As a preface, as with all my work, I invite you to be deeply compassionate with yourself as you read this, and to put down any of what I call ‘guilt sticks.’ Given that, let’s continue…
I imagine you’ve found that if you’re feeling stressed, you find it harder to sleep. It makes so much sense, doesn’t it, that if we’ve got a lot of accumulated feelings, or fight/flight energy sitting in our bodies, that it’s harder for our bodies to be relaxed enough to go to sleep and stay asleep.
And yet, this information often doesn’t get transferred across to understanding the sleep of babies and children.
Research indicates that the more birth trauma a baby experiences, the more sleep challenges they have.
From an Aware Parenting perspective, this makes absolute sense. The more stress or trauma a baby experiences, the more they are holding those feelings in their body, and the more that fight/flight/freeze energy is sitting in their bodies, and the less relaxed they feel.
And deep relaxation is required for restful and restorative sleep.
However, Aware Parenting also understands that whilst we all have an innate stress response – to move into fight or flee, or to freeze if that’s not possible – we also have an innate healing response which actually releases all the tension mobilised in the muscles and the rest of the body to fight or flee.
And it turns out that the healing response is also the same as the relaxation response – the intrinsic response that babies and children have to feel relaxed enough to go to sleep when they’re tired and to stay asleep until they’ve slept enough or until another important need – such as hunger – wakes them up.
Again, this makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Our bodies are so wise. We wouldn’t have evolved the fight/flight/freeze response without also having evolved a way to release any unused fight/flight energy from our bodies.
Why is the relaxation response and the healing response one and the same thing? Because when they’re tired, babies and children are less able to repress their feelings – this is again, their innate wisdom, so that they express those feelings and let them out, so that they feel more relaxed in their bodies, and so they can sleep more restfully and restoratively. Restorative sleep is so necessary for health, so of course we have an innate relaxation response to ensure that happens!
And yet, in what I call The Disconnected Domination Culture, many of us got trained out of deeply trusting our bodies.
This explains the answer to the question that I imagine you might have on the tip of your tongue:
If babies and children have an innate relaxation response, why is it that so many babies and children and their parents seem to have such sleep challenges?
Well, one of the main reasons is because of our cultural conditioning.
This is both in terms of our beliefs and our cultural practices.
Some of those beliefs might be:
We need to do things to babies to make them relaxed.
We need to calm them down.
Babies and children get overtired (this term isn’t used in Aware Parenting).
If children are playing, we need to calm them down.
Babies and children fight sleep.
Some of those practices might be:
Babies in cots.
‘Self-settling’ and ‘self-soothing’ (these terms aren’t used in Aware Parenting).
Giving a baby or child a dummy to go to sleep.
Jiggling, rocking or bouncing a baby to sleep.
Feeding a baby to sleep.
Toddlers in cots.
Telling a playful child to calm down.
Distracting a crying child rather than listening to their feelings.
In Aware Parenting, we see that human beings are incredibly versatile – we can survive in all kinds of conditions, but this doesn’t mean that we’re thriving.
When we look at our evolutionary origins, many of the things that we see as normal for babies and children in this ear are not actually what we evolved to experience.
In the majority of our long past as humans, babies and small children slept with their family or wider community. Lacking safety, warmth and nourishment, a baby being left alone would be much less likely to survive.
Babies haven’t changed physiologically since those days. And yet, many of us will have many generations before us who didn’t get to sleep close to our parents. Apparently it was the Romans who first started the practice of babies in cribs, and the Catholic church in the 13th Century who forbade mothers to co-sleep with their babies. If you live in Europe or have European ancestors, that might be a lot of intergenerational conditioning. If you live in a colonised country, this might have happened in more recent times over the past few hundred years for your ancestors.
In our culture, if you search for a children’s book about babies, you’ll probably see a picture of a baby in a cot. Cots are seen as essential to parents, and yet they aren’t what we evolved to need as babies. Neither was the idea of ‘self-settling’ or ‘self-soothing’ – a prehistoric baby crying alone somewhere probably wouldn’t have survived for long. Unable to fight or flee, their next option is to freeze – what we call dissociation in Aware Parenting. This might mean quiet, and apparent sleep – but it certainly isn’t relaxation, and it is a long way from optimal for babies.
But what on the other hand, about all the things we are conditioned to believe that we need to ‘do’ to babies and children to ‘calm them down’ enough to go to sleep?
From an Aware Parenting perspective, many of those things can actually work against their natural relaxation response. That’s why I often say, it’s not babies and children who are fighting sleep, it’s us who are fighting their natural relaxation response.
If we deeply trust our bodies and our innate wisdom, and we understand the natural relaxation response, we can cooperate with it rather than work against it.
What does that natural relaxation response consist of?
Remember, it’s the same as the innate healing response.
There are two main parts.
The first is to cry and rage with vigorous body movements, releasing feelings and stored up stress and tension from the body, whilst feeling safe in the present moment.
For babies, this safety requires that we always hold them in our arms and make sure all of their needs are met. This is because, for babies, crying can be for communication, or it can be for healing. We need to make sure they’re not communicating an unmet need before we support them with the healing process of crying in arms. This includes checking out for illness, teething, allergies, digestive issues, or the effects of EMFs, blue light, or chemicals in food, clothing, bedding or washing powder.
For children, this healing and relaxation process requires our loving presence, so that they know that they are safe in the present, whilst they are releasing stress and trauma, and the painful feelings associated with this, from their bodies.
The loud crying releases the sounds that a baby or child would have wanted to make when they were in that stressful situation. The vigorous movements of their arms and legs releases the tension that was stored up ready to fight or flee.
The second part is to laugh and play with loving support, as long as there’s no tickling. Laughter is also a powerful release process which supports older babies and children to let out feelings of fear, powerlessness and frustration.
As you read this, I wonder if it now makes sense to you, the phrase – they are not fighting sleep, we are fighting their natural relaxation response.
When a child is being playful before bed, might we be trying to ‘calm them down’, rather than collaborating with the power of their playfulness to bring about relaxation.
When a child is asking for a million things and still isn’t happy, might we be distracting them from their feelings?
When a child is having a big reaction over a small thing and we’re trying to get them to ‘calm down,’ might we be stopping them from having a big cry or rage which lets out the big feelings they’ve been holding inside?
When we give a child a dummy, might we be distracting them from their feelings and their innate relaxation response? Might they be mildly dissociating rather than feeling truly relaxed?
When a child is sucking their thumb, might they have learned to bypass the feelings that are trying to come out when they’re tired?
When we try to distract a baby from their feelings in the evening, either through jiggling and rocking, feeding, or giving a dummy or soft toy to sleep with, might we be distracting them from their feelings?
Might this explain why babies who experience more stress and trauma wake up more?
Might it also explain why, as babies get older (and their unexpressed feelings and fight/flight tension accumulate), that it takes them a long time to go to sleep and they tend to wake up more and more frequently?
Another core element of Aware Parenting is understanding the difference between dissociation and true relaxation. Mild dissociation is pleasant, but it is generally short-lasting, unless the thing that creates the dissociation is repeated.
Many of the things that we do to babies or children to help them feel relaxed enough to sleep are actually causing a mild dissociation. The thing is, it isn’t long-lasting, hence they wake up more and more as the feelings bubble up.
In contrast, when we support babies and children with their innate healing and relaxation response, they feel a deep sense of relaxation in their bodies, which is long-lasting.
We can see it clearly – their muscles are relaxed, so rather than fists, their hands tend to be open. There’s a lack of tension in their face when they’re sleeping. They don’t tend to move around a lot. And when they’re awake, that relaxation means moulding into hugs, being aware and present, being able to concentrate. Their vocalisations and voices are more calm and relaxed too. And they make more relaxed eye contact.
This is another thing I love about Aware Parenting. Each of us as parents can be our own researchers.
If what you’re reading resonates with you, and you feel called to experiment with it after learning more about it, I invite you to observe all of these things – the relaxation or tension in their muscles, the eye contact, the sound of their vocalisations or voice.
They will let you know whether this really is a healing and relaxation response, whether they really do feel more relaxed, and whether or not that is enjoyable for them.
There is so much more to say about sleep, stress and trauma, and this article is only a small part of it.
If you feel called to discover more, there’s a sleep series on The Aware Parenting Podcast and there are other articles here on my website.
I also have my new course coming out, (I’m writing this in April 2023), and a book coming out later this year!
Much love
xoxox