8- The Baby is Asleep Routine

• Conventional wisdom: Good parents have a routine they insist be imposed on everyone remotely near their young children.

• Reality: The parents benefit from routine. The kids could care less and will sleep when tired.

   We touched on sleeping babies in the chapter before, but they deserve more coverage. 

    This  hot topic is argued by parents that tend to look for cause and effect in every facet of life, or stimuli that their precious offspring might possibly react to.  Waking from a nap is not a bad thing, nor does it cause irreparable damage to wake up before the scheduled minute has arrived.  It is also not the end of childhood if kids sleep in. In fact, an argument may be made that children exposed to periodic disruption learn to deal with life’s inevitable unexpected twists and turns better than those children that lead a so called perfectly scheduled mundane existence.  

   We are straying from bedtime routines intentionally to try to promote loosening up a little in general.   Think about how kids are raised in different cultures and think about pioneer times or even further back to caveman times.  In some places today, probably in your neighborhood, babies are strapped on the moms backpack, or belted into a carrier and mom goes about her day.  The baby is tossed about without regard to routine, but it still manages to get the shuteye it desires. When the child is bigger and no longer needs to be carried, it runs along beside the parents learning what is needed for their way of life, curling up for siestas when the urge hits.  These parents have no clue that their baby or toddler needs quiet time or a designated sleep period, they just go about their lives, tend to their babies true needs, and are blissfully ignorant.   Or, are they?

   Enlightened parents or more likely, parents with multiple children have learned to promote routine that works with the family, as well as works for the baby.  This means the babies, the toddlers, the active adolescents, and all the rest, sleep at night, and are awake during the day. Of course, infants and exhausted children need more sleep than adults need, and are free to fall asleep when the need arises.  Parents that promote day and night routine that closely follows their own routine are rewarded with their own quiet time in the evenings after the kids sack out. This doesn’t mean there will be smooth sailing and peaceful nights all the time. Infants still need to be fed, burped and changed, but altering the family routine and tip toeing around the baby is not necessary. Parents that do not grasp this simple concept set themselves up for endless needless work that may last many years.  

    The sign next to the doorbell says, “don’t ring, baby asleep” or the parent says, “I can’t, the baby is asleep.”   When you see these warning signs, you know the parents are already beyond help.  They have bought into, “baby routine comes first parenting”  and any attempt to persuade them otherwise will be met with an icy stare or worse, a speech on the virtues of good parenting strategies. Sadly, or maybe not, if you are still friend’s years later you may remember that, baby comes first episode, and then you can check out their kids to see how well you think their parenting strategy worked.  That is if their marriage has survived, and the child lives with the parent you stayed friends with.   The last sentence is needed to point out that parents that buy into the routine at all cost strategy, are likely to employ other non-flexible thinking, and I’ll leave it at that.