BEDTIME
All parents have trouble
at time getting their children to sleep. The reason is simple: children don’t like to
go to sleep. This means that when we try to put our children to sleep. We’re trying
to get them to do something we want them to do rather than something they want to
do.Why don’t children want
to go to sleep? Certainly they get tired. Yet you may they’retired, they rarely
deliberately go to sleep. Even when sleep almost against their own wishes. Why is this so?
Well, for several reasons. Children don’t like to go to sleep because:
1. It means that they
have to give up the pleasant activity and company they are enjoying at that time.
2. They know that we’re
not going to sleep when we put them to bed, so they feel we’re taking advantage
of them.
3. More often than we’re
ready and willing to recognize, they’re not tired at bedtime.
4. Sometimes they’re
afraid of the dark.
5. They may have had
scary dreams, which have in turn left them vaguely uneasy about sleep itself.
6.they probably have had
the acutely unpleasant experience of having awakened at night wet,
uncomfortable, cold, or mildly frightened and have been distressed by a sense of aloneness,
separation, or rejection when their calls remained unanswered by us for much longer than
we’d take to respond to them in the daytime.
7. They may have been
sufficiently spoiled about bedtime to use this period for self- assertion and the
domination of their parents. In order to help our
children develop the habit of retiring without a fuss, it is
absolutely imperative
that we start with this assumption: children do not like to go to sleep! Now, how do we
get them to like it? We teach them to accept the fact that they have a bedtime even
though this is contrary to their wishes. This may sound harsh, but it is not
meant to be. I have emphasized the fact that children do not like
to go to sleep not for
the purpose of suggesting that our disciplinary measures be proportionately stronger
as a result. On the contrary this point has been stressed for two reasons:
1. Ordinary motivations
such as rewards and bribes and futile.
2. The greatest amount
of understanding, sympathy, and patience is necessary to
teach anybody anything
he is unwilling to learn.
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