Help Your Baby Get a Good Nights Sleep Naturally Family Articles | July 17 Brian Gibbons Hurricanes Jersey , 2007 After you've tried all your regular tricks, do you still wonder how to get your baby, toddler or child to sleep? This article gives you simple tricks James Reimer Hurricanes Jersey , techniques and solutions to help your child sleep - naturally!
Copyright (c) 2007 Liddle Kidz? Infant and Children's Pediatric Massage
To help your child prepare both mentally and physically for dream time, one first step is to have a regular relaxing bedtime routine or ritual. You might wish to try a warm bath followed by a bedtime story or maybe a nighttime meditation that you read to your child which can help him relax and get ready for slumber time. It is important to give your child plenty of time for his bedtime ritual. This way you both avoid feeling rushed, anxious or stressed. Try to make your child's personal bedtime ritual as comfortable and relaxing as possible. Not only will this help your little one sleep easier Teuvo Teravainen Hurricanes Jersey , it will be a much more pleasant experience for you as well.
Many natural therapies have been shown to calm and relax children.
Touch can be a soothing tool. It is necessary to be a professional massage therapist in order to provide your child with the soothing strokes they need. By providing a nurturing massage you will ease sore muscles and encourage relaxation. For massage you can use any natural oil. You might try grapeseed oil or olive oil. Both of these choices are safe to be ingested if your little one touches their mouth.
You may also wish to try a sleep sachet. You can create a relaxing sachet by placing a half cup full of chamomile flowers, lavender flowers, lemon balm and rosebuds inside a small cloth and tie closed. Then place this sachet inside your child's pillowcase just before bedtime.
For years parents have tried a cup of warmed milk to soothe their child at bedtime Jaccob Slavin Hurricanes Jersey , but many have found that a cup of sweetened chamomile tea can be much more effective and really do the trick.
A warm bath with a couple drops of lavender oil has soothing and calming effects (it is not recommended that you use essential oils with children under 3 months of age. If you are unsure if you should use essential oils, consult your child's physician.
Soothing music can also help a child relax and prepare for sleep. Ask your child to help select their favorite bedtime music. This way they'll feel comfortable and will have played a valuable role in their own bedtime ritual.
Syndicated columnist Dale Dauten recently wrote, ?One of life's great joys that we've lost is that of the empty day Brock McGinn Hurricanes Jersey , a day given over to quiet, to reading and contemplation. Our planners and PDAs give the illusion of importance and of being in control.? A beautiful statement but what Dale doesn't acknowledge is that we've become such slaves to busyness and mental stimulation that spending ?a day given over to quite? would drive most of us mad! It would be nothing short of a drug detox.
Any book on brain research will tell you that the brain will eventually create a tolerance to an increase in stimuli. Looking at the stimuli in our lives we find work, relationships Gustav Forsling Jersey , TVmedia, music, kids Ryan Dzingel Jersey , the list is almost endless. These are all good things and very important to our daily lives but the high level of stimuli has become status quo and the thought of quiet contemplation has been drowned in the mire of pure busyness.
Recently, I called my wife on my cell phone while driving in rush hour traffic with the radio blaring in the background. What was I thinking? I recently had high-speed DSL installed in my house because the three second wait between web pages was killing me! Here's another fine example, last weekend I had some free time around the house and thought I was going to loose it! I had plenty of things I could do but had no interest in doing them and the necessities of the day were all taken care of. The nothingness nearly drove me to scrub the bathroom tiles! Like an addict hitting bottom Brian Gibbons Jersey , I took the first step of recognizing and admitting that I had a problem. Then I thought back to my grad school training and began using some stress management techniques to ease my anxiety and slow down my mind.
Sitting comfortably I closed my eyes and began taking a few deep breaths. I progressively relaxed my body starting with my feet and working my way to the top of my head. This took all of five minutes and when I opened my eyes I felt a world of difference. This was the starting point of realizing the sacredness of silence, the importance of a calm spirit and they joy of a quite mind. Many great thinkers have had their most profound moments in times of silence and solitude. Ever hear of the bathroom break epiphany? Unlike many of the great minds of years past, we live in an information age that moves at a different pace but we do have a choice as to the pace that we will live our lives. By creating time to give over to quiet James Reimer Jersey , to contemplation and to a calm mind we can not only begin reaping the numerous benefits touted by all the health and medical journals about reducing stress, but we will also be creating time to truly be in control of our lives so that the rest of our time we can give ourselves to our day rather than be swept away in the current of busyness.
Here's a few links for additional information on stress management techniques: