Why is your baby afraid to sleep?
Fears arise for many reasons. This may be overexcitation, overdeveloped imagination, strong attachment to parents, place of sleep and other factors. Many of them may seem far-fetched and banal. But it won't hurt to know the full list of possible causes of restless nights and phobias before going to bed in your own crib. Let's divide the main reasons for fear according to the age of the children.
Infant
Children from birth to 1.5–2 years of age show a negative attitude toward sleeping without their mother for the following reasons:
- The baby is cold and hungry.
- The baby is pissing himself, but mom doesn’t notice his wet panties.
- I'm used to being held in my arms all day. Without feeling the warmth of someone else's body, he cannot fall asleep.
- The newborn was overexcited: he did not sleep for too long or played noisily before bed.
- The baby has colic, stomach pain and gas.
- The bed is uncomfortable. Breasts are uncomfortable in a spacious bed, or the mattress is not suitable in terms of hardness.
- The baby got sick. There doesn't have to be a fever; perhaps he just feels unwell.
- The baby is used to sleeping in his parents' bed.
On a note! Children should sleep in a separate bed from birth. This is normal from the point of view of hygiene and the psychology of raising an independent personality. Place the cradle near you at night.
At 3–4 years old, you can carefully move your baby into a separate room.
Children from 2 to 6 years old
This is a period of rapid development of the kindergartener’s imagination and independence. He communicates a lot with his peers, other adults, and watches TV. An immature nervous system provokes fears due to the following factors:
- The baby sees monsters under the bed. This is due to the wild imagination of children.
- Lack of attention from parents. The little one started going to kindergarten and sees his mother less often.
- The baby is raising its parents. More often, parents of 3-year-old children face a test of endurance when another age-related crisis occurs under the motto “I’m on my own!” The child dictates to his mother where he will sleep and when he needs to go to bed.
- Unbearable mental load. After 3 years, kindergarteners attend clubs, dance, sing, learn English, that is, they actively develop under the strict supervision of their parents. By the age of 6, you need to learn to read, count, and take a course for a future first-grader using an enhanced scheme. It is difficult for an unformed psyche to withstand such a load. As a result, self-doubt and fears are formed.
On a note! Often young children do not understand exactly what feeling they experience at night. From fear, the heart beats quickly, breathing becomes difficult, and the desire to run to mom appears.
Talk about what fears and nightmares are with your 4-5 year old child. Explain that fear of something is a normal human reaction, you need to cope with it, and not hide under your mother’s blanket.
Junior schoolchildren from 7–8 to 10 years old
This is a time of enormous changes in life.
The reason for fear may lie in the following:
- Anxiety related to school. Most often, first and fourth graders are at risk for sleep disorders. For the former, the reason for anxiety is getting to know a new team, the academic load, for the latter - final exams from primary school and entering the secondary level, where there will be new teachers, difficult subjects.
- Socialization. After kindergarten, children spend more time alone, meet new people, make friends at school and in the yard. On this path, difficulties and misunderstandings with peers may arise. Children need parental support.
- Watching “adult” programs and movies. In the absence of parents, and even with them, children watch horror films, scary cartoons, and have nightmares at night.
- Computer games. Walking and fighting monsters have a negative impact on the baby’s psyche.
In addition, there are several other causes of night phobias that are not related to age. This:
- Life changes. Moving to another city, to a new apartment, changing the decor in the room, another bed, and so on.
- Psychological situation in the family. Most often, phobias are formed due to frequent quarrels between parents, especially if they occur at night. Children hear that mom and dad are sorting things out, they don’t understand what’s happening. The next night they find it difficult to sleep; they want to be close to mom and dad to prevent a quarrel.
- Ailments of the central nervous system, mental health. Restless nights often accompany children with mental and neurological diseases (autism, schizophrenia, ASD, hyperactivity).
- Psychological trauma. This is fear, surviving fires, earthquakes, wars. Newborn babies may be frightened by loud noises.
- Baby's temperament. Phlegmatic people are more sensitive to changes, separation from mother, and noisy games in the evening than choleric people.
On a note! You need to immediately wean your baby from going to his parents at night or being whimsical in his own bed. If the mother agrees to the baby’s terms several times, then the next nights she will definitely sleep in the toddler’s arms. The baby will understand that he can manipulate his parents.
Why is there a fear of the dark?
First, she appears What Is Nyctophobia and How Is It Treated? due to lack of visual stimuli. A person in the dark does not distinguish the objects around him, because of this he is anxious, and his imagination draws not the most harmless pictures.
Secondly, the fear of darkness is associated with the fear of the unknown: a person sees nothing and does not know what awaits him - and this is scary. There is a hypothesis: Fear of the unknown: One fear to rule them all? that the fear of the unknown is one of the basic and most ancient, and from it all other fears and phobias grow.
Thirdly, the fear of the dark may have been inherited from our distant ancestors. For primitive man, the night was a difficult time; many dangerous predators attacked people in the dark. Those who were afraid and exercised caution had a greater chance of survival. Now no one attacks us, but the instinctive fear of the dark remains.
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