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SLEEP PROBLEMS AT DIFFERENT AGES: INFANCY
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Parents will often have different concerns about a child’s sleeping patterns at different ages. In infancy these will usually be about the unpredictable nature of sleep. Many babies take a very long time to settle into any sort of predictable rhythm of sleeping, feeding and playing. This makes life very difficult for the rest of the family, of course, as it is impossible to schedule other activities, such as paying attention to other children, shopping, cleaning and most importantly, the parents’ (usually the mother’s) own relaxation or sleep. There is always the possibility that the baby will wake up, demanding a feed or attention.
Babies who continue to wake through the night cause similar problems. Parents get very tired and become exasperated at having their sleep interrupted regularly, sometimes several times a night. This is always a source of considerable tension in the whole family. Nothing seems worse than having to get up in the morning to face the day tired and grumpy.
Many children seem never to get into a predictable routine. Those who have a difficult temperament seem to go right through infancy and the toddler periods without sleeping through the night. Parents will report that ‘Johnny didn’t sleep through the night until he was 4 years of age’. While this may be true and it may also be true that some children do have an intrinsic predisposition to be irregular sleepers, the problem is often contributed to by the parents’ inadvertent reinforcement of the very sleep patterns that they complain of. There is no doubt that all children, no matter what their temperament, can be taught to sleep through the night.
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