Who should get enough sleep: the baby or the parents?

E. GEVORKYAN — Good afternoon! This is «Echo of Moscow» and the program «Baby Boom» is on the air again. Our theme: Who gets enough sleep at night: babies or parents? We are talking about night sleep. Pamela Druckerman’s book French Kids Don’t Spit Food tells us that French kids can sleep through the night…

The hair on my head just moved in horror and stood on end, because it seems to me so inhumane and unnatural that we, in fact, will figure it out. The main conflict that we have identified for ourselves inside the editorial office is whether we, as parents, should follow the natural biorhythms and sleep of the child and adapt to him, to his natural rhythms, or another situation when we create a nightly sleep and feeding schedule that is convenient for us, parents.

Personally, it was convenient for me to adapt to the child in such a way that all the children, while they were babies, of course, slept with me in the same room, and since they were physically very close nearby: I moved the crib or, when they were completely cradles, completely on lay on my bed — and I simply put them on autopilot, breastfed them automatically and did not even wake up. And for me, it was precisely this following the natural rhythm of the child while sleeping with him that was so simple that we only got enough sleep thanks to this. If, God forbid, I came up with the idea of ​​putting him in a separate bed in a separate room and trying to somehow accustom him to sleep for 8 hours in a row — firstly, I have no technical idea how it is possible to make him there he did not yell, did not cry, did not shout, so that the whole house would not stand on its ears.

A. GOLUBEV — There are people who say that it is possible to do this, the main thing is to be decisive and act consistently. And we have already started talking about the book by the wonderful French author Pamela Druckerman, who is American herself, but lives in France, and she describes all this in an accessible way. She herself was surprised at how this happens in France, because she is an American, she came to live in France and was surprised to notice that French children sleep at night.

In our family with the first child, not everything is so great, unfortunately, so we tried to catch up. But with the second child, it’s already easier here, because we tried to follow the recommendations of Dr. Evgeny Olegovich Komarovsky, not to rush to the child at his first sob, cry, and so on, and the child begins to somehow be more independent. There are these phases of a child’s sleep, when he can wake up, grunt a little, scream — you need to give him the opportunity to go into this next phase of sleep, and the child sleeps, and you don’t need to immediately give him food so that he immediately shuts up. Because this is a dead end: the child wakes up periodically, starts quacking — mom immediately gives him a breast, and as a result he overfeeds, his stomach starts to hurt from this, he starts crying — everyone goes crazy, dad goes to another room to sleep, because he was fed up with the whole thing, the next day he goes to work dead, broken. Then he yells at his mother — and the family breaks up.

LISTENER — Hello! My name is Anna. I speak from Saint Petersburg. The fact is that my children are already adults, but I want to say that I was greatly impressed by the words of your presenter — sorry, I missed her name — she said that she could not imagine how it is possible for a child to sleep all night . Here I have two children, and I taught them, both of them were tuned clearly to my regimen. My kids never slept with me, I’m generally against it. Next to the bed where my husband and I slept was a baby crib. We had a clear set: the child should not eat at night. If he wants to eat, then he must be given a drink. On an empty stomach. If you want to eat, drink. And I also did what I did — I gave a massage to a child. So, when I let my son out of my arms, he just relaxed and was happy that he was released. Yes, I got up at night to give water and massage, but this only lasted the first two or three months, after these problems also went away, the child just slept peacefully all night.

A. GOLUBEV — Evelina says that it is easier for a mother to sleep when you sleep with a child. I have a question: And where is dad at this moment? How normal is this when the first years of a child’s life — and if you have several children in a row, then for several years — forget about the joint sleep of mom and dad together in bed.

E. GEVORKYAN — Well, why? Intimate life does not stop, because it is not necessary to do this with a child in this very place, in these very seconds. Mom is here with both the child and her husband. The bed is attached to our large, adult bed, next to it is very close, as a continuation of our bed. When the child becomes larger, it already becomes crowded there, and we relocate him, as it were, 50 centimeters from me, but as if my hand can always reach out at any moment, you can put your hand on the child and he will calm down, because his mother is nearby — he in safety. Dad is also nearby and everyone is happy.

Let me now read information from this author James McCain, Sleeping Together with a Child is the title of his book. Here he says that only literally the last hundred years this newest phenomenon in the history of mankind has arisen — about the fact that the baby does not sleep next to his parents, because there were separate rooms, separate beds, opportunities to feed with mixtures and so on. And then he talks about how, having studied this story as an anthropologist, as a biologist, he comes to the conclusion that if a child is artificially accustomed to a separate sleep, then the child is born by itself not very mature, a human cub and for its calm development and normal development of the brain, so that there is no elevated level of cortisol in the blood, so that there is no constant stress, it is important for him to feel that his mother is near and that he is safe. And the easiest and most natural way, which is still in some countries …

A. GOLUBEV — How long, Evelina, is it necessary before the wedding to make him feel safe? How much should he sleep with his mother and prevent his parents from living a normal parental life?

E. GEVORGYAN — No, why did you give birth to a child? Can you wait a year or two?

E. PRUDNIK — In the question of who should get enough sleep — the baby or the parents; whether it is necessary to set some kind of night sleep regimen — I am always on the side of the child. He has reasons to wake up, which are not related to his moodiness and the desire to harm his parents, but to his physiology, because he is growing, and he has a lot of reasons to worry during sleep.

A. GOLUBEV — Let’s listen to the recording of my conversation with Evgeny Olegovich Komarovsky, a pediatrician from Kharkov, who is broadcasting.

E. KOMAROVSKY — To begin with, we must clearly understand that sleep is a physiological need, that is, just like breathing, defecate, how to eat, how to drink, that is, a child cannot help but sleep — this is quite obvious. The main thing is why a child can sleep poorly, why does a child have to wake up every ten minutes? Because, most likely, something is bothering him. What could be bothering him? He may be disturbed by hunger, he may be disturbed by thirst, itching, diaper rash, pain in short. And parents should think about it.

The main task of parents is for the child to go to bed before the night tired, sleepy, but at the same time he should be full, he should not have thirst, he should not have diaper rash, and so on. So what is the point? In order not to want to sleep during the day, organize the child’s lifestyle correctly. But quite often a child goes to bed warmly dressed in a hot, dry room. At night, he wakes up precisely from thirst, because his mouth is dry and his nose is blocked. He is fed with food, because parents cannot understand that a child’s mouth can dry out. As a result, the child overeats, his stomach hurts, he screams.

And when a child screams, what conclusions do mom and dad make? He is either cold or hungry. They wrap him up more tightly, they feed him more — he yells further. That’s all, in fact.

Therefore, the main thing is to understand what should be for a start, this is the most important thing, and without this no issues can be resolved: such a concept as a children’s bedroom or a room where a child sleeps, or rather the conditions in which he is, must be implemented. The optimal conditions for a children’s bedroom: the air temperature is not higher than 20 degrees, optimally 18-19 and air humidity from 40 to 70%. This is the task of the father. If he found the strength in himself to make a child, then he must find the strength in himself to provide comfortable air in the bedroom. This is where you have to start.

A. GOLUBEV — Well, mothers say that «my child does not sleep, but he apparently has such a psyche, such a character — well, a restless child.»

E. KOMAROVSKY — This is mommy’s psyche and character, because she is wrong … I once again fix my attention: the easiest way is to translate the arrows, that this is such an unhappy child. So, if a child is hungry, fed heartily, bought, then dressed warmly and put in a clean, cool room, he will sleep without waking up for 6-8 hours. But it is impossible to do this all the time, there are not enough emotions for this, there is not enough determination for this. The easiest way is to say: “Mine is so special, with a unique nervous system”, go to the doctors, ask for drops for sleep, stuff these drops and not sleep for years.

A. GOLUBEV — Evgeny Olegovich, but we know that up to a certain age, mothers, whatever one may say, must wake up at night to feed the child.

E. KOMAROVSKY — Quite right.

A. GOLUBEV — At what age can she no longer do this, because this has been going on for quite a long time?

E. KOMAROVSKY — At least I know that those parents who follow my recommendations, as a rule, do not wake up after 6 months of age. That is, after 6 months it is quite possible to make sure that the child will sleep from 24-00 to 6-00 without waking up. Some people have more luck. For example, my children slept until 8 in the morning, after bathing and a hearty meal of their mother at 24-00. Until that time, it’s completely calm, as a rule, once or twice in the middle of the night, the mother wakes up in the middle of the night and spends 15 minutes feeding the baby, after which they immediately fall asleep further, but once again I fix attention: very often women feed at night, almost constantly, precisely because children wake up with a dry mouth and with a feeling of thirst, but instead of ventilating the room and eliminating this, their parents feed them all night, and this is a very serious mistake.

A. GOLUBEV — Another such constant question: Whom, in fact, to adapt to: parents to the child’s regimen, when he wants to sleep, or to adjust the child to himself?

E. KOMAROVSKY — Well, this is, in general, the most important question. This is, in general, the question of who adapts to whom — this is a question of the philosophy of parenthood. I always talk about this and repeat: Nowhere in wildlife is there such a flock following the cubs. Cubs go where they are led by strong and experienced adults — this is the law of nature. If the pack follows the cub, then the life of the cub is in danger and the life of the pack is in danger. Therefore, the child must adapt to the model of the family. Dad needs to get up in the morning having had enough sleep and go to earn money for this child and his mother, so the family must organize their sleep so that everyone goes to bed together, so it’s clear: the child must be adapted to the family.

If a child sleeps during the day and then stays awake at night — what is called an inverted mode: he confused day with night — then you should not give one or two days, deliberately interfere with the child’s sleep: entertain, play, walk, but make him sleep when it is comfortable for adults. Yes, adults very often cannot decide on this, especially women. A woman perceives her motherhood, all the time, as a feat — she is ready for a feat already at the moment when she felt that she would become a mother. So our task, maybe men, is to help women and turn motherhood not into a feat, but happiness — this is the main task of a man. And for this, he must take upon himself the decision at least about what to dress the child in, and what air the child should breathe at night.

A. GOLUBEV – And one more debatable question. In general, today it is very popular for parents to sleep with their children. Here, mothers explain this by the fact that the child needs mother’s warmth, to feel her closeness. And all the time the children do not get out of their parent’s bed. This is fine.

E. KOMAROVSKY — If dad, mom and child like it — as much as you like. But I want to tell you that the child will not go anywhere from you, but your husband also needs warmth, and you also need to occasionally apply it to your chest. I know, again, after the fashion for co-sleeping with children has gone, I see a huge number of broken families because of this, when mom sleeps with a child, and dad sleeps on a sofa or on a rug next to the bed. Once again I fix attention: I have nothing against co-sleeping, if it suits all family members. Ideal situation: mom and dad are in a large bed, the child has his own crib, which is located next to the crib of adults. After six months of age, this bed can move away, and after one year old go to a separate room, but the child should have his own place in the sun.

Again, I am deeply convinced that in order for a family to be strong, the love of dad and mom should come first. Realizing the love of mom and dad is much easier when there is no one else in the bed. Don’t worry, all the best to you! I hope that if you do not draw exactly the right conclusions, our listeners will at least receive information for reflection.

A. GOLUBEV – Let’s turn to our guest: Elena Prudnik is a specialist at the Center for Natural Development and Child Health. When I see this: “specialist of the Center for Natural Development”, I immediately imagine how then children develop unnaturally, that means. I immediately imagine: a specialist of such a center should talk about how parents should indulge the child in everything, how they should indulge in each of his … Natural development — how is it? Are parents adjusting to their child’s routine or are they adjusting their child to theirs?

E. PRUDNIK — Here it is always decided individually. No matter how diplomatic it may sound, however, it is very individual, because different parents, different children. Children are different in temperament in their own way. Choleric people always sleep worse, because their rate of mental reactions is much higher and faster, so all the processes in their body interfere with them, wake them up, disturb them, they yell about it, demand, respectively, all children from the material of the customer, which means either mother or Dad is also choleric.

A. POZDNYAKOV — That is, indeed, Komarovsky said so ironically: «There are some special children: my child is special,» so he does not sleep at night. Is this allowed?

E. PRUDNIK — We are all very special, we are all very individual, and all our children are also very individual.

A. GOLUBEV — It seems to me that if any child is loaded in such a way that by the evening he will fall down — choleric, sanguine, someone else …

E. PRUDNIK — Children will still behave differently at night, because they all grow teeth — once, bones grow — twice. They all want to eat, they all want to write, and all these processes are perceived by each of these children in different ways. Accordingly, “a well-tortured child” sleeps better — this is the motto. It is clear that if you give the child a good, normal load, so that he smiles and laughs all day, of course he will sleep better, but if he has six teeth cut at the same time — you go, treat six teeth at the same time to the dentist — I will see how you will sleep at night. That is, here he has an absolute right, even tired at night, to whimper, demand additional affection, demand additional attention, and so on. It is clear that it will not be long: the teeth erupted for 10-14 days …

A. GOLUBEV — And the child is already used to his mother, that his mother is already, when he begins to demand his mother — mother comes. He gets used very quickly: «I demand my mother — my mother comes.» Okay, great! Mom comes running at his slightest request.

E. PRUDNIK — I strongly disagree with you, because the child needs to sleep at night, and if nothing bothers him, he will sleep and will not do anything else. Well, at the age of 16, he will probably go to a disco.

E. GEVORKYAN — I’ll just clarify. Here, indeed, there is a topic in what — what is this … a French author — she suggests — again I don’t understand at what cost — that he sleeps for 6-8 hours in a row and does not demand to eat, that is, wean him from eating at night, and that he would fall into a deeper sleep. Another author, this James McCain — he writes that this is natural, and just the human brain develops better in infancy, if he does not fall into this deep sleep — then there is less chance that this sudden death syndrome will happen. It is normal if the mother reacts very sensitively to it, precisely because it is inherent in nature. Babies — they are born so imperfect and they don’t have to sleep 8 hours like adults.

E. PRUDNIK — I completely agree, especially when it comes to children of the first three months, because the baby is born completely immature, completely helpless, absolutely. On the first day, he cannot even fix his eyes, not to mention doing something with his hands or with his head, therefore, naturally, the smaller the child, the closer to the mother he should be, and he, in general, is called the chest because he suckles at the breast, but because he must be at the breast of an adult: it does not matter whether it is mother or father. Accordingly, the phase of REM sleep and the phase of non-REM sleep, that is, deep sleep, are different. A child has much more shallow sleep due to the immaturity of, say, the brain. We cannot influence these processes. It’s the way it happened. This is neither good nor bad. There is a certain ratio of light sleep and deep sleep. In an adult — we doze somewhere around 20 percent, and 80 percent — we go into the depths. The child is diametrically opposite, that is, he falls asleep very deeply for 20 percent and naps very superficially for 80 percent.

I see very few parents who have wonderful children who sleep 8-10 hours. It is clear that everyone wants, having a child, to have an obedient and wonderful child who will eat on his own, sleep on his own, go to school on his own, get fives on his own — it’s very easy. And children are not like that, they are what they are. They have a number of physiological features. Here, if the physiology does not go beyond the pathology, then here, then, the parent demands too much from his child. And, if it goes beyond the scope of physiology and this is already a pathology, then we need to figure it out, do something about it.

It is clear that if a child with erupting teeth confuses day with night, and at night he “Ai, nane-nane” — lights up and does not let the whole entrance to sleep, and gets enough sleep during the day, then, of course, Dr. we will not let him sleep by all means, and at night, in general, by all means we will calm him down. That is, it is normal for the situation of precisely the violation of the circadian rhythm — when the day is confused with the night. But then again, no healthy, normal child will make it his goal to look for his mother if he just wants to sleep. But if he wants something else, then, of course, he will require help, and the closest person who can provide this help to him is his mother.

A. POZDNYAKOV — Elena, you have given two extreme cases. You are talking about some kind of natural order, you are talking about such problems when a child confuses day with night, but there are situations when, outside the conditions of teething, some other conditions, a child, for example, suddenly begins to wake up five times a night. times, and sleeps very anxiously — are there any reasons for this? Is it possible in some way — like Dr. Komarovsky, who said that maybe creating a cool room, you can somehow help by some indirect methods to influence the duration of sleep. When, under what circumstances is it clear that something needs to be done, and indeed, how can one prolong sleep?

E. PRUDNIK — Yes, of course, a very understandable and very good question. See, natural sleep conditions for a child are very important. It is clear that in close air they sleep worse, that in the fresh air it is better. Of course, we create all this business for them, we think about it, and the first thing we start with when a child begins to sleep poorly, we think about these reasons: about organizational and conditional. Further, if they do not help, then we begin to observe the child more closely and look at some of his processes: is he in a prodromal state …

E. GEVORGYAN — In which one?

E. PRUDNIK — Well, that is, before the illness. That is, there is no temperature yet, and the person has, in general, somehow whimpered, which is not good there with the mood. Does he have problems with digestion, are there any impurities, a color changed in the stool, because this can also affect. That is, from the side of health, are there any reasons. If we do not find any reasons, in general — well, that is, the mother is scrupulous, anxious, knows everything about the baby, she watches him everywhere and everywhere: no rashes, no stool disorders, normal appetite, but something is wrong with him.

E. GEVORGYAN — Leave him yelling in the next room so that he can get used to sleeping for 8 hours?

E. PRUDNIK — Why? We are watching him further. This means that he has some kind of process, say, a physiological one, which is incomprehensible to us, because when the spine grows, when the liver increases by fractions of millimeters — these are intense sensations — the child can be capricious.

There is such a category of children who really do not sleep well, from the point of view of a parent’s understanding. Such children can be educated, but you can not educate. And if you do not educate, then sooner or later, he will start to sleep well, because the child wants to sleep — this is also his need, like ours. There are children who, if we start to educate, then we can rake a big bunch of psychological problems that result in psychosomatics, that is, they are very quivering natures, sensitive, who, with fairly severe deprivation moments, that is, when I yell, they don’t suit me, and I’m lying alone in the dark and I can’t crawl away myself, I can’t get up and leave on my own, I can’t find my mother in the apartment — neuroses begin in him, and at an older age …

A. GOLUBEV — Pamela Druckerman writes that no such problems have been recorded in France. And she describes the experience of French mothers in this way: “The task of parents is to rebuild the rhythm of the child to suit their own, so that parents feel comfortable. Do not rush to the child at night every minute, give him the opportunity to calm down on his own, do not react automatically even in the first days. Babies wake up between sleep phases that last about 2 hours, and before they learn how to link these phases together, they will cry, and this is normal. By interpreting any baby crying that he is hungry or that he is not feeling well and rushing to comfort him, parents do a disservice to the child: it will be difficult for him to connect the phases of sleep on his own, that is, he will need the help of an adult to fall asleep again at the end of each cycle.

Night vigils with an 8-month-old baby are not perceived as a sign of parental affection. For them, this is a sign that the child has problems with sleep, and there is discord in the family ”(For the French). Further, the author himself concludes: “If I had known about all this, when my daughter was born, four months old, when it was possible to teach her uninterrupted night sleep with relative ease, we have already stepped over. She’s nine months old and still wakes up at two sharp every night. Gritting our teeth, we decide to let her scream. The first night she cries for 12 minutes, I also cry clinging to Simon, my husband, then my daughter falls asleep. The next night, the screaming continues for 5 minutes. On the third night at two we wake up with Simon already in silence. Since then, Bean sleeps until the morning.

E. GEVORKYAN — Everything. I already have goosebumps.

A. GOLUBEV — Everything! The psyche of the child is destroyed, he is finished, a moral monster with a broken soul will grow up, right?

E. PRUDNIK — Of course, the baby will be injured. The question of how he will live with this trauma is also individual, because there are children who are traumatized very easily, and it will quickly result in somewhere around 30-40 years old, when a person will have a complete lack of trust in the world, he will not have his normal family and it will be extremely difficult for him to survive this trauma in adulthood.

You know, I have big doubts about the education of the author of this book, because it gives inaccurate figures. A child’s sleep cycle is not two hours, it’s two hours for an adult. A child’s sleep cycle is 40 minutes. And gradually it increases, by the year it can increase to one and a half hours, but not two. Two is only from two years. Therefore, I have great doubts that a person, in general, is literate in matters of physiology and anatomy of childhood. And those examples that were read out are an individual example of a specific one girl, and specific data of parents. Parents are also clearly of a choleric temperament, that is, clearly not phlegmatic. Accordingly, their child is the same, and now they all “sausage” together in chorus. They chose such a path, hard enough for a child. What will happen next with this child is unknown.

A. GOLUBEV — Yes, we all went through this … we are all crazy …

E. PRUDNIK — Mankind has gone through the experience of such a rather tough upbringing of a child in the first year of life. It was the Americans, it was Benjamin Spock, who borrowed his famous book, which was very difficult to find in the Soviet Union, and our parents raised us according to this book. He, after 30 years, publicly asked for forgiveness from the whole generation …

A. GOLUBEV — Well, Spock is debatable, everything is so complicated there …

A. POZDNYAKOV — Allow me, before this thought, I would like to summarize some of the results of the vote, because it is very interesting. While we were discussing here, we had a vote. We asked how you operate in terms of nighttime sleep: Do you adjust to the rhythm of the child’s night sleep, or do you teach the child to sleep according to the regimen? Here are the majority — this is more than 77%, two-thirds admit that they teach the child to sleep according to the regimen — here they are engaged in just such, excuse me, training.

E. GEVORKYAN — Because we are from this Soviet culture. Our children were given to a nursery — it was a forced necessity, but this is unnatural, this is not normal.

A. GOLUBEV — Is it not normal to send a child to a nursery?

E. GEVORGYAN — Of course, it is not normal to send a child to a nursery if you have the physical and financial ability to be with the child while he needs you. Yes, the main idea that I still want to have time to say … — when a child is born to us, he will not always be at the breast, he will not sleep forever in phases of 40 minutes — it lasts only a year, one and a half, two …

A. GOLUBEV — Indeed, what garbage! Forget about normal life, parents, for the first two years!