Five ways mindfulness and your energy can transform your child's sleep.
We’ve all been there - trying to get our child to sleep amidst crying, screaming, or my personal favorite - the silent cry that precedes a large outburst of emotion.
So when you feel like you’ve tried everything and frustration levels are rising, what else can you do to calm your little one? What typically comes to mind is what we can do for them (rocking, shushing, singing, bouncing, etc.) and while some of this absolutely works, if your little one (and you!!) is still having a tough time, there are other things you might want to consider.
There’s a powerful feedback loop between you and your child. That’s right, research shows that our children quite literally attune to our internal state - our heart rates and cortisol (stress levels) synchronize! This means, we can play with the impact of OUR state of mind and body on our CHILD’S state of mind and body. Instead of focusing on what we can change externally, we focus on what we can change internally. In other words - our ability to be present.
But what does that really mean, and how can we practice this in the trenches of crying and screaming to help soothe our little ones? Here are five ways to use mindfulness to transform your child’s ability to calm down and prepare for sleep.
1. Ask Yourself, Are My Thoughts Productive or Counterproductive?
The first place to start is to get into an observer state of mind. We often simply believe every thought that passes through, but that doesn’t mean it is true or worth listening to.
Thoughts like “oh my gosh, this is insane, when are they going to stop crying?” and “I feel like a failure, this is so hard!” are simply remnants of our brain’s old survival-based habits. Our brain’s number one job is safety and it often leans on control, predictability, and certainty to get there. As a result, our brain tries to “fill in the blanks” to create a story that gives it a sense of understanding and safety - even if that story isn’t a very nice or helpful one!
This matters because our thoughts impact our feelings (internal state) which are proven to impact our child. They’re extremely perceptive, often better at feeling than we are - because they don’t have a noisy brain stealing their attention.
What you can do is start to observe your thoughts. Ask - is this productive or counterproductive to my goals right now? If your thoughts are creating more tension in your internal state (and baby can feel that), it is worth practicing separating from these thoughts.
Put simply, we can remind ourselves, would someone who is tense be able to calm me down?
2. Meditate Without Actually Meditating…With Baby
After we’ve learned to observe and identify counterproductive thoughts, we can begin to strengthen the skill of redirecting away from these thoughts. Particularly in those super challenging, big emotion moments.
Meditating “on the go” is a great way to reap the benefits of meditation without needing to separate yourself from your baby. It teaches you how to shift your focus and find calm even amidst a chaotic external environment. Sitting in a silent room with your legs crossed on a meditation pillow is nice, but is harder to translate to real-life with crying kiddos!
The process is simple and cyclical. When a counterproductive thought arises, e.g. –“Ahhh! Why are they still crying?! I wish they would stop so I could go back to sleep!”–you come back to your breath.
Even if you only have 2-3 seconds of a quiet mind focusing on feeling/hearing your breath…that is a success! This is a way of strengthening the muscle of coming back into the present, physical moment. It’s a way of getting out of your head, and into your body (breath/senses/anything tangible).
Do this while rocking the baby, bouncing on a ball, or by yourself when your toddler is throwing a fit about reading one more book. The more you learn to self-regulate yourself, the more likely your child will be able to self-regulate themselves!
3. Senses vs. Thoughts
To shed more light on the “meditating on the go” process and how this helps you and your child, it’s worthwhile to better understand the “out of head, into body” concept.
Basically, if we’re listening to our thoughts/mental chatter, we aren’t in the present moment. We’re in a mental story about the present moment. We’re listening to our thoughts about the moment vs. listening to the present moment.
Put another way, it’s about getting into your senses. Because if we’re using the sense of hearing, we’re simply listening to the sound of our child’s crying, versus listening to our thoughts about our child’s crying. Simply listen to their crying and your breath - versus listening to your mind telling you “this crying is crazy!! I can’t believe they’re not asleep yet! Suzy’s baby is sleeping through the night already! Why can’t my baby?!”
When you remind yourself “out of head, into body/senses”, it’s easier to escape those counterproductive thoughts and come into a calmer state–one that calms you, and consequently increases the likelihood of calming your child.
4. Am I Resisting or Accepting?
One of the most powerful parts of this process is simply asking yourself, “Am I resisting or accepting the present moment?” In other words - am I wishing things were different and that my kid would stop crying and go to sleep already? Or am I meeting them where they’re at and accepting it? While our little one’s brains may not be fully developed, their ability to feel and sense is. Think about it this way - imagine if you were upset about something and then your partner was annoyed that you were upset. You’d be able to feel that, right?
It doesn’t matter what age, there is something about our ability to feel when there is frustration and resistance. On the flip side, we can also feel when someone is present with us and allowing us to feel what we are feeling.
By allowing your child’s emotions to pass through without trying to “fix it” or “get rid of it”, it allows them to soothe and calm that much quicker. This alone is one of the biggest “tricks” in using your energy to transform your child’s ability to calm and sleep.
5. Repeat
This is a repetitive, cyclical process. It is a life-long skill to practice! Some moments will be harder than others, and that’s okay. Just like it’s not helpful to resist your child’s emotions, it’s not helpful to resist yourself and your “level of success” of being present with your child.
Remember, learning, practicing self-awareness, and being open-minded to exploring how you’re impacting your child is amazing and a success in and of itself! Relax, breathe, and repeat.