ASK THE EXPERT:How can we help our three children to overcome their fears of bedtime?
Q We have a daughter who has just turned two and twin boys who are nine months old. As you can imagine with three babies, getting everyone to bed has never been easy, but up until recently we had some semblance of a routine.
Then we had a bit of a nightmare holiday a few weeks ago. My daughter got a virus, developed pneumonia and ended up in quarantine in hospital for a week. Now we are back and bedtimes are a total disaster.
All three scream their heads off when put them in their cots, and they will only go to sleep if someone lies down beside them and cuddles them. It’s not too bad if both of us are there, but often it’s only me. I am tearing my hair out.
Countless people are telling me that the solution is to just put them in their cots and let them cry for a couple of nights. What would you recommend? Is it wise to stay in the room with them until they fall asleep?
Should I be cuddling them to sleep? And, most importantly, is all this trauma doing them any lasting damage?
AI would not recommend letting them cry it out. I think controlled crying (or uncontrolled crying) methods have the potential to be emotionally traumatising for small children.
However, I recognise that you have a dilemma, given that you can’t meet the comfort needs of all three children at the same time.
The babies are all screaming because they associate the bedtime with stress, so a key factor for you is how you can stay calm and supportive in the face of their distress. That might mean structuring your day so that you have the energy required to make it through the bedtime.
Perhaps you need to make sure your husband is around for support for at least a few weeks at night-time, then try to stagger the bedtimes. Put your eldest daughter to bed first, and sit rather than lie beside her.
Even if she is upset, use your presence and your voice to soothe her, with warm and comforting tones and perhaps some hand holding or head stroking. She will accommodate to this reduced physical closeness within a few days or a week.
Once she is settled or asleep, help settle the twins (assuming your husband was either minding them or starting to settle them). Again, avoid lying with them but do stay to be a physically comforting presence. Over time you can wean them into becoming more self-soothing and less reliant on you for comfort. But go slowly and patiently with them.
What your children need is to be reassured that things are back to normal since the holiday, and that you can contain their anxiety and distress. Your confidence and reliability at their bedtime will mean that any potential trauma they now experience will not have a lasting impact.
Q I am wondering what is the best way to go about moving our five-month-old out of our room and into her two-year-old sister’s room?
The two-year-old is going away with her dad to see her grandparents for two weeks in November, and we wonder should we have the baby’s cot in her room when she gets back or wait until she settles back before making the move.
Also, have you any advice in general on making this transition? We wonder will the baby wake our older daughter up. We have a spare room but would rather that the two start sharing from an early age.
AI don't think that it would be a good idea to move the baby while your daughter is away. If the baby has moved in in her absence, your daughter may feel displaced. Any feelings of displacement may get taken out on the baby, and it would be better to avoid this.
Also, after a two-week holiday with her dad and her grandparents she may be a bit unsettled anyway, and so it is definitely best that she has time to readjust to life back home.
So perhaps waiting until December, maybe even Christmas, might be better. You could tee things up with your daughter by talking about how exciting it will be to share her room.
You might get her thinking about the notion of the baby moving in, almost like a Christmas present. Indeed the baby might bring a little “room-warming” gift with her.
Essentially, you are trying to create a situation where your daughter thinks that having her little baby sibling move in to her room was her idea. Once she has decided she wants the baby with her, the transition will go more smoothly.
If you would like your children to share, it is best not to worry too much about them waking each other, or getting giddy in the room. These are always potential outcomes of sharing, but the benefits, in your mind, need to outweigh such potential costs.
- David Coleman is a clinical psychologist and broadcaster. His new series of 21st Century Childis currently on RTÉ1 on Mondays at 9.30pm
- Readers' queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but David regrets he cannot enter into individual correspondence. Questions should be e-mailed to healthsupplement @irishtimes.com