If we understand that babies need us by day, why don't we understand that they need us at night?

Babies are dependent beings. They need us to eat, to be calm, to feel safe and even to fall asleep, since without our help they hardly fall asleep. We all understand this, just as we can understand that a six- or eight-month-old child still needs us for all of this and claims us not to be left alone.

Now, many expert theorists in child sleep continue to offer quite outdated advice, explaining to parents that six-month-olds can now sleep through the night and that they have to do it alone in their rooms. This is quite inexplicable and somewhat absurd, because If we understand that babies need us by day and we see it normal, why don't we understand that they need us at night too?

Babies, those little helpless beings

Yes, the young of humans are the most defenseless and dependent there are. They are because, because we are an intelligent species, they do not need to start running to flee from other animals that want to eat them when they are born. If you have to run, we already do it, your parents, with them in your arms. But it is not the case either. They are born immature, very immature, and consequently very helpless.

They are provided with some basic reflexes, some of them useless and simple reminiscences of our past as monkeys (you will already tell me what the foot grip reflex is for, if we are not going to take any branch with them), but with very developed instincts that help them ensure their survival.

In Babies and more Babies sleep better when both parents get involved in their care

These instincts are what make them cry if they feel alone, cry if someone they don't know catch them, cry if they are hungry, cry if they are sleepy, cry if they feel cold or hot, cry if something bothers them, cry if ... come on, that everything that seems to them that makes them in danger, makes them cry to solve it. It is not something rational, they do not think "I am hungry, I will cry to give me" or "milks, what I have only stayed, to see if crying a little comes someone to keep me company, I get bored", they cry from true, because your body is really telling you that you are not well alone, that you have to run away or fight, that you have to do something to ensure your survival.

And look, it seems that parents, more or less, or at least more and more, we understand that this is so, that they cry because they suffer and because they need us. In fact, there are already many parents who know what separation anguish is, that moment that reaches eight months, when they begin to understand that they exist as unique individuals and that if they separate from their caregivers, and above all from their Mother, the danger multiplies. That moment when he suddenly does not consent for a stranger to take him or for his mother to separate from him.

Well, if we seem to understand that they need us for the day and that we have to accompany them to make them feel comfortable, what happens at night? Why do we believe those who tell us that at night they can and should be alone?

Children don't care whether it's day or night

Nothing changes. For children nothing changes. I know that we close our eyes and what we hope is to rest, sleep, because at dawn another long day awaits us in which we need to be in minimum conditions, but for them nothing changes because they don't know if there will be a tomorrow and, in fact, they don't even care. They still do not advance to it, they still do not think "I need to sleep 12 hours for tomorrow to be able to open my eyes well and soak up my surroundings", so they, at night, continue to be governed by their instincts, those that say "if you see that you are not calm, if you see that something does not fit, you complain, man, cry, let your parents know that at night you also need them. "

And hey, said so it seems quite logical, but I don't know why, perhaps because you are a father only when you have a child and not before and because you end up thinking that experts and others always know more than you about a subject, parents and mothers have ended up believing that "he has to sleep in his room, and he has to sleep all night without waking up, because if he doesn't do it, it is because you have been taught badly because he has insomnia."

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Insomnia. What nonsense, if they sleep more hours than anyone. Insomnia, what nonsense, if it turns out that you don't do anything and little by little they sleep better and better. If they had insomnia because we have done things wrong they would continue to have it to do nothing and, who knows, they could even get to sleep worse. But no, you attend them every night, you take them if necessary, you sing them, you rock them, you wrap them with your protective arms, you walk them, they cradle them, you breastfeed them (if you are a woman), they… and it turns out that they fall asleep and that, when they grow up, it is no longer necessary to catch them, but you do the same to them lying on their side, stroking their hair and back after telling them a story. And they fall asleep. And time goes on and it happens that you don't even need to be by his side. A few days you can and tell them the story, you kiss them and they sleep alone. You can't and another day it is they who flip through the pages of a book, turn off the light and fall asleep.

No, it was not insomnia, it was instinct, which also begins with "i", but does not mean the same. Insomnia is a disease, instinct is something that your body makes you do for some reason. If you are a baby, for survival, for safety. Then, when the child grows up, when he understands our words and when he knows, finally, that tomorrow will come tomorrow, instinct is controlled by his intelligence, by reasoning. That's why, precisely because of that, we must not force anything, but simply wait with understanding, with affection, with common sense, and sending the experts to the field that tell us that what we have to do is that our children suffer and cry at night without need.

Unless ... you want to pay more attention to the expert than your son

Unless, of course, you prefer to pay more attention to the one who says that all the children in the world have to sleep alone at six months, and do it all night, that your son, who is telling you that it is worth, that he it seems very good but that from just nothing and that at night he will wake up, yes or yes, until the day you can sleep all night at your leisure because your brain and your understanding allow you to do so.

Unless, of course, you prefer to put your child against you, make him cry and start seeing him as a child that bothers because he does what no other child does (if you believe the expert's words, of course), this being dangerous for the future of your relationship, it helps to cool it and distance yourself from it. There is nothing further from happiness than to believe that your son does things to annoy you, there is nothing worse than believing that you should not behave like this, there is nothing worse than confronting him asking him to sleep at once, and stop crying, because you have lost your patience and have not known how to understand him. Think about it, please, the next time someone tells you that if they cry at night nothing happens to them and that they have to learn to sleep alone and in their room, for their sake, for your sake.