touch him, give him a hand, let him touch us

- caress, pat on the head

- put parents in bed

- let him jump around the bed / room to exhaustion in the hope that then he will fall asleep faster

-give food and drink

Bottom line: never actively help your child sleep. He must learn to fall asleep on his own.

CHAPTER 3

You go quieter - you will continue, or how to teach a child proper sleep from birth.

How to teach a newborn. The main thing you need to know is that the newborn sleeps as much as he needs - no less, no more. He can fall asleep anywhere and with any noise. As mentioned above, his cycle is usually 3-4 hours. Ate, slept, pooped, changed clothes, etc. If your newborn isn't following any pattern, don't worry - it's completely normal. At this stage, food and sleep are closely related, so the baby wakes up because he wants to eat and falls asleep because he is full. However, you need to be careful here: if the baby is crying, this does not necessarily mean that he is hungry (many mothers breastfeed right away, as this is the easiest way to calm the baby, but this is wrong). First (if the child has recently eaten - the interval should be 3-4 hours) try to find other reasons: is he hot? Cold? is he wet? wants to handle? tired of noisy society? tummy hurts? Only then give him the breast. If you breastfeed him every time he cries, the baby will get used to associating the breast with sleep and comfort. He will get used to the fact that in order to calm down, you need to eat. In just a few weeks, babies are able to eat more than they need. If you give him your milk, there is no medical problem, but it still leads to bad habits, since the feeling of sleep and hunger are controlled by the same part of the brain. In addition, such children grow up into adults who, when nervous, begin to eat everything in order to calm down. If you feed him artificial milk, too much feeding can lead to obesity in early childhood or adulthood.

It is not yet the time for hard scheduling. However, we advise you to show your child the difference between sleep and wakefulness. If he is not sleeping, take him in your arms, play with him, talk. If he is awake, try not to keep him in the crib. This will help him understand that the crib is a place to sleep (see the previous chapter on external elements).

During the day, put him to sleep in a light light, and at night do not leave a nightlight on. So the child will learn to understand the difference between night and day.

During the day, do not tiptoe, even if the baby fell asleep, but at night try not to make noise behind the wall or in the same room. During the day you can vacuum, play the piano, etc. In the evening, when the baby is already in the crib, turn down the volume on the TV, etc.

Bathe it before bed. Some parents prefer to bathe their baby in the morning, but if you are more comfortable doing it in the evening, the baby will have another external element associated with sleep. He will quickly get used to the fact that after the bath he goes to sleep.

Give him maximum sleep comfort . If he has just eaten, hold him upright so that he releases air from his stomach. Change his clothes, check that the crib is not too cold, that the room is about 20 degrees.

From birth, the baby should get used to sleeping on its own. Try not to rock him in your arms. Try not to associate food too much with sleep. However, if at this age it still doesn’t work out, don’t be upset. Your baby is still too young. Be guided by common sense. In any case, it is useless to leave the baby to cry for hours.

Many children start sleeping 5-7 hours at night and earlier, but by3-4 months all children should do this. At this age, the biological rhythm changes. If initially you did not follow any rules (rocked the child, gave him the breast to put him to sleep), now the time has come to gradually change these habits.

Remember:

- you must be calm at the time of laying the baby

-help him connect some external elements with the hour of going to bed, you need to do the same actions every night before going to bed.Remember that for a child, repetition means a sense of security.

This is the age when it is already necessary to decide at what time the baby should go to bed. From a biological point of view, sleep in children is easiest in the summer between 20.30 and 21.00, and in winter - from 20.00 to 20.30 Choose daily routines that you will then repeat every evening: bathing, changing diapers, 10 minutes of quiet games with dad, etc. Pay attention to how your baby reacts to bathing - if he does not like water or is too excited, spend only short baths before bedtime, or move them altogether into the morning. It is better not to let the baby eat next to the crib to separate food-sleep. Spend a few minutes with your baby in another room (where he is awake), talk to him, play quiet games, etc. Then put him to bed with his things - you can choose what you want; teddy bear, doll, pacifier (preferably a few, then it will not be difficult to find at night, for example, tie 4 nipples to the edges of a large handkerchief) The main thing is that what you give him can stay with him all night and does not require your repeated intervention. Kiss the baby, wish him good night. Then leave the room while the baby is still awake.

If you do everything right, the baby will enjoy the time before bedtime, he will recognize him and go to bed without any problems. However, if your baby, despite your efforts, does not lend itself to “education”, do not worry: it is too early to talk about childhood insomnia before 6-7 months. It's just that your baby needs more time to transition to an adult cycle.

If he wakes up frequently during the night, check:

- are you sick?

- Too bundled up or cold?

- peed or pooped?

- Don't eat before going to bed? (if he is hungry, he should not eat at night, but the last meal should be larger)

Did your baby have gas (colic)? If so, he is used to waking up with stomach pain.

Help him. You can shake it, caress it and put it back in the crib. However, remember that your goal is to teach him to fall asleep on his own.

Attention: in the first weeks of life, the child never cries for no reason. Therefore, we must immediately try to understand what is the matter and help him. However, you will soon notice that the baby has different types of crying: he protests, he is hungry, he is wet, he is angry, he is bored, etc. Once you learn to distinguish crying for serious reasons from a simple whimper, do not run to the baby every time because of nonsense. Wait a few minutes - maybe he can fall asleep again.

WITH 6 months any child should sleep less during the day (usually twice: after breakfast 1-2 hours and after dinner 2-3 hours) and more at night. At 7 months, the child should already have a meal-sleep schedule (eating 4-5 times a day, sleeping 10-12 hours at night without waking up).

If your baby is 6-7 months old, and he is not yet accustomed to such a regime, start “education”.

Good for a 6-7 month old baby

- established regular meal-sleep schedule

- eat 4-5 times a day

- sleeps 10-12 hours at night

- goes to bed willingly and without problems

If your child fits this description perfectly, don't get too carried away, as all sorts of small details can easily ruin a good sleep habit in a young child. Try to maintain the regularity of food-sleep and the repetition of activities before going to bed.

From the age of 7-9 months, the baby will no longer fall asleep if he is too tired. At this age, children know how not to fall asleep, even if they are very tired. Sometimes because they want to stay longer with their parents, sometimes because they are too tired or excited, etc. Don't let yourself be fooled. Put the child to bed at the same time, repeating the same actions. . Try not to stretch your actions to put the baby to bed for an hour (baby's dream). Children who already know how to speak quickly learn to bribe their parents: one more kiss, read one more fairy tale, just one, etc., I'm thirsty, I want to write ... If the child insists on one more fairy tale, read him a well-known fairy tale in a monotonous voice. Do not read anything interesting and exciting to him at night! It prevents him from falling asleep!

After a year, the baby gradually moves from two daytime naps to one. This is a difficult time, as there is a period when one dream is not enough, and two is a lot, but the problem disappears in 1-2 months. After dinner, the child should sleep until 4 years old, and preferably up to 5-6. Many parents and caregivers allow a child not to sleep as early as 3 years old. This is too early. A child at the age of three is able to stay awake during the day, but in this case he is too tired in the evening, he has too deep sleep, which in turn can lead to various problems (nightmares, etc.).

When we understand that the child has learned to sleep. The child can sleep well at 10 months, without visible problems. However, at least until the age of 5, one must be careful, as some event (moving, the appearance of a brother, etc.) can destroy good habits. As soon as you notice problems, apply the method described in Chapter 4. So our advice is: even if your child can already sleep, be careful, follow the evening procedures and schedule.

Last note: be realistic!!!

Many parents do not know how to be realistic and want the impossible from their children. If your child in the first month of life slept less than the norm for his age, then in three years after applying our method, he will sleep less. If he has learned to sleep, he will go to bed without problems, will not wake up at night, will sleep for 10 hours. But he will not become a dormouse if he is not a dormouse by nature!

Many parents rejoice when their children get a lot of sleep during the day (finally, you can mind your own business!). The child cannot sleep 4-5 hours after dinner and 12 hours at night! Even if you are very pleased that the child is sleeping, wake him up after 2-3 hours of sleep. A child should never sleep during the day without waking up for more than 3 hours!

Other parents put their baby to bed at 8 pm and want him to wake up at 10 am. A child is not a clockwork robot! He has his own biological rhythms, they must be respected, not destroyed!

Perfect pajamas - this is one in which the child is not hot and in which he can sleep without a blanket. Small children always open up at night.

CHAPTER 4

Start over , or how to fix your child's sleep habit . What is normal for a baby and what is not? When can we talk about childhood insomnia?

Many parents consider it normal to get up at night 2-3, or even 4-5 times to a one and a half year old child to give him a bottle. But this is NOT NORMAL, just like the case when an 8-month-old baby does not sleep until midnight without any signs of fatigue, or when a one-year-old baby starts screaming loudly as soon as mom puts him in the crib and wants to leave the room.

From 6-7 months of age, all children should be able to:

- go to bed without crying and with joy

- fall asleep on their own without help alone in the room

- sleep 10-12 hours without a break

- sleep in your own crib (and not in your parents' bed), in the dark without a night light on

This description applies to all healthy babies as long as they do not have colic (which usually resolves by 4-5 months), milk intolerance, acute respiratory infections, bronchitis, etc. If your baby is already 6 months old and not sick, but has not yet learned to sleep through the night, he may have problems with childhood insomnia in the future.

Children's insomnia is explained by:

- in 98% of cases, the wrong habit of sleeping

- in 2% psychological problems (see end of chapter)

Children's insomnia caused by wrong habits has the following characteristics:

- the child is unable to fall asleep without assistance

- wakes up at night (from 3 to 15 times) and cannot fall asleep again on his own and requires the help of parents (sickness, bottle, etc.)

- superficial sleep - the slightest noise can wake him up

- sleeps fewer hours than indicated in the table for his age

In such cases, parents resort to auxiliary methods: shake the baby, pat on the head, give food, drink, etc. The baby eventually falls asleep, but the problem is that when he wakes up again, you have to start all over again.

If you decide to change this situation, you must follow the following rule: we must strictly follow our instructions, follow them literally, the slightest deviation or change can lead to failure!

What does it take to develop a good sleep habit? Let's repeat the general rules:

- parents should be calm and confident in what they are doing, and also always follow the same pattern in behavior when laying the baby down, create a ritual.

- the child must associate sleep with external elements that can stay with him all night: a bed, a bear, a pacifier, a favorite blanket, etc.

So, let's forget the past and imagine that our baby was born today.

Let's start by choosing the outer elements. Remember that they should stay with the baby all night (that is, they should not be dangerous, too small for him to swallow, hard so that he does not hit in his sleep, etc.) and that they should not require our presence (for example, a bottle of tea is not suitable, since someone has to fill it at night). With a child of 2-5 years old, you can prepare a drawing to hang over the crib. After dinner, dad (mother) says to the baby: "Let's go to the room, draw a beautiful picture." The kid can draw the sun or a cloud over the house himself, and dad can add a bird or a tree, etc. Mom can prepare a carousel to hang over the crib (just cut out a doll or airplane from paper, make a ball of shiny paper and hang it over the crib with a rope or elastic band). You don't have to create masterpieces, you can just buy something suitable. The main thing is that the child has something fundamentally new, which was not there before and that he likes.

If before every night you put him to bed in a different way, now you need to create a ritual. Decide for yourself what is more convenient for you: swimming, dinner, half an hour of play and in bed. What you decide now, you will have to do the same every evening.

Let us give you some advice. In accordance with natural biological rhythms, it is best to give the child the following schedule for eating: breakfast around 8 o’clock, lunch around 12, afternoon tea around 16 and dinner around 20. Try not to deviate too much from this schedule, as these are the biological rhythms of children. In any case, if for some reason you cannot stick to this entire schedule, remember: the child falls asleep most easily in winter at 20.00-20.30, and in summer at 20.30-21.00. This is due to the peculiarities of the work of the brain of babies.

First day of re-education . So, you are all set, the schedule and the evening ritual is selected. After dinner, dad (mother, grandmother) play calm games with the baby for 10-15 minutes, then they hang the drawing together over the crib. They explain that this is a poster, and that he will sleep all night with the baby. If the baby is still sleeping with a pacifier, buy him a few, spread them around the crib so that it is easy for the baby to find at least one in the dark. If you don't think this through, your baby will wake you up at night so you can help him find a pacifier and then - goodbye, re-education!

The second step: mom or dad chooses a toy from those that the baby already has and gives him a name. After that, they say to the baby: This is your friend Mishka (Petya, etc.). He will sleep with you all night. Don't let the kid choose: remember, we know how to sleep and teach him, not he us, now you decide. Even if your child is 4 years old, in this situation we must treat him,as with a newborn who still does not know anything and does not know how.

If you must deprive your baby of something that he had before (bottle, etc.), explain to him that his new night friends replace the old ones and that they will stay with him all night and in the morning when he wakes up they will still be with him.

Remember

- the requests and demands of the baby at the time of bedtime can affect the correct sleep habit

- the child should not tell his parents how he should sleep and what he needs for this, in this situation, parents are teachers, and children learn to sleep, and not vice versa. The calm, confident tone of the parents should show this to the children.

So, it's time to put your baby in the crib. Act like you do it every day. Calmly change your baby's clothes, put him in the crib and cover. Do not expect the baby to close its eyes, turn on its side and snore. Firstly, the baby has not yet been “reeducated”, and secondly, he has already realized that you have prepared some kind of surprise for him. Most likely, he will immediately jump to his feet and start screaming in a wild voice as soon as he realizes that his mother wants to leave the room. Don't try to put it down right away. Sit next to the crib or take him on your lap and tell him, “Kitty, Mom and Dad want to teach you how to sleep. Look, you are not alone: your bear, drawing, etc. are with you. They will all sleep with you all night.” This speech will take between 0.5 and 2 minutes. Depends on what you include in the list (curtains, bicycle next to the crib, etc.). The main thing is not to get annoyed and speak calmly. It does not matter at all whether the child understands well what you are saying to him. Most likely, during your entire speech, the child will scream like a cut in the hope that he will be able to return to the old days. Ignore the crying, keep talking. These are moments that require willpower and courage from you. Your baby will be ready for anything so as not to lose his "privileges". Here is just a short list of what children in our practice were capable of in order to pity their parents and return “their happy past”: children sobbed, made sad faces, asked to drink, write and eat, threw tantrums with hiccups, caused themselves to vomit, poop, etc.

Despite all this spectacle that your baby will give you, you must not lose calmness and remember: you teach him to sleep, not he teaches you. You are doing this for his future, for his health, and for your nervous system.

After your short speech above, put the baby back to bed.

Attention: after this point, it cannot be touched until the next morning. If he gets up again, don't mind. Say, "Good night, fish (pussy, etc.)", turn off the lights and leave the room. Leave the door almost completely closed (small crack to hear what's going on).

Attention: It doesn't matter if the baby is 6 months old or 5 years old. The only difference is how he can fight you. A six-month-old baby can only cry, and a 4-5-year-old can talk, scream, beg, get out of the crib, etc. In this case, we advise you to organize some kind of barrier to exit the room.

Don't lock the door etc. It can terrorize your child! Don't be afraid if he falls asleep on the floor, etc. Firstly, children rarely do this, because they love convenience, and secondly, even in this case, the goal is achieved - the baby fell asleep on his own. All you have to do is put him on the bed.

Up to this point we have considered the point of view of adults. But how does the baby feel in such a situation?

Children communicate with adults according to a certain pattern: action-reaction. Children do certain things because they expect certain reactions. Consider the situation: a six-month-old baby. They put him in the crib, he begins to sing "ah-ah-ah-ah" and clap his hands. What will mom and dad say? "What a bunny!" And they will mind their own business. But the same baby starts screaming like a cut one, becomes brown-red or purple, hiccups. What are parents doing? They run: “Bunny, are you ill? What happened to you? Do you have a stomach ache? Cutting teeth? Kitty, now mom (dad) will shake you (scold on the handles, etc.)”. What does the baby like more: lying alone in the crib or being the center of attention of all relatives? What will the baby do the next time he wants the attention of his parents? And what will a child of 4-5 years old do? He has enough imagination to make his parents back down first!

Let's go back to the bedding process. What will our 4 year old baby do when we give him his teddy bear? Maybe throw it on the floor. If you pick him up and give him again, what will he do? Throw the bear on the floor again. If we continue like this, who will win? Baby!!! Because he made a certain action and achieved the desired reaction. You fell for his bait! If your baby threw a teddy bear, a pacifier, a blanket, a pillow on the floor, and you continue to talk calmly, then collect everything, put it in his bed, turn around and leave the room despite his wild cries, who will win?

Another example: you put the baby in the crib, and he immediately rises to his feet. You put it down again, it rises again. You do not want to put him to bed all night, but he wants to continue this game for as long as possible, because in this way he completely owns your attention. So put him in the crib and leave the baby alone. If he wants to go up, let him go up as much as he wants.

What else can a baby do to get your attention? “I want to drink”, “ah-ah-ah”, “bo-bo”, etc. The child may even induce vomiting. Don't worry, nothing happens to him. Wash it, change the sheet and put it back in the crib. You can be nervous (but don't show it outwardly). Remain outwardly calm and determined: your child must learn to sleep. The kid can also scream and cry like a cut (then tell the neighbors that his ears hurt, poor thing). In such

Lyubov Khromushina

In love with Italy and the Italian language. Enjoys beauty and harmony in all manifestations. There are no children yet, but she dreams of having them in the near future.

photo: designhermomma

A heated discussion continues in Italy, in the center of which is the sensational technique of the Spanish doctor Eduard Estiville.
The doctor heads the clinic for the treatment of sleep disorders. His book "Sleep well" was first published in Barcelona in 1996 and then translated into Italian (Eduardo Estivill "Fate la nanna"). Recently, it has been gaining popularity around the world.

The technique consists in the fact that, depending on the age of the child, different methods are used to put him to bed. Until a certain age (6-7 months), the baby tends to stay awake all night, he can often wake up. Further, according to Estiville, he needs the help of his parents to learn how to sleep properly. From 6 months to 5 years, according to Estiville, the habit of going to sleep is formed. A child at this age is already able to sleep for about 10-12 hours without waking up. It is necessary either to help him in mastering the ability to sleep alone throughout the night, or to re-educate him if he is already accustomed to improper sleep.

Reeducation is that the child is put to bed in accordance with a certain ritual - they read him a fairy tale at night, give him a massage, and talk. The ritual itself is not so important, according to Estiville, the main thing is that it takes place every evening at the same time. Next, the child is put to bed in his room, wished good night and told that now he must learn to fall asleep on his own. After that, the child is left alone. Parents should not pay attention to the fact that the child may begin to worry and cry. They come to his crib at regular intervals and in a calm, confident tone tell the baby that he is able to sleep on his own. In this case, it is not allowed to take the child in your arms. After a while, the child calms down and falls asleep.

Actually, Estiville's idea cannot be called revolutionary, since a similar technique for putting a child to bed was previously formulated by Richard Ferber in the 1980s.

Italian parents are divided into two camps: many claim that this book really helped them and after long sleepless nights they were finally able to relax and sleep.

Everyone who has used the technique notes its effectiveness. After three nights, during which the child cried sometimes for 30-50 minutes, blissful calm set in. The child began to fall asleep at the appointed time on his own, without whims, and slept throughout the night.

Some openly admit that in order to apply the technique, you need to prove yourself. not from the best side:

“There is a Nazi hiding inside you. Maybe you don't know about it, but he hid somewhere in the depths of your soul. It's time to wake him up to face the little imp.", writes Claudia De Lillo.

“No one has ever died from crying. Therefore, if a child, like an obsessed one, emits terrible cries from his bed, then he does not suffer, but implements a diabolical strategy to enslave you, ” De Lillo addresses the inexperienced parents. She is a passionate admirer of the Estiville method, because after 3-4 nights "the beast is tamed" and you can sleep peacefully.

photo: joannagoddard

Other parents believe that Esteville's theory is fascist and it is inhumane and inhumane to apply it to children.

Main arguments against:

First, the biological rhythms of a child are very different from the periods of sleep and wakefulness in adults, children simply cannot physically sleep all night at the age of 6 months.
Secondly, many criticize the mechanistic approach that underlies Esteville's methodology. All children are different, and parents can understand for themselves what is best for their child.
Thirdly, the crying of a baby can usually be distinguished from whims. In any case, he speaks of some basic need that must be satisfied, be it hunger, thirst, cold, malaise, fatigue, fear, etc.
And finally, many parents shudder just at the thought of having to leave their child to cry in a separate room.

However, some parents suggest using the Esteville method with extreme caution, coordinating it with their inner convictions and not going too far. There is a rational grain in the theory, they admit - it is reasonable to create a ritual of going to bed (tell a story, sing a song, hug a toy, etc.), which should be performed daily at a certain time.

photo: joannagoddard

There is another aspect that rarely attracts attention.

Journalist George Kozza points out to her parents the attempts of linguistic manipulation by the author. The following words are used to describe a baby: "brat", "bandit", "cunning", "imp". Separate features of his personality are deliberately leveled out so that they cannot become an obstacle to the implementation of the method. The journalist is sure: Estiville resorts to phrases with a negative connotation to make parents believe that a child who prevents them from falling asleep is their enemy.

Insidious intentions and bad inclinations are attributed to children:

“He knows perfectly well that such behavior will interfere with his parents ...”
“The child will cry and make the saddest face from the whole arsenal of his faces. This is his deadly weapon and he knows it."
"What other tricks will he resort to?"
Relationships between parents and children are portrayed as military actions between people on opposite sides of the barricades: "Be vigilant ... you may fall into his insidious traps."

So that parents cannot deviate from clear instructions and follow their intuition, Estiville warns them in advance: a result can only be achieved by literally following his instructions. Thus, he is engaged in the re-education of not only children, but also the parents themselves.

And he often succeeds: after Esteville's "linguistic attack", parents can adopt the proposed method. Indeed, if we do not get enough sleep because of small but vicious children who use all possible ways to bring us to exhaustion, to manipulate us, maybe letting them cry for several nights in a row is not so scary? It's for their good, think the parents who read the book. So children will get rid of sleep disorders.

photo: markandlola

It is worth adding that the Association of Cultural Italian Pediatricians opposed this method.

“We once again express our disagreement with the method of “training young children to sleep”, which is based on the gradual cessation of crying. In addition to conventional common sense, scientific research confirms that the physiology of a child involves receiving maximum care from the adults who care for him. The requirement that a small child fall asleep on his own and sleep throughout the night without any contact with an adult does not correspond to the physiology of the child and is unrealistic. This method can cause confusion for parents and great stress for children. The use of this method can undermine confidence in adults and in oneself in early childhood and prevent the establishment of a proper relationship between parents and the child. In addition, its use can harm breastfeeding if the child is small., - says the appeal of pediatricians to the Commissioner for the Rights of Children and Adolescents of Italy, Vincenzo Spadafora.