Sleep "Training"

Sleep is a wonderful thing. Lord knows I cherish it. I'd rather sleep than do a lot of things. There is nothing like the beautiful feeling of falling into a deep, blissful sleep.

And goodness knows how a sleep-deprived mother misses it. I know. I have been there. So in desperation, I know some parents give in and try to "train" their children into some kind of artifical sleep schedule. I don't want to argue about that with anyone on my blog, as I know opinions about this are varied and passionate. But I do want to share my perspective for anyone for whom it might matter. By sleep train, I don't mean routines. I mean actually trying to impose a sleep schedule on your child through coercive and artifical methods such as cry-it-out (cry to sleep).

Whomever you are, my dear loved one who is considering or starting to do this, I hope you will reconsider. There has got to be a better way to survive your child's early years.

Here are the top ten reasons why I think such a course is usually (I will make no hard line about never, but USUALLY) not such a good idea:

10. Because children need parenting all the time, not just in the daytime. If you fail to parent your child at night, it means neglecting some needs that your child has.

9. Because the person you are really training is: yourself. What are you training yourself to do? You are training yourself to be non-responsive to the messages your child sends you. You are training yourself to ignore your child in his or her moment of need. This is not natural. There is a reason that mother nature has given mothers (and fathers) an instinctual, painful, gut-level response to a baby crying. Everything we are meant to do in the first year or two of a baby's life has to do with a high level of responsiveness. By training yourself out of your responsiveness, you diminish, even if subtly, your closeness with your child.

8. Because even if you can do nothing to soothe your baby's tears, your presence counts for something. It is diminishing to you both to assume that it matters not whether you are there. Have you yourself never been comforted by a loved one, even as you sobbed in his or her arms? Sometimes the ability to stop tears is not the best measure of the difference one person makes in the life of another.

7. Because independence is not a foundational level skill. Imagine trying to teach a child to write before he or she ever sees a letter, to ride a bike before he or she has learned to sit up, or to answer the phone before she or he has ever spoken. Independence is a slowly building skill, and the ability to sleep independently in many children does not develop for many years. While some may be able to train their children to "give up," and to stop crying because those cries go unanswered, this only demonstrates the development of mistrust that one will be cared for. It is a far cry from real independence.

6. Because unaswered cries are stressful for babies. Of course, sometimes some of us will need to put our babies somewhere safe and walk away for a few minutes to get ourselves together. It is hard when a baby cries, and cries, and cries and there is nothing we can do to make it better. But when you choose to ignore your child's needs in order to "train" him or her into some false "independence," you are choosing to let stress hormones rage through your child's body. In the short term, this can lead to vomiting, overheating, and maybe even contribute to risk for SIDS. In the long term, repeated episodes of exposure to stress hormones through "cry it out" could result in permanent changes to your child's neurological system (BRAIN!). These changes can impact memory, attention, and emotion over the course of a lifetime, perhaps even including a predisposition to anxiety and depressive disorders. Also, who wants a child to associate sleep with stress hormones?

5. Because a baby's need to sleep will vary depending on a large number of factors. I am all for routine. Routines help children feel secure, can ensure a child's needs are not unintentionally overlooked when a parent is otherwise distracted, and can increase the chances that everyone will keep their sanity in a family. But schedules, well, they can be good...but are trickier. When you artifically impose a schedule on a very young baby, you will miss those changes in sleep needs that naturally arise from things not limited to growth spurts, work on developmental milestones, and dietary variations. By tuning into my children's needs, I have been much better equipped to recognize when suddenly they need that second nap each day again after not having needed it for a few months, or when they need to go to bed a little earlier or a little later, or when they are too busy learning to sleep and will catch up later. It's a similar thing to following a baby's cues for feedings...in which case you ensure you don't miss a need for more calories (more meals) for a growth spurt, and so forth.

4. Because there is nothing like the times when your baby falls peacefully asleep in your arms. You can't get this time back, when they are little and cuddly and want to be with you. You just can't. 'Nuff said.

3. Because it is a lie that your baby will still need you to go to sleep when s/he heads off to college. I promise. Seriously, your child will grow to want his or her space and you will someday come to miss these years. Whoever invented the myth that whatever you do when your baby is a few months old is what you will have to do *forever* was seriously misguided. My children's sleep habits have changed more over the last few years than I could even describe. These days, they don't like to be touched even (so sad for me). I just sit next to them.

2. Because closeness with parents in the early years is actually a good thing. It helps children develop a solid foundation for many emotional intelligence factors...the ability to empathize, the ability to be comforted and to comfort others, the ability to read the emotions of others, a healthy desire for closeness and intimacy with others, and a sense of confidence through security (and the assumption that the world is generally a good place where needs will be met). These emotional intelligence factors are critical to a successful, happy life.

1. Because parenting is not about what "works in the short term," but rather about what you want to do for your child over the longrun. Hopefully, we all want to have confident, secure children in the longrun. But actually, it is useful as well to know that in the short-term, many times "cry it out" doesn't "work" for even short term parenting goals. When it does "work," it often requires that you do it over and over again. Night after night. And again with each growth spurt. And again any time your child is teething. And again with each major developmental milestone. It is actually often way more work.

There are many different ways that parents address sleep needs without sleep training. If you are interested in ideas and advice, try this: Nighttime Parenting Discussions.

That's my two cents. For what they are worth.

One More Reason to Homeschool

I have had to fight our school district pretty hard since M. turned three to keep him out of public school. It's been really tough having to stand up, only to be battered at every turn. I do it because I have seen with my own eyes the benefits Montessori has had in M's life, because I have observed the public school classroom recommended for M. and seen the sub-standard education offered, and because I have researched the heck out of it and made the decision I feel is most educationally sound.

Even though this isn't the reason I have M. doing partial homeschool and partial private Montessori school, this kind of thing is one more reassurance I've done the right thing: http://enyal.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/abuse-or-classroom-management/

My local school district has some crazy approaches to behavioral management, and I could totally see this kind of thing going on. In fact, I actually had to request a new school district speech therapist for M. after, among other things, his speech therapist grabbed his arm and yanked him very roughly right in front of me.

Everyday I am down on my knees saying my thanks that I have been able to keep ds out of harm's way, for the most part.

Not done (aka: dangerously blogging while angry)

An addition to my writing of a few minutes ago. I just read the comments on the news cast website, and I am all the more horrified. Here is my most recent post on my message board.

Post Four: You know, the comments on the news video...VOMIT! More parent blaming for the child with the disability...more wah, wah, we adults lose it because we aren't allowed to discipline and we have no idea how else to relate to children with disabilities other than to discipline (punish) them into submission. More, no one understands how bad it is for teachers and how this child is surely the devil himself.

Not to mention more excusing the teacher's behavior with the notion that teachers are overworked and underpaid. BELIEVE ME. My wife was a preschool teacher, the most overworked and underpaid of them all. And at one point in a preschool with HUGE discipline issues. But being overworked and underpaid still is not a justification for abuse of a child. It is just not.

I appreciated the person who commented, "Did she really think she could bully him into better behaviour?" Well, given the way we have historically misunderstood and mistreated people with disabilities, it is possible she thought she could. But she was WRONG (and unprofessional and abusive).

Someone commented on the news cast website:
"The teacher explained that this student had been a major disruption in her classroom all year: yelling, touching and bothering others, rolling around on the floor, etc."

All of these are actually types of behavioral communication that make sense for a child with aspergers. It is a discipline issue until the teacher figures out what the child is trying to communicate and responds appropriately. The behavior will stop when the need is met. The child is trying to regulate his neurological system. The child is trying to communicate with other children when words fail him. The child is trying to respond to his environment when it overwhelms him. That's hard work, but all this he has had to do all year under the duress of this emotionally unsafe classroom environment.

I just can't get over it.

Saying (as one person did in their comments) "the teacher explained that this student had been a major disruption in her classroom all year: yelling, touching and bothering others, rolling around on the floor, etc." about a child getting evaluated for aspergers is like saying about a child being evaluated for visual impairment: "the teacher explained that this student had been a major disruption in her classroom all year: running right up to the chalk board while the teacher was writing, running and bumping into other students, putting her hands on the walls when walking down the hall, sometimes even causing other students' artwork to fall."

This Is NOT Okay

So a couple days ago, one of the parents on a message board I frequent posted a link to this article:

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/may/23/st-lucie-teacher-has-class-vote-whether-5-year-old/

Here's a photo of this little guy, lest we run the risk of thinking of him as a hypothetical.

Of course we all-- meaning all the moms on the message board who read the story-- went straight up in arms about it.

Here is some of what I said:

Post One: I am sitting here sobbing at the thought.
Literally, I could see this happening to my son. I am TERRIFIED of putting him in school.

What does the teacher think this is, an f'ing Survivor episode?!!

Seriously, that was so emotionally damaging for this boy AND all the students in this class. And really, those two little ones who voted against the crowd...you have got to be impressed because at that age, how hard would that be?! Incredible.

Post Two (After someone wondered whether the teacher was engaging in a misguided attempt to teach him natural consequences-- as in, if you behave in a particular manner, you will upset other people and they won't want to be around you):
If it was a natural consequence of his behavior, then I am sure he was already experiencing it.

Where did the IEP come into all of this? That's what I want to know. Because if the kid had an IEP as a result of aspergers, then there likely had to have been some kind of plan to address these types of issues with this kid.

Post Three (When someone reminded me that there wasn't yet an IEP in place): Right. I got so wound up about this that I started forgetting some of the details. Still...

Then someone reminded us of this, from the original article:

"Barton said her son is in the process of being diagnosed with Aspberger's, a type of high-functioning autism. Alex began the testing process in February for an official diagnosis under the suggestion of Morningside Principal Marsha Cully. Alex has had disciplinary issues because of his disabilities, Barton said. The school and district has met with Barton and her son to create an individual education plan, she said. His teacher, Wendy Portillo, has attended these meetings, she said."

Of course what this teacher did would have been awful no matter what student was the victim: a student of any age, with any disability or none at all. But this teacher attended the IEP meetings. She knew what was up. This is disabilism. This is horrific!!
And now, listen to the tape (go to the following link, scroll down to the video box, and click on "watch this story"):

http://www.whas11.com/news/local/stories/whas11_topstory_080527_recording.3444fc17.html

How on earth can the school district say this doesn't meet the standards for emotional abuse? This is absolutely NOT okay, and as for me, I am taking this very personally. Because this is a blow to all human beings who have any sense of decency at all, not to mention all of us who have children and especially those of us with "disabled" children.

But the worst of it is the fact that the damage has been done, to this child and to all the other children in that classroom. Serious damage. It will take a lot of hard work to help these children heal these wounds. The only silver lining I see is that this child is learning in a major way (albeit under unfortunate circumstances) that his parents will protect and stand up for him. May all children come to be so blessed.