Article created with advice from SG Supernanny
Lack of sleep affects children too. Imagine us being unable to function properly when we are having lack of sleep, what about our children?
Sleep helps our children to learn and remember things and it boosts their immunity. Their bodies produce growth hormones when they are sleeping, thus newborn need to sleep more at times to grow well.
Children of all ages need to get enough sleep so they can play, learn and concentrate during the day.
Source: SG Supernanny
It is important to make sure they sleep well to allow them to develop better.
After doing research, I found out there are some misconceptions that Asians do while putting our babies/child to sleep:
1. To use external tools (eg. Rocker, Yao Lan, Sarong)
This is one of the common practice that Asians always use. These external tools cause reliance for the babies to be familiar with this routine before sleep, causing them to not have a good night sleep if they are not using this external tools.
2. Sleep Training is allowing your baby/child to cry their lungs out.
No, this is not true at all. There are many articles online on how sleep training means letting the babies cry it out and get themselves tired, then they will fall asleep on their own. However, sleep training should be helping your baby/child to have healthy sleep habits by teaching them and guiding them. If you allow them to use external tools, they will learn that I can sleep better only if I use these external tools.
3. They will get their sleep cycle themselves.
This is what our parents say when they raise us up. However, we must remember that baby needs to learn how to pick every skill up themselves, including learning how to move their little fingers and realise that they have hands and legs. Hence, our baby should learn to pick up the skill on their sleep cycle.
If you face these problems with your child’s sleep issues, wait no further to rectify them. Resolving them fast will allow your little one to have a proper development. As a result, you can have better rest too!
You can find Zoe Chu (SG Supernanny), the sleep expert, to solve all your issues here.
Zoe Chu, also known as SG Supernanny has been featured in Mindvalley, Mother & Baby, Singapore Motherhood, Sunday Times, Expat Living, Lianhe Zaobao, Harper’s Bazaar Jr, AsiaOne, SmartParents, Young Parents, Honeykid, Money FM and Channel NewsAsia. The sleep super nanny has helped many tired parents get back their precious sleep through her simple 5-steps baby sleep programme. Zoe is also a mother of 4 including a set of twins and all 4 of her babies have been sleeping well and through the night since they were 3 months old.
You can also get to read her e-book here.