Terminology I Don’t Use

The internet and social media can be a great way for parents to relate and support one another. However... there's a huge amount of messaging and language that can also create or deepen a parent's sense of guilt or even shame.

An important part of my work as a sleep consultant is to help cut through all of that online noise to help parents focus on what they need to know in order to improve their child's sleep. Rather than blaming past behaviours, I focus on gentle solutions.

⁠Here are some common phrases that parents might like to rethink when they come across them online or in everyday life:  

1.   ‘’sleep crutch’’ or ‘’bad habits’’ 

I hear these phrases from parents and in the industry on a daily basis and they have always made me uncomfortable. They create a sense of doing something unhealthy by assisting your child to sleep that I don’t agree with. Firstly, they can make a parent feel judged for coping the best they can and doing what they need to do for everyone to get to sleep. Secondly, there is nothing inherently wrong with helping your child to sleep, whether that be feeding to sleep, rocking, singing, or patting. These actions are performed with love, with the best interest of the child at heart and they are instinctual. A better term for such actions is ‘’sleep association’’. Your child associates the action you routinely perform with sleep. A sleep association can be an external factor like a sleep sack or white noise or it can be performed by a care-giver, like nursing or rocking a baby to sleep. A sleep association isn’t a negative action - if it works for baby, it feels right and it feels sustainable then there’s no need to change anything. However, if your baby or child is starting to resist that method of falling asleep and the night wakings are feeling unmanageable, teaching your little one to fall asleep (and back to sleep) independently can lead to remarkable improvements in the whole family’s sleep.

2.     ‘’bad sleeper’’

I can’t conceive how a baby can be born ‘bad’ in any way. They are pure, innocent and beautiful. Of course, some children have a harder time with sleep (sometimes there may be a medical reason for this, often it’s a matter of temperament, both of these factors I will delve into in another article) and the impact on the whole family can be pretty torturous. The term “bad sleeper” also implies there’s nothing that can be done about the matter and that’s simply not the case. Not all babies will be able to achieve ‘’sleeping through the night’’ at the age that a parent might hope or another baby is able to - it’s dependent on their developmental stage and capability - but there is always something that can be done to improve and optimise sleep.

3.   ‘’spoiling a baby’’

Unwanted advice is an annoying certainty as a new parent. We’ve all experienced it. I remember being told I shouldn’t be nursing in the cradle position as baby will get air in their lungs and it’s super dangerous (not true). One parent told me that her postman used to tell her ‘’you are spoiling your baby’’ because every time he saw her, the baby was is in her arms!  These comments not only create unnecessary conflict for a new parent but it’s just not true. The child development literature suggests the more responsive you are to your baby the more you facilitate their development. Responding to your child helps develop a secure base from which they are able to grow and thrive. Just one example from a wide array of research showed an increase in maternal responsiveness directly impacted infants’ social, emotional, communication and cognitive competence (Landry, Smith & Swank., 2006).

I’m not implying that you have to respond to every single whine or moan from your baby or little one immediately, that’s pretty unrealistic, but if you are ever confronted with someone telling you that you are spoiling your baby feel free to correct them with some informed evidence!

In what felt like an endless struggle to get more sleep for my little one, reading terms like this triggered a lot of self-blame and guilt during that period. Those emotions were of course only intensified by the sleep deprivation. Looking back, a lot of this stems from our insecurity filling the new role of parenthood and because of that we compare our situation to others which a lot of the time only deepens the sense of insecurity rather than empowering our trust in our parental instincts. If you’re having one of these moments, take a deep breath, remember your intentions for your baby and the love behind your actions mean more than anything else, both short and long term. There is always a way forward but timing is key! When the moment feels right to make some changes there are lots of options that won’t compromise your parental instincts or values. There is support and guidance out there to help when you can’t see a way.