Insomnia in children due to bad habits

Surely we all know of a father who reports that his young son has experienced difficulty sleeping during prolonged periods, and / or, to keep him through the night. In fact, 3 out of 10 children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years suffer from insomnia, which makes it a rather frequent and disturbing problem in family dynamics.

For parents it translates into dark circles, irritability, frustration, self-blame, even resignation ("never slept well", "are teeth", etc.) and comes to a helpless spiral, Circumstance that is crossed is natural in childhood.

How you get to this situation?

Much of the explanation lies in the process of acquiring sleep - wake cycles.

In the first months of life, thanks to a physiological process that occurs in the hypothalamus, babies begin to experience nighttime sleep and gradually the sleep cycle is established at night / wake or be awake during the day. In turn, begin the first associations of certain habits and stimuli external to the period of sleep (darkness, silence, tranquility, solitude ... etc.), and these associations are consolidating; We see then that the dream as well as being a biological event, is also psychological and social. It is normal for a 7-month-old to sleep, an average of 12 hours at night.

But sometimes the attitude of the parents (there are no routines, they keep rocking the child while sleeping, improper attitude during awakenings ...), does not favor the acquisition of the habit and then appear inappropriate associations that instate anomalous sleep behavior : Not wanting to sleep alone, delaying the onset of sleep, excessive demands that overflow to parents during the night ... etc.

That is why in most cases of insomnia between 6 months and 5 years could fit into a disorder called Insomnia by Incorrect Habits , which is contemplated within the International Classification of Sleep Disorders 2005 . According to the aforementioned categorization, it is characterized by the resistance of the children to go to bed and the nocturnal awakenings with incapacity to reconnect the dream by themselves.

Is it a non-return situation? Can you teach yourself to sleep?

As we have seen, a habit is learned behavior, therefore adults, we can and should teach our children to associate sleep behavior with elements such as bed, room, etc. You can follow some guidelines to establish the dream:

-Create a pleasant atmosphere, without tensions. Always at the same time, there is also a time of the day (biological) conducive for children to go to sleep, which would be between 8pm and 9pm. You can create this environment by telling a story or reviewing what we have done today and always outside the child's room.

"We tie the sleeping future to the bedroom and have to sleep alone. If we stay while asleep and later unveiled, we will miss, then the ritual will have been useless.

- These steps must always be repeated in the same way to learn, always safely, not show weakness and should never change the criteria because the child will not know how to behave.

It is very important since childhood, have a good sleep hygiene, have a positive impact on daily family life, and prevent future health problems.