Sleep training your kids in Brooklyn

Among other things.
Apparently there are two main sleep regressions. There can be more, but one usually occurs around 4 months as the architecture of sleep changes.
Younger babies literally sleep straight through until they wake or are woken.
At 4 months, babies start to sleep like people, like older children and adults do. You cycle into a slight waking state every 90-120 minutes or so. This is the time when humans have to learn, or should learn, how to get themselves to fall back to sleep.

Our twins had a very small sleep regression around 4 months. Very slight.
Some times they are hard to gauge because they were three months premature. There is a big difference between their calendar age and their developmental age, although gap is shrinking rapidly.

Around 10 months, they were teething, had started crawling and pulling themselves to a standing position. Big developmental milestones often cause sleep regression in 8-10 month range.

No lie, they each went through episodes of sleep crawling. While I was still in soothe mode, I'd hear crying go in and one of them would be crawling around the crib, bumping into the rails, eyes closed, still asleep and crying.

It was crazy.

They're getting better, and one crying rarely results in the other waking. They're getting used to it.

I only know this stuff because of reading, especially books recommended by smart people like Lugs.

I don't see the sleep training as just something that my wife and I need. I see it as something that is for the boys' well being.
Once I had that straight in my head, I didn't struggle with the crying much. This is what is best for them, and they can't understand that.
It's similar, to me, to letting them fall and bump into things as they learn to stand unaided, balance and walk. It's scary, but they've got to go through it.

Only 17 more years until we get our house and lives back!

 

Oh, it's the best. We always talk about what was his favorite thing he did that day, what he's most proud of himself for, and I tell him what my favorite part of the day was and what I was most proud of him about. We'll still do that, it will just have a firmer end time, rather than staying with him until he falls asleep.

Most nights, it's the nicest thing in the world to have him fall asleep to my songs (which are terrible), but taking the long view, I think it's healthier for him to be able to fall asleep on his own.

 

This is pretty much the tactic we took, although our intervals were shorter. I think we went 3-5-7-10. Not sure I ever got to 10 with them.

My son did the same thing, though he wasn't yet 2 when he climbed out of his crib the first time (day after Christmas, so he was 20 months, and we got him a big boy bed the next day). The next night he climbed over the baby gate at his door, so that's when we turned the knob around on his door so we could lock it.

Totally agree on routine. It saves me, particularly when my wife is out of town on business. So much easier to say "Because that's what we do every day," than to try negotiate with a cranky 4-year-old. He gets it. That's what we do, so he does it. Holidays are pain in the ass - throw everything off.

 

Life's so funny; I always wanted the progressions to be linear (so much easier to know what to expect) and regressions were I guess what make life exciting but oh so frustrating. I recall my older one sleeping great until probably 18 mos when he decided he did not want to go to sleep at the set time as before and I resorted to driving him at 1 am in the car in his baby seat for about a week.

With my boys 15 & 17 now, it is like pulling teeth now to get info out of them about their day and I do reminisce about when they couldn't keep their mouths shut about what they wanted to share. Sigh. What is neat though is even though they never say anything, you can tell they still want to be a kid at times and for us to be their mom and dad.

 

Well, that's something I'll likely never experience. Sounds great.

 

Not to give you false hope, but medicine is an amazing field. You never know what might help him 20 years from now. You might get those conversations later in life.

 

On the bright side, he's very verbal. He's just not conversational at all. Hopefully that part of him develops.

 

DD's right. There have been so many huge breakthroughs and the future looks promising as well. And even if it doesn't come to pass, your bond and your journey is no less valid just because it is different than most.

 

Our 4-year-old occasionally says or does something that quickly causes us to realize this isn't going to last much longer. I think some people on here are aware that I had a pretty nasty custody battle for him, so I pretty consciously try to savor everything, even when he's acting up.

 

My kids share a room right now and for the next few months, so that makes it a little difficult to time everything. My 3-year-old usually goes to bed at 8, but my daughter finally gives out anywhere between 8 and 11. We can't let her cry it out, because her brother is already asleep and he's an even tougher out than she is.

The workaround right now is my son falls asleep in our bed (by himself, to be moved later), and my daughter just falls asleep on someone's shoulder until she can be safely and quietly laid down.

 

Sorry to hear that, Sunshine. Don't know about your situation, but it sounds pretty difficult. As DD said, hold out hope something can be done to help him. Good luck.