You could now teach a course, drawing from your own experience, on the
topic of how significant in a person's life are those first few months.
Every experience, from birth on, determines a person's future. Behaviour
and habits learned in infancy have more staying power than anything the
child will learn in graduate school. You have given your daughter
life-long sleep habits. .
Nobody warned you that your baby is a learning machine, soaking up
information and establishing attitudes at a rate that cannot be equalled
at any other stage in her life. Since she has been used as a soother, to
help somebody else get to sleep, you could say her presence in the home
has served a useful purpose during a time of need, but I wonder how
useful to her this experience has been. .
One great benefit of closeness with her parents, and her acquired need
to be close to somebody as she falls to sleep, is that for all her life
she will probably be a warm, loving daughter, and have an easy ability
to become close to others. She will not be the person who shies away
from hugs. She will be popular with friends because of the pleasure she
derives from close contact. Other chidren who have not had this training
in infancy will wonder at her ease with strangers. Being able to come
close to people, and to enjoy it, is a rare gift. .
When some relative or interfering "friend" tells you that she is getting
too old to cuddle and should never be allowed in bed with her parents,
just ignore them. When your next child arrives, I would not suggest
that you change your ways at all. In fact, you might find that letting
the new baby sleep with your daughter might work well for them both. .
Now I can see all the child psychologists in the hemisphere rising up to
say I'm giving dangerous advice. Sorry about that - but as I see it
there is much benefit from closeness of any kind, especially within a
family. .
Since I haven't given you any advice about how to get your daughter to
go to sleep on her own, you may have guessed that in my mind this is not
a priority. If you need a bigger bed, that's just one of the problems
faced by growing families. If you can't afford a bigger bed, make do
with what is there. One of my children needed to feel my presence at
night and we put the crib tight beside our bed so I could lay my hand on
him while he fell asleep. That son is awaiting the birth of his third
child just now and is the most caring, loving father I've ever seen. .
I think some people don't realize that having a child is not like
getting a new piece of furniture. The child changes your life entirely.
And each subsequent child does it all over again. If you make mistakes
(and every parent in the world makes mistakes constantly) you just have
to learn by them and try something different next time. Meanwhile, we
have these wonderful children with us and have little alternative but to
make their lives as wonderful as we can. Trying to mold them into
routines that suit us but don't help their growth is one of the mistakes
we can all avoid if we just stop and think at every juncture. .
When your question first arrived - simply stating that your child would
not go to sleep unless you lay down with her - my answer would be "Well,
then, lie down with her." After much thought, and hoping you have come
along with me through all this cogitation, the answer still seems to be
the same. Lie down with her. .
Later on, you can tell her repeatedly that she can enjoy sleeping alone
if she will just let her mind wander along the lines of whatever story
you are reading to her currently. Or if she will try to think up new
lines for some silly song you have been singing with her, or imagine the
adventures of an imaginary playmate you have helped her invent. In other
words, she can use her mind to keep you with her while it wanders along
familiar thoughts. .
In one week you'll think you are making no progress, but maybe in a
month she might be gaining a little courage about going alone into those
areas of thought. And if that doesn't work, you'll think of something
else, but be sure it's a method that uses your daughter's imagination.
Having her cry about being alone has no value at all. If you think she
is using her crying and throwing up technique to control you, don't let
that worry you. Learning to control one's surrounding is not a bad
thing. If these drastic methods get her no results, she could lose her
will power and never develop the strong character you really want to see
in your daughter. .
Now I'm off on another tangent, but I guess my "advice" to you about her
need to be with you during that moment of going to sleep would be, just
ride it out. Things change rapidly. It seems like forever just now, but
when you look back on this ten years from now it will just be a tiny
blink. .
Yours truly,
GG.
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