A little more than a week ago, a study on children's sleep was presented, sponsored by Dodot and conducted by Diego García Borreguero, president of the Spanish Sleep Society and director of the Sleep Research Institute, in which they reached conclusions of the most strange and, in my opinion, very far from what babies really are and, most worrisome, very far from what defines us as human: humanity (of the SAR: f. Benignity, meekness, affability).
Then I will talk a little about all this, but to give you an idea, García Borreguero says that Month and a half babies have to start falling asleep alone and in the study they estimate that more than 60% of children 0 to 36 months have trouble sleeping. With such results I feel like opening a sleep clinic in the place under my house (60% of the children are many) and trying to find, sure there is, the "Off" button of babies to get them to sleep as blessed a month and a half.
Do 60% of children sleep poorly?
The study says that 60% of children from 0 to 36 months sleep poorly, that is, they have difficulty falling asleep and have frequent awakenings. We talk about newborn children and 3-year-old children, who are obviously very different and the figure is a hoax that also leads to cheating. It is high enough to think that the study is an exaggeration, but low enough to think that "hey, but 40% of children sleep well, just as it is true that children have a problem to solve."
What would happen if we limited the figure to infants? Let's say we talk about babies from 0 to 12 months. All parents, from our own experience, know that a baby of less than one year wakes up more times than one of two years or two and a half years. They have not given data, but it is very likely that the conclusion, if we talk about babies from 0 to 12 months, is something like "80% of babies under one year have trouble sleeping." These are, in fact, the figures that are usually managed to sell behavioral sleep methods.
So I keep the first thing I said: 60% of children are too many and the conclusions are not correct. They are not, because 80% are too many and what is happening is that they are talking about a problem when we are actually talking about something normal. It is as if I now become an expert in speech, I write a book, I believe the Institute of Child Speech (IHI) and say that something is happening when 90% of children under 18 months do not speak fluently, and I also add that It is because of their parents, that they have not been able to teach them. Already, you are thinking that I will not sell a book and that it will rain colleges, because that is what I think of the theme of the dream, that they will not sell a book and that nobody will believe them and look, the colleges will take them to me equally.
We keep playing babies have a problem
Well, I do not think that 60% of children under 36 months have trouble sleeping, because if this is true one wonders how it is possible for us as children to be able to sleep without studies, professionals and sleep books. Besides, I don't believe it because, if it were true, the children would still have the same problems growing up and yet the figures go down and down until when they are five years old, the vast majority sleep as blessed.
That is called evolution. The dream is evolutionary and ranges from frequent awakenings in early childhood whose mission is to eat and make sure that their caregiver is close (survival, if the caregiver leaves, the child can die) to late childhood, when the child is older, can sleep without eating, is more rational, knows when there is danger and when not and has two strong legs to run in case of danger (which is not the case in our country, but in countries with wild animals).
Babies must learn to sleep a month and a half of life
This is what García tells us, that after a month and a half of life the baby has to start learning to sleep. To do this you have to get them to learn to be in the crib still, playing, quiet. Let them be there and sleep alone. Do not fall asleep in the arms of their parents.
Ok, now I understand how we can reach 60% of children who sleep poorly and a higher figure if we talk about younger children. Babies able to remain calm, looking at the ceiling, without their parents or anyone with whom to interact, in low light, and who end up closing their eyes they are a strange minority. Some do, I do not say no, but most inexperienced parents have tried with our children and we soon realized that that doesn't really happen (or we have thought that our son is "tarao" until when talking with other parents we have confirmed that, either it is normal, or there is a lot of "tarao").
They don't stay calm in the crib, they don't like to be alone, they get bored and cry, asking for arms. They say (he and other sleep professionals) that we should avoid falling asleep in our arms because if not later, when they wake up, they will look for the same arms that cradled him to go back to sleep, and suggest that we reassure them in the crib, since not doing so will come the cries that those arms ask for.
But no. The cries do not come because we do not give the arms to which we have become accustomed. The cries come because we want to get used to something for which the babies have not come prepared: to be alone, quiet and silent in a crib and fall asleep, wake up in the silence of the night and go back to sleep alone. Impossible. They cry because they are unassisted, not because we have become accustomed to anything.
If you told me that we talk about older children, it is worth it, but we are talking about babies who do not reason yet. They cannot understand that they are safe because they do not even think they are in danger. They simply come equipped with a serial alarm system that says "if you are alone, ALARM!". It is reasoning, it is intelligence and it is experience that over time makes them able to silence the alarm.
The problem is not babies, the problem is adults
So how are they who have to control the alarm and since I have not been able to find the "Off" button, I beg Dodot, Mr. Garcia and all those who think like him and talk about babies like robots it is a question, that they think a little that both they and we are human, people, and that What fails is not babies, but the pace of life of adults.
Garcia says that when talking about children's sleep, nobody thinks about parents (I quote from an interview on ABC): "Nowhere is there talk about the pressure that new parents have, whether they can afford to sleep a little less for a while ... or the characteristics of the baby." And I would ask him if in this study, or if in his words, he has stopped to think about babies, if they can afford to spend the night alone, having learned, surely with cries, that their claims, when there is darkness, will not be taken care of.
What would happen if we could all go to bed at ten and get up at ten? Or at nine in the evening and nine in the morning? It is a fictional schedule that I have invented, but imagine that at ten we all went to bed, mother, father and baby, and that during the night the baby would do what everyone does, wake up with a groan, ask for the chest of the mother, or arms that cradle her for a while until she falls asleep again. It would happen that the parents would get up several times to attend to him but, in the total sum of the night, we would get to sleep six hours the worst nights and eight or nine the best. Not bad, huh?
Well, that is not the fault of the children, it is our fault that we have created a world in which babies with their schedules have no place. The fault is ours because instead of creating a system that says "maternity and paternity leave x weeks and you go to work later until 12 months" we call work and family reconciliation to someone come to wake up your children, dress them and Take to the nursery.
So no. Children do not have and should not have an off button and no, Children do not have to learn to sleep a month and a half because we are doing great. Of course it would be great if that were the case. I and my wife would not have been sleeping badly for eight years, the result of the three children we have, but look, we will be this way humans, that we do not let them cry and we prefer to sleep poorly and less so that they sleep more and better, aware that they are not alone in the world, day or night.
