Battling sickness in an infant or toddler while maintaining sleep.

Scenaro:

A toddler or infant who is sick is the classic scenario of stress inducing family life for those few days and nothing disrupts routine more than that. Work needs to know, your nanny needs to know, day care needs to know, and your own mind is screaming multiple things as to how you could have prevented it and how you would survive the next few days. This scenario could be even worse for a SAHM who is managing multiple child schedules which is basically multiple full-time jobs!

Suggestion:

Independent sleep coaching is best postponed when a child is sick as this would mean that her child is running on a treadmill, and you want her to carry some dumbbells while she runs. However, if you have a child who has been allowed to follow her natural state to learn how to rest then you assuming your child needs support during sleep is a myth.

Science:

Sleep inducing hormones have nothing to with you. they would be produced and would take affect in her body and mind and a parent sleeping alongside would change the pattern and create confusion to ac child’s brain who has learnt that sleep I s independent.

Social aspect:

The perennial parental guilt propels one to change sleeping arrangements during sickness. On the contrary I suggest managing the guilt without disturbing your child’s rested sleep.  Let her do her thing and do periodic check by maintaining the dark and quiet sleep environment in the night.  A good rest is what most childhood common viral infections need along with some hydration.

Solution:

A video camera that monitors without disturbing the child is also something that helps tremendously to an anxious parent. Periodic checks every 4 hours helps in determining if your child is running extremely high fevers that would need medication. Allow your child to sleep during her nap times and this would be a time when she might take longer naps to give her body rest and time to heal.

The core value of independent sleep is to let your child learn to own her mind and has nothing to do with parental guilt and anxiety which is best managed with mature thinking, untainted by peer pressure from society to “stay with your child all the time “for common viral infections.