Children aged 1.5 to 5 have a problem with delayed sleep. Children at this age are indeed good at procrastination. Separation anxiety or nighttime fear can both exercise this skill in them. This often leads to conflicts between parents and children. On the one hand, parents who have been working all day hope their children can fall asleep as soon as possible; On the other hand, children are always looking for various excuses to delay falling asleep. In this tug of war, many parents can't help but get angry or give orders to their children. However, when children see this attitude of disgust and anger from adults, they will not restrain themselves and will find more excuses to resist. Parent child relationships can face significant challenges at this time. How to break the ice?
Change mindset
Let's first take a look at why babies behave like this at this time? Children around the age of 2 have already developed a sense of autonomy. They want to make their own decisions and often say no to instructions from their parents. They prefer to be treated as independent individuals.
So, as parents, we have to face the initial stage of parent-child separation and cannot rudely believe that children should do things according to our wishes. We often talk about respecting children, but whenever we encounter problems, we tend to forget the most important one.
Respecting children means looking at problems from their perspective, engaging in equal dialogue in a way that they can accept, and believing that they can cooperate. No longer aiming for 'falling asleep before what time', don't rush to say 'no' to his requests, but understand his thoughts and agree on rules with him. For example, "Baby, after we take a shower and go to bed, let's read three more picture books. After reading the books, you can turn off the lights, okay
Develop a bedtime schedule
Many foreign parents will create a schedule for their children, which will list several tasks to be done before bedtime, such as taking a shower, drinking milk, brushing teeth, reading picture books, chatting with the mother, turning off the lights, and having a good night kiss. Checking each task will help cultivate the baby's sense of order and time, and more effectively, involve the baby in the development and implementation of the schedule.
Change evaluation
Children tend to value recognition or approval from the outside world, so in order to prevent them from procrastinating, it is necessary for parents to change their evaluation of their children. If parents can often say to their children, 'If you were a little faster, you would be even better', 'You're making progress now than before', 'Look how fast you're doing', 'You're doing great, keep up the good work', 'That's great, you don't need to remind you all the time now', the child will receive positive external stimulation, and these sincere encouragement can move the child. The child will consciously remind themselves to do things faster next time.
