amyl@gatech.UUCP (Amy Lapwing) (01/30/85)
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I have been reading with great interest the recent series of
articles concerning ways of getting children to go to bed
and/or sleep through the night.
I have no children (yet!), so I do not write to tell of my
experiences. Rather, I would like to make some observations on
what I've read here in net.kids that have not yet been made.
First of all, it seems that those parents who say their
children are not going to bed reasonably easily or who are
not sleeping through the night are those parents who seem to
rely on the child's volition, rather than their own, to accomplish
these tasks. Thus, it seems apparent from the discussion that
if you rely on your child wanting to do something you want
him/her to do, you have problems. On the other hand, parents
who make it clear that the child will do what they want him/her to
do, regardless of whether that is also what the child wants,
are not writing in about having sleeping problems. This second
group of parents must obviously take it upon themselves to decide
what is best for their child, and then follow through with
deliberation (and discipline) to see that those decisions are
carried out.
So, in the going-to-sleep issue, I see two schools of thought:
1. The child will go to sleep when he is sleepy, therefore
he does not need to be forced to go to bed.
2. The child needs more sleep than he usually wants to
admit, therefore the parent must enforce a bedding-down
routine.
It is principally parents of the first group who are writing in with
problems.
My second observation is that which of these two groups you as
parents belong to depends largely on your
feelings, philosophies, upbringing
and less on your
knowledge of children's psychological and emotional needs.
For example, Pete Kaiser writes in to say he and his wife thought
about a disciplinary approach of shutting their child in at bedtime
and not going in "for any reason" to "condition" her to go to sleep
at a regular time. They opted not to do this because "we chose
simply not to." In fact, they felt good about themselves because
they perceived that they were showing their child that her needs
mattered to them: if she wanted to stay up till 11 p.m., they were
amenable. Now, whatever approach you take to child rearing, you
should be comfortable about it and feel good about what you are
doing. Some parents center their lives around the child, making
sacrifices (such as a good night's sleep) to please the child,
and they like this state of affairs. Other parents consider their
children as people who share in their lives and who must learn to
adapt to the parents' lifestyle as the parents make allowances for
their needs, in a give-and-take that is comfortable to the parents.
My last observation, then, is that all of you who have written in
about this issue have related the ways you have learned to deal with
your children. However, some of you support your practices or
philosophies by making statements such as (and I paraphrase)
"The child needs to know we care for him, so we always pick him
up when he cries", or "Our child does not need much sleep, so
we don't force her to go to bed at some arbitrary hour."
I, as a layman, have no reason to believe these claims that
a child could require as little as 8 or 9 hours of sleep a day,
or that some psychological damage will result from not picking
up a child each time it complains. These are just claims and
should not be made without sources. Readers have no reason
to believe them, and, in fact, could be doing themselves a disservice
to follow advice that is not soundly based.
So please, parents, tell us about the child-rearing practices
you are comfortable with, but don't try to back them up with
(probably) false claims as to their soundness. And especially,
don't try to make the more disciplinary of you feel guilty
with cheap shots about their humanity.
Amy Lapwing Pitts
--
Amy Lapwing
School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA
CSNet: Amyl @ GATech ARPA: Amyl.GATech @ CSNet-Relay
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,rlgvax,sb1,unmvax,ut-ngp,ut-sally}!gatech!amyltron@fluke.UUCP (Peter Barbee) (02/01/85)
> So please, parents, tell us about the child-rearing practices >you are comfortable with, but don't try to back them up with >(probably) false claims as to their soundness. And especially, >don't try to make the more disciplinary of you feel guilty >with cheap shots about their humanity. > > Amy Lapwing Pitts Your whole article seemed so well thought out and then in the last paragraph you seem to say that discipline (more discipline is better) is assumed correct while you want us to prove that a non-antagonistic approach must be proved. My question to you is, do you want me to tell you what to do because I "know" better ? (supposedly based on more experience) Do you think it is right? If you answered no (I realize I'm assuming) then why should we treat a child differently? Do we want to condition children to not worry too much because their parents will make all the really tough decisions? And further limit their confidence by punishing (or just "disciplining") them when they make a decision we disagree with? A while back I began my career as a mechanical engineer. In my first few months I was not the most productive engineer around, and I also made some significant mistakes. Did my boss discipline me? Did he take over some of my decisons? No, he encouraged me to keep trying and showed confidence in my decision-making ability. He was definitely banking on the future, I like to think that his confidence paid off. I think the above is pretty analogous to raising children, I like myself and I like the confidence my 4-year old shows as a result of my actions. At least I like to think her behavior is affected by our relationship, I know it is not an absolute cause-effect situation. Just another father, Peter Barbee decvax-+-uw-beaver-+ ihnp4--+ allegra-+ ucbvax----lbl-csam-+--fluke!tron sun-+ ssc-vax-+ :
whitehur@tymix.UUCP (Pamela K. Whitehurst) (09/15/85)
In article <3838@amdcad.UUCP> linda@amdcad.UUCP (Linda Seltzer) writes: > >Why make the kid go to bed if he's not tired. When he's tired he'll fall >asleep anyway. Plenty of parents are frustrated little dictators and the >only way they can exercise power is to impose all kinds of arbitrary >rules on their kids. May parents used to make me go to bed early, >I just turned on the lights after they fell asleep, and stayed up >most of the night reading. It never hurt me that I didn't sleep >10 hours a night - good training for engineering school, actually. Let's get the bed time and ages straight. Anyone old enough to read a book that takes most the night is probably ready to find out the results of their actions. At 13, my daughter does not have a 'bed time'. She is expected to stay in the house and be quiet at night, and she is not allowed to use tiredness as an excuse for not doing her chores, or for being disagreeable the next day. She is allowed to sleep late or take a nap if it is possible. Until she was 12 she had a bed time. I did not have trouble with "I'm not tired", because she was tired. I think that after going to bed at the same time for so long, her body was conditioned to going to sleep by 9pm. Sometimes she was the one to say "I'm tired, I'm going to go to bed." (It was so cute coming from a five year old!) She didn't complain much about "missing something" either. Her bed time ritual involved a bath and then a story. The books were always beyond her reading ability and enjoyed. The advantages of this approach were: she went to bed without complaint because she wanted to, I had a special time with her each day, we both found a lot of good books. The biggest disadvantage was sometimes I didn't feel like spending the time to read to her. Sometimes I could skip a night without her complaining, but not for more than a couple days. The bed time ritual stopped about the same time the official bed time did. Occasionally she still asks me to read to her, and sometimes I do. -- PKW hplabs!oliveb!tymix!whitehur