The Cathcarts

If you don’t have any children, this post will probably be pretty boring for you and you can just skip it if you want to, but for those of you with children, it might be pretty interesting.  Every Tuesday, Jaxson and I attend Brighter Beginnings.  I know I’ve talked about this a little bit before, but it’s a small group of moms getting together with a leader from the WDM public schools and we discuss a topic each week or have a speaker come talk to us on a certain topic.  All of us moms in our group have a child in the 2-3 year old range.  The kids are off in their own area doing crafts, reading books and playing with all of the other kids and teachers, so this is an awesome time for us moms to relax and "get away."  Last Tuesday, we got on the topic of sleep because a mom in the group was having a horrible time with her three year old daughter at bedtime.  Another mom in the group had previously recommended that she read the book "Healthy Sleeping Habits Happy Child" by Mark Weissbluth, who is a pediatrician and a father of four who has been studying children’s sleep habits for 30 years.  She came back this week and said that she had read the book and that it has changed their lives.  Her daughter is much easier to get to bed and she is now a happier child.  So I got to thinking that I should read this book.  For the most part, Jaxson is an excellent sleeper; however, with the transition to his new room, we’ve been having some issues with him coming out and not getting to sleep until late (10:30ish).  Nap time was also becoming increasingly difficult, so it made me start to wonder if he was getting to the age where he was ready to give up his nap.  So I just had a lot of questions that I wanted answered.  I went out and bought the book that afternoon and starting reading it immediately.  I have to say that I have learned SO MUCH from this book already.  After reading only 100 pages so far, I’ve learned that Jaxson is not ready to give up his naps, as children his age are supposed to have around 12.5 hrs of sleep everyday.  Since he doesn’t sleep 12 hours at night, then he needs a nap during the day.  I also learned that he needed to be going down earlier than his 2:00 time that I was putting him down, so we have since moved up naptime to 1:00 and it is working perfectly.  We have also moved up bedtime from 9:00 to 8:00, which we are still getting the kinks out there, but have had a few interruptions with being sick and Halloween.  I originally bought the book to help me with my issues with Jaxson, but I found that it is really going to help me with the new baby also.  One of the biggest things that I have learned so far is that our kids need to go to bed when they first start showing signs of being tired, for most kids that is between 6:30-8:00.  You don’t want to wait until they hit the overtired state (fussy, crying, hyperactive) because that is then when the child has a harder time falling asleep and it will most likely take longer.  "We need to watch our child, not the clock."  Something else that I have learned is if you put your child to bed early, when they are tired, they will not wake up any earlier then they normally do, which is a common myth in our society.  Go ahead try it. . . I dare ya.  We tried it the first night with putting Jaxson to bed over an hour earlier than we normally do.  He was asleep at 8:20 (which is super early for him) and got up at 7:45, which is 15 minutes longer than usual, so he got almost two more hours of sleep than he normally does.  These are just a couple of things that I have learned already.  If it has helped 1 blog reader than it’s been worth the time it’s taken to type this up.  The book also has a great format in that it is divided up by age groups, so if you are looking for something on a certain age like I was, it was super easy to find.  So with that, good night and sleep tight