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It is an amazing time when your baby is learning to talk. Being able to communicate with your baby is a joyous and refreshing experience unlike anything in the first five years of childhood. (It’s successful potty training being, obviously, very controversial.)
But until that day, you still need to communicate. The baby will tell you a lot about how he feels, what he likes, what he doesn’t like, and when he’s ready to sleep.
I see a lot of people on my Facebook page saying that the only way to bond with a baby is to cry, and I mean A LOT of people. I’m not sure if they have really bad kids, or if they’re just bad at detecting signals, but I can’t argue with that much.
Every child I know has a very loud voice before they speak. It’s just that sometimes we don’t speak their language.
Learning to recognize the messages your child is sending you is essential to getting a good night’s sleep, and I’ll tell you why. When your baby starts crying, which is the universal signal to parents that it’s time to go to bed, it’s clear that he’s already passed his sleep window and is very tired.
This means that his melatonin production has stopped and his cortisol production has started, because the body is thinking, “Hey! Looks like we’re not going to sleep. Everyone should get back to work,” and turn the machine back on.
On the other side of the tightrope is the risk that you will put him in his room before he goes to sleep, and he will be lonely, tired and depressed. Again, this causes him to squint and the result leaves him wobbly and unable to get a good, shut eye.
So what do you look for? Well, with babies under six months old, I find the most common symptoms to be…
- Making fists
- Turning her back
- Playing empty words
- Limit travel and work
- Shaking his ears
- To caress or suck a loved one
As soon as he hits 7-8 months, you may start to see him begin to shake, rub his eyes and nose, and gently pull his hair. These are all signs that it is time to go to bed.
The reason I say “signs” is that there are no signs that baby is ready for sleep. You will have the ability to know which are sleep signs and which are false flags when you speak his language fluently.
An important footnote here… Some children are passive, and some are eager to go to sleep when they are tired. The brothers are dying because they are fighting each other, they are fighting like this, so you can tell them that they are still fighting. The temptation when they do is to let them, “take it off,” thinking that they will let it when they are tired enough.
Resist that temptation, I beg you. Toddlers tend to overdo things when they’re tired, and the more you tolerate them, the less sleep they’ll have, the worse their behavior will be, and it all just snowballs out of control.
Finally, I just want to point you to another post I wrote, which shows how long your baby should be awake. This, along with a good understanding of what your child is telling you, should help you establish a consistent schedule without resistance.
I know it can be frustrating trying to understand the complaints of someone who has not started language skills yet, but he appreciates this moment. Before you know it, they will be young, and you will wish they would hide from themselves every now and then.