Why Do Children Cry As They Learn How To Sleep and What Can You Do About It?

Seeing your baby cry is perhaps the most heartbreaking moment of all. You don’t want him to cry. You want him happy. And of course, you want him healthy. But for all that to happen, he needs to sleep properly.
It would be nice if your child could learn how to sleep without any crying or frustration whatsoever. Every parent would sign up for that. Unfortunately, the truth is that all children, regardless of the method you use to help them sleep, inevitably do shed some tears in the process. Let’s see why.
First and foremost, children cry when learning to sleep because they are protesting – they don’t like change. In fact, they hate change. Just think about it.
Do you remember what your favorite book was as a kid? Do you remember wanting to read that book over and over again, even though you knew every word of it?
We all resist change, children and adults alike. It’s normal to do so, and it’s normal for your child to express his resistance by crying. After all, crying comes before words – not the other way around.

Second, as children begin to learn how to sleep but haven’t yet figured out how to do so, they are understandably frustrated. They no longer have Mom and Dad on their side to help them get to sleep, and they don’t yet know what to do differently. They will eventually.
What’s really interesting about falling asleep is that although each of us is born with the inherent ability to do so, it is considered a learned behavior. And yet you can’t teach anyone else how to do it – you can’t simply say to your child to close his eyes and sleep. Instead, each of us has to learn for ourselves what to do to settle into sleep.
Of course, there are children who seem to learn how to sleep almost magically, with very little effort on the parent’s part. However, children are different. Everyone is unique.
Your child, along with many others, hasn’t learned this essential skill yet, which is why he needs you to take a step back, so he has the opportunity to achieve that on his own.
How will he do it?  He might kick his legs around a bit, he might gently rock his head from side to side, or he might grab his lovey. Or maybe he’ll suck on his thumb. If he’s a bit older, maybe he’ll play with his hair.
The truth is, each of us has different things we do to soothe ourselves into sleep, and your child will surely find a way that’s perfect for him. But he won’t discover those things nearly as easily with you standing right next to him or picking him up – he won’t have the motivation to do so.
Simply put, if you “help” him, he will cry even harder because the touching feels like a tease that serves to reinforce the crying.

Saving Your Marriage On Your Own - What You Need To Know?

One of the most common questions spouses ask when confronting a marriage crisis is this: How can I save my marriage if my partner doesn't want to help find a solution? How do I succeed I am trying to save my marriage on my own?
           
It is a typical enough story: one partner leaves, the other stays. One remains 'in love', the other is uncertain. Whatever it is that has caused a couple to be apart, the one person who remains bears the prospect, fear, doubt, desire, hope of saving his or her marriage' ALONE.

Considering there are two people contributing to the overall health and wellbeing of a marriage, shouldn't both of you be present to actually try and save it? Or, worse, when it's his, her, their fault so shouldn't he, she, they be the ones to make amends? You're just the victim here, after all!

The first thing you must know is if you want to save your marriage and if you find yourself alone in this desire, waiting for the other spouse to make the first move is the beginning of the end. If you are looking for someone to blame or someone else to put the emotional and physical work into saving the marriage, again, it's going to fail.

The belief that the responsibility lies with the other person is a self-defeating attitude.  It propagates the belief that there is absolutely NOTHING you can do to save your marriage and you should stand and watch what comes your way.

NOT true!

There is still something you CAN DO. Even in your loneliness and solitude, you CAN save your marriage.

How? Let's begin first by examining what it means to be on your own.

As human beings, we hate being alone. It's part of our genetic make up to be social creatures and develop connections with others, whether through friendships or romantic interest. The way we connect with others and the nature of how we interact with people is a fundamental aspect of personal and emotional development.

The paradox is that as we grow older in the love, trust, companionship and support of our significant others, we develop an internal strength of self that makes us whole, happy human beings. Ideally, the mature human person should have developed a strong sense of self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem as he or she reaches adulthood. These become the windows with which we view the world, flaws and all. These make up part of our personal shelter amidst challenges and difficulties. This is called SELF-ACTUALIZATION.

However, many of us enter into adult life without even being aware of this beautiful, human truth. We may have experienced abandonment in our childhood or been disappointed by our romantic relationships; whatever it is, it has caused to shift from proper mature development to fears of abandonment and the inability to see that we can stand on our own two feet.

Thus, many of us enter relationships and marriages with the hope, plan and dream that we would never be alone. We invest so much in our partners and loved ones, focusing our entire beings on them and relying on them to make us happy and secure. Unfortunately, this perspective carries with it its own poison. Subconsciously, we project the responsibility of our life happiness on the other person, eloquently sidestepping taking responsibility for our own life happiness and destiny.

Problems develop when a partner indicates some form of dissatisfaction with the relationship or the expectations unwittingly placed upon them, and when they do so, we panic. When our partner leaves, our fears kick in. When something goes wrong with our marriages, it is very easy for us to place the blame of the other person for having made us unhappy.

In order to save your marriage when you are the only one doing it, the key then is a paradigm shift, meaning, the key is to change your attitude and focus. Stop focusing on your partner - stop the blaming, stop the inaction.

Take a good look at yourself and what you can do in this moment. You can definitely NOT control your partner's feelings, attitude and reactions, but you can control your own.  You can go from fearing abandonment to actually taking responsibility for yourself and your own happiness.

This is where the human truth about self-actualization comes in. Understand, adapt and internalize this for yourself. Learn it. It will spell the difference not just in your marriage but in YOU.

A whole human being is easy to love. A happy person attracts happiness. In starting with yourself, you can move from being an unhappy, clingy, difficult person to one who can provide an environment of safety, wisdom, trust and open communication. If each of you are able to self-sustain when it comes to taking responsibility for your own life happiness, you both have much less baggage and much more genuine love to bring into the relationship. Your motivation shifts from being one of fear to being one of real love.

Rather than beat yourself up in desperation, try these tips to start your own personal transformation and lead your marriage to success:

- Breathe
- Smile
- Let go
- Believe that reconnection is possible
- See a counselor for YOURSELF not just for your marriage
- Examine your part in contributing to the difficulties in your marriage
- Forgive yourself
- Change
- Look after your health, beauty and well-being

For all you know, your partner (and you) may just rediscover the person they first fell in love with and more. For all you know, this is the type of you that would allow your partner to come back and initiate communication. When that happens, you have every opportunity to sit down with him or her, discuss your motivations, plans and feelings. You can even get to the real issues surrounding your marital difficulties and actually begin taking positive steps to work them through.

In being open and mature, you can also provide an environment where love and intimacy can flourish once more. With all the confidence and sincerity you have gathered, take these steps. Plus one more. Even in your separation, conflict or difficulties, find it in you to continue loving your partner and showing him or her that you do. Through little, subtle acts, like preparing a snack for him or her or spending some quality TV time, you can rekindle love in your marriage. They don't have to be grand gestures, they just have to be sincere. And coming from the mature, new you, they will.

Is Your Child An Early Bird?

Early morning wakings are one of the toughest sleep problems to fix, if not the toughest. If you’re wondering why, it’s because after a decent night’s rest your child has got more energy to fight sleep in the morning. And the truth is, all of us come up into lighter sleep phases in the last hour of our sleep, preparing to take up for the day.
Remember, however, your child is waking early only if he is not getting the right amount of night rest for his age and his body. In other words, if your child sleeps from 7 PM to 6 AM, it’s a perfectly reasonable schedule for him, even though it might feel early to you.
We can’t ask our children to sleep more than 11 hours at night. Their bodies are usually rested after this much sleep, and they won’t be able to do more.
Also keep in mind the following fact: if your child is waking even at 10/½ hours, if he is rested and energetic in the morning and makes it easily till his naptime, then he’s getting enough rest for his body.

Problems arise if your child sleeps from, say, 7 PM to 5:30 AM. In this case, you’ll need to push the bedtime later by 15-minute increments, then watching to see if your child can sleep later in the morning,
A word of caution, though: Making the bedtime later can often have the opposite effect of causing your child to wake up earlier. This is the reason why things need to be done in small steps.




Here are some other ideas to try if your child is an early bird:


•    Make sure that your child’s room is very, very dark.
•    If there are any sounds that could be waking him – such as garbage trucks, barking dogs, sprinklers – put white noise in the room and make the volume loud enough to protect him from these sounds
•    Remove all stimulating toys from your child’s crib or bed, which can be distracting once the sun enters his room.
•    If you are checking in on your child within the last hour before his wake time, your interaction may prevent him from returning to sleep. Don’t check on him if it’s less than one hour till his wake time.
•    Make sure the bedtime is not too late for your child’s age. Adjust the bedtime earlier by 15-minute increments, and watch what happens in the morning. In doing so, you will allow your child to sleep later, as he is less overtired at bedtime. If he does wake earlier, return to your previous bedtime. If moving the bedtime earlier has no effect on the wake time, you may want to consider using the earlier bedtime anyway to help your child get the right amount of night sleep for his age.
•    Make sure your child is not hungry. If you have a child under 12 months and have newly begun to wean feedings, you may want to slow the process down to give him more time to adjust. Moreover, be careful to ensure that you are offering the breast or bottle more often during the day to help him transition his previous nighttime feeds to the daytime, so he won’t be hungry going down for sleep at night.

Communication Breakdown - Guilt, Barriers, Stress and Ways To Overcome It

It happens to the best of us. Communication is such a fickle thing, and the lines of communication can become blurred every so often, especially when love and feelings are involved. Even those who think that they are immune to the confusion of conflict can find themselves drawn into a communication breakdown when they least expect it, and chaos ensues.

Even those of us who are better equipped than many others are not immune. This happened to me on the weekend, and until to be quite honest, it took me by surprise. My spouse told me something that really hurt my feelings, and I automatically lashed back in defense.

It was a silly argument, over something as simple as a misplaced bottle of perfume. But to me, it represented something much deeper that had been simmering away for a couple of weeks. I get frustrated at having to search for something when it is not where I expect it to be, worse still when my partner has shifted it and I don't know the first place to begin searching.

Perfume, needles and thread, car keys, a Tupperware container to store my baking soda in, covers for our outdoor chairs, all were examples of instances where I had to turn the house upside-down. A simple answer from my spouse when these things were shifted would have saved me a lot of time and frustration. And the answer I got? "You need to open your eyes and organize yourself better"

I was gutted. When I come home from work I exercise the dog and cook dinner so that it is on the table by the time my partner gets home. The house is always spotless and warm, as I'm very conscious of coming home to a tidy environment.

I see this as a fundamental part of my role in coming home first, and it takes a lot of my time. To imply that I have the time to "organize yourself better" really hurt.

I don't expect praise, but I did hope that my efforts were recognized. I got told that "I don't expect you to cook my dinner every night." That was interpreted by me as ingratitude, and hurt me even more.

So where to from here? My spouse felt guilty at coming home every night to the perfect household, where I felt guilty if it wasn't perfect. It was never about me trying to make my spouse feel guilty, but it seems it did. And this is where the communication fell down. He misinterpreted my efforts, and I misinterpreted his response.

Communication, communication, communication. I needed my partner to keep me informed of where things move to. I need to be informed. I need to voice my frustration before it gets to boiling point. We both need to talk about our feelings more, and how each of our contributions to our home and our relationship make us feel, and how we interpret each others contributions.

Just because something isn't spoken about, doesn't mean it's not important. A relationship or marriage is not a competition, but for many couples it feels like it.

When people feel guilt or stress, it leads them to act funny ways. Often stress and guilt are barriers to communication. The key to overcoming them is to recognize what it is, and have the courage to talk about it. You might be able to do it as a couple, or you might want the help of a friend who can listen to the way you are communicating with each other and offer insights and advice.

We got it sorted out, and kissed and hugged. It wouldn't hurt so much if I didn't feel such love at the same time. But it served as a good reminder to me. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in your own emotions that you forget to think of the other person. You also need to entertain the possibility that you are misinterpreting each other. Talking about it is the way to expose the miscommunication and let the healing begin.

From Crib To Bed - Important Change for Your Child

I want out! That’s the message your toddler will send – one way or another – when he’s ready to wave goodbye to the crib and say hello to a big-kid bed. Your child might actually verbalize displeasure, or more likely, simply climb out of the crib.

So, what needs to be done?

First, resist the temptation to move him too early. Most experts recommend doings so around age 3. Unless your child is climbing out of his crib or needs more space than a crib can provide – his body is growing at an astounding rate – it’s better to keep him in the crib, which allows him to feel safe.
This way, your child can feel comfortable taking giant developmental leaps during the day but still regress to the security of his old crib at night.
Moreover, until age 3, toddlers are very impulsive, and your child’s difficulty in understanding and being able to follow directions or rules (like staying in bed all night) will make sleeping in a bed a real challenge. If you transition to a bed before age 3, you can plan on waking up to a little visitor next to your bed pretty much every night.

When the time comes, however, you need to help your child transition smoothly to sleeping in a bed. For that, you need to follow certain steps. These are:

1.    Create a safe environment: Safety proof your child’s room and any adjacent areas he may be able to visit into the middle of the night. Secure windows, tops of stairs, and any stepstools that can be tripped over. Even better, you can install a safety gate at your child’s door. You can even install a small night-light in his room to help him orient himself and avoid hurting himself.

2.    Pick the mattress: Go to the mattress store – or any other store that sells mattresses – and let your child help you choose the mattress or bed. With safety in mind, all you need is a twin-size mattress and box spring and some safety rails for the side. You should adjust the height of this new bed accordingly, as it will need to sit low on the floor for some time until your child gets used to it. Get some fun new sheets, some special pillowcases and you’re set to go.

3.    Disassemble the crib (together): Once the new bed comes home, ask your child to help you to take down the crib. This way, your child will feel part of the transition process and will also be able to say good-bye to the crib.

4.    Set up the bed: Put the bed in a corner of your child’s room so that the head and side of the bed are flush against the wall for protection. Add a safety rail to the exposed side of the bed. Your child will feel safe this way, just as he did in his crib.

5.    Explain the rules of bedtime: If your child is verbal before the first night of sleeping in the bed, go over the rules of bedtime with him. Tell him that he is a big boy now who needs to understand that when we go to sleep, we only wake up when the sun is nice and bright.

6.    Do your bedtime routine: During the first few nights your child is sleeping in his new bed, take an extra 10 minutes of reading time together to make him feel comfortable in his new environment. The idea here is to make your child feel safe. If your child seems excited about the new bed from the very start, you’re one of those luck people who has made this transition easily.

Can Your Spouse Love You Again? All You Have To Do Is...

Like the seasons, love in a relationship grows and wanes.

One of the most common myths in marriages is the belief that when the love wanes the relationship is over.

It's not.

If your spouse says 'I have fallen out of love with you,' don't panic. It doesn't mean your marriage is over. It doesn't even mean they don't love you. What it does mean is that your spouse has lost their way, or doesn't understand the many stages love and a relationship goes through.

You are being called to take charge of the situation, guide your spouse towards understanding this process, and even begin to rekindle your relationship.

The key to success is in understanding what is happening in your marriage and the role that love plays. It's very easy for us to connect losing the feelings of being in love with actual loving when it is not really the case.

After the initial thrill of romance is gone, couples often find themselves lost and confused. What they don't realize is that love is not just this heady lustful feeling that carries us away. That feeling has a shelf life. When the prospect of spending years together sets in, the correct question to ask one's self would be 'How now do I love without the initial thrill?'

We have to discover that every relationship has stages:

- falling in love,
- the honeymoon stage
- chaos or disillusionment,
- then mature love or resolution.

We are very quick to judge that we no longer love someone just because the feelings fade. With proper understanding, we can expect that even if the feeling may not be there, it doesn't mean we don't love.

In truth, love is a commitment. It is not just a feeling, it is a doing thing. A mature person loves by choice and not simply by circumstance.

The next step would be to manage your partner's feelings or lack thereof by starting with dialogue. Talk about the feelings and find out what happened, where is it coming from? There are numerous tools and methods available for a couple ' together or with a counselor/mediator ' that would help them examine their present situation. Talk to your spouse and tell him or her that the relationship deserves at the very least, dialogue.

In dialogue, let your spouse talk and you listen. There may be important things you need to learn about your spouse and your marriage. On the other hand, you can also share your own feelings about what is happening. Try not to place blame on your spouse, however, but share your thoughts and feelings by using 'I feel' statements.

In the meantime, do some self-improvement. It is never too late to evolve into a happier, more mature and more lovable person - even if it's just something you do for yourself. For all you know, this new you will be more attractive to your spouse and come as a surprise to him or her.

Finally, don't stop reinforcing your presence in the marriage. Do some positive loving acts for your spouse without expecting anything in return. These mirror your mature, positive view of what love really is. Make these acts little things. They don't have to be grand gestures.

It's the everyday things that actually build trust, intimacy and love between couples.

Co-Sleeping: Should Your Child Sleep with You?

Co-sleeping is the practice where the child sleeps in bed with his parents. Not surprisingly, it is one of the most hotly debated and controversial topics related to pediatric sleep. Let’s see why.
Some people argue that co-sleeping is the right and natural way to raise a child because the practice fosters a stronger bond and a more secure attachment.
Conversely, others will tell you that co-sleeping is risky, ridiculous, or even dangerous and they don’t want it for their family.
So, which approach holds the truth?
First, it’s important to understand that co-sleeping is not magic. Although some proponents of the family bed would disagree, numerous couples have reported that their babies did not necessarily sleep deeper or longer because their parents were close by. In fact, some parents found that their child slept longer and woke less frequently when they stopped co-sleeping and moved him into his own crib.
However, whether families choose to co-sleep or have their children sleep independently is a personal decision, and if both parents and child are safe, rested, and fulfilled, then co-sleeping is nothing to worry about.
If you decide do co-sleep, this commitment requires some very careful thinking about what you and your spouse feel is right for you as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.
Ask yourselves the following questions:
•    Is it nice to think about enjoying the coziness of sleeping in close proximity, or does one or more of us tend to stay active during sleeping – potentially disrupting the others?
•    Does everyone in our family want to co-sleep, or are we leaning toward it because one of us feels strongly?
•    Are we willing to commit to being quiet after our child falls asleep, or do we like to watch TV or talk in bed?
•    Will we enjoy being able to feed our baby more often throughout the night, or will having him next to us make it tougher to wean nighttime feeds?
•    Are we agreeable to getting into bed when our child does, to ensure his safety?
•    For working parents, does sleeping next to our child allow us to feel more connected to him?
As expected, co-sleeping has both advantages and disadvantages.
Let’s take a closer look at them.


Advantages:
•    Constant closeness whenever the child is awake. Many children and parents enjoy this feeling.
•    Immediate action and support for any sleep-related problem
•    The ability to nurse and respond to other nighttime wakings without getting up
•    More time to spend with the child
•    Possibly better sleep for both the child and the parents, if the child was sleeping poorly to begin with
Disadvantages:
•    Parents may sleep poorly if their children are restless sleepers
•    Parents may end up sleeping in separate rooms, and they may become angry at their child or with each other
•    Children’s and adults’ sleep cycles do not coincide
•    Parents may have to go to bed at a very early hour with their children and be left with little time for their own evening activities
•    Parents have little privacy
•    There may be a slight increase in the risk to the infant from SIDS and related causes.

The decision to co-sleep should be yours, made by the parent – or parents – and based on your own personal philosophies, not on pressure from your child or anyone else. Another family’s good or bad experience with co-sleeping should not influence your decision: your child is unique and your family is not the same.