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Episode 12. What About My Child's Feelings? Overcoming the Biggest Barrier to Creating a New Sleep Routine
In this three part series, guest expert Gwen Kiehne shares her most impactful strategies for helping families work out their struggles with sleep. part 3 of 3 What about feelings? Here are some helpful notes from Gwen:
- How to be present with baby/toddler’s feelings
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Learning something new is hard and we just talked about how creating a solid attachment relationship is about creating predictability and a stable sense of safety. Well, when we change the status quo, it can be a very untethering experience for babies. It’s really normal for them to experience worry, sadness, anger, frustration, confusion any time you change the routine, even a little bit.
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Say again - these are normal human emotions. I think it’s also normal for parents to want to protect our babies and toddlers from experiencing these emotions because we think of them as unpleasant or even distressing ways to feel
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It can be more effective though to normalize these feelings by being present with them, bearing witness to them, and being an emotional anchor through them. I think about these big feelings like sudden thunderstorms. They come rolling in and they try to blow things around and they test to see what’s nailed down and what isn’t
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- Learning/teaching to tolerate discomfort
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Whether it’s allowing a little frustration to happen during tummy time or it’s working on sleeping without the breast in the mouth, children are served by understanding that frustration, confusion, even sadness and anger are not emergencies. Our children really look to us to understand how they should feel about certain situations, so if we come full tilt running every time they peep, it reinforces that this is the normal, appropriate, and eventually expected response to that feeling that they just had. In other words, “it felt like an emergency that I’m still on my tummy and when I made that sound my parent came running like it was an emergency. It must be an emergency.”
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The caveat here is that every child’s temperament is different. Some babies take quite a while to reach a point of frustration and then they can tolerate being in that discomfort for a while. Others are very quick to frustration and escalate to distress quite quickly. There’s no one answer that will work for all babies, so it’s important to just work with the baby you have, start where you are.
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- Practical tips
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Think about what ideal looks like and then break down the steps to get there
-
Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken
-
View all episodes
By Rachel AlvaIn this three part series, guest expert Gwen Kiehne shares her most impactful strategies for helping families work out their struggles with sleep. part 3 of 3 What about feelings? Here are some helpful notes from Gwen:
- How to be present with baby/toddler’s feelings
-
Learning something new is hard and we just talked about how creating a solid attachment relationship is about creating predictability and a stable sense of safety. Well, when we change the status quo, it can be a very untethering experience for babies. It’s really normal for them to experience worry, sadness, anger, frustration, confusion any time you change the routine, even a little bit.
-
Say again - these are normal human emotions. I think it’s also normal for parents to want to protect our babies and toddlers from experiencing these emotions because we think of them as unpleasant or even distressing ways to feel
-
It can be more effective though to normalize these feelings by being present with them, bearing witness to them, and being an emotional anchor through them. I think about these big feelings like sudden thunderstorms. They come rolling in and they try to blow things around and they test to see what’s nailed down and what isn’t
-
-
- Learning/teaching to tolerate discomfort
-
Whether it’s allowing a little frustration to happen during tummy time or it’s working on sleeping without the breast in the mouth, children are served by understanding that frustration, confusion, even sadness and anger are not emergencies. Our children really look to us to understand how they should feel about certain situations, so if we come full tilt running every time they peep, it reinforces that this is the normal, appropriate, and eventually expected response to that feeling that they just had. In other words, “it felt like an emergency that I’m still on my tummy and when I made that sound my parent came running like it was an emergency. It must be an emergency.”
-
The caveat here is that every child’s temperament is different. Some babies take quite a while to reach a point of frustration and then they can tolerate being in that discomfort for a while. Others are very quick to frustration and escalate to distress quite quickly. There’s no one answer that will work for all babies, so it’s important to just work with the baby you have, start where you are.
-
- Practical tips
-
Think about what ideal looks like and then break down the steps to get there
-
Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken
-