Reply to Can you create a bad or good sleeper?

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[quote=Anonymous]People define "good sleeper" differently and I've found that the more rigidly demanding a family's sleep expectations are, the more important it is for them that "all kids need to be sleep trained" or whatever.

We have very low key sleep requirements for our kid. To me, a good sleeper means she can fall asleep on her own, sleeps through the night, wakes up without seeming to have residual tiredness, and does not seem tiredness or sleep-related crankiness during the day. This means my 4yo who has not napped for almost 2 years, and often stays awake in her bed singing or looking at books until 9pm before falling asleep, is a "good sleeper" to me. She clearly gets enough sleep, never wakes up during the night, wakes up happy and in plenty of time for school in the morning, and does not get cranky late in the day. She gets a lot less sleep than I expect a kid this age to need, but there are literally zero negative implications for it. We've discussed it with her PK teacher too, who is surprised but agrees. DD is one of the kids who never sleeps during their preschool rest time, but she'll just lie on her mat and look at a book or play with her hands and day dream. No behavioral issues. Once in a blue moon she'll fall asleep due to a growth spurt or some-travel related tiredness. Same at home -- every now and then she has to go to bed early because she's clearly exhausted, or sleeps in past 8am. But these are exceptions, not the rule. She is an independent sleeper who sleeps when she needs to. Good sleeper.

I have had friends and childcare providers tell me she is a bad sleeper because of the dropped naps, because it takes her a while to fall asleep, etc. I've been criticized for letting her sleep in our room until she was 10mo old, for continuing to do night nursing on demand for longer than that (I never minded, I'm a night owl and always went right back to sleep after), for allowing her to look at books in her bed, for never doing CIO or sleep training of any kind. Which is fine. I think the people making these criticisms have very rigid expectations of what a child's sleep should look like. I think they are often trying to conform their kid's sleeps to very difficult school and work schedules. I think sometimes the parents themselves have bad sleep hygiene and are tired and this gets externalized onto their children in the form of very high expectations for sleep.

Kids are people. People need sleep. If you just kind of let them sleep when they are tired, they usually figure it out and do so. Make sure they have a safe and appropriate place to sleep. But other than that, this is not rocket science. You're raising a person, not a fighter pilot who needs to be able to sleep on command in preparation for military missions. They just need to have energy for school and playing.  Don't overthink this.[/quote]

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