I am a Consultant Child and Family Therapist and have worked for many years with a variety of problems. In my experience feeding and sleeping are two major areas of disruption in family life. They are the areas where parents can feel most powerless and they are areas which can determine certain patterns of family life for many years to come. Eating and sleeping are the foundations, for example of boundaries and discipline and for containment, of children feeling safe. Problems that are not addressed early can lead to many future difficulties within the family.
I am delighted to have come across Millpond Sleep Clinic as somewhere that I can trust to refer clients who need help in this area. Mandy has been a staunch support to my sister with her first two children and more recently with her twins and I have been very impressed with the sensible, compassionate way that Millpond Sleep Clinic works.
I have included an article below that gives some background to the issue of sleep in infants and young children and hope that this is of some use to parents in their thinking about sleep. I would also like to offer my services to any parents who feel that they would benefit from the support and advice of a child and family therapist. I have a website which offers free advice and also offer a free initial consultation if you have concerns that you would like to discuss in person.
Best wishes, Ryan Lowe
ryan@askachildtherapist.com www.askachildtherapist.com
I think it is worth putting a newborn baby in context. Man’s environment has changed at an extremely accelerated pace, much faster then we are able to make physical evolutionary adaptations. Therefore, although the human adult has used its ability to think to adapt to and create the world we live in, the newborn baby does not have this thinking capacity and is, to begin with, a rather primitive creature. The environment that a baby is adapted to, and therefore has an innate expectation of, is that of an early hunting and gathering existence. The baby expects to be carried, jostled, to live in a small but very busy community and to sleep in packs.
There are several survival mechanisms in a baby, the main one of these is that if they feel unsafe or uncomfortable they will cry in order to elicit help. In a primitive environment a baby that is left alone to sleep is likely to end up as lunch for some passing carnivore. For this reason babies are very clear that when left alone without comforting sounds, feelings and movements of adult protectors, they cry. We know ourselves as adults that it is hard to sleep when anxious and so a baby needs to feel safe and have their anxiety at an acceptable level before they are able to fall asleep. Bear in mind their instincts are telling them it is unsafe to sleep alone, they do not yet realise they are born into a world with very few passing carnivores.
In many cultures it is still the norm to sleep with children well in to advanced years. I have a friend who grew up in Burma and described the family bedroom as being one long room running the length of the back of the house, for every new baby that was born a new mattress was added to the bed and all the siblings moved over to make room for the new baby next to the mother. In Japan also it is still perfectly normal behaviour for all members of the family to sleep together in one bed. However, I am fully aware that we are not living in Burma, we are no longer members of small tribes and our society is extremely different from that of a primitive hunter-gatherer society. We live in small nuclear families with parents who would really like some time and space to themselves in the evening!
Once you know and understand the position of the baby as described above, there are several options. Obviously you are at liberty to bring up your family in whatever why works best for you. But you may decide that you want to help your baby to learn early to manage sleep by themselves. In these circumstances the help of professionals like the sleep therapists at Millpond Sleep Clinic, can be incredibly helpful in creating a safe, compassionate, sleeping routine with the minimum of distress for both parents and baby.
