Sleep

Mr 11 was a ‘great sleeper’ as a baby! He went along with sleep training at 6 weeks old and was sleeping through the night 7am to 7pm by seven weeks old.We thought we had it all worked out and had it made. Guess who has the most trouble falling asleep in our house these days?Not the child who needed to be held and rocked at all times and woke up screaming for help multiple times a night for the first three years of his life. Not the child who likes her back rubbed and still sneaks in for cuddles in the early hours. The good sleeper. He’s the one who starts stressing about whether he’ll be able to fall asleep before he gets into bed. He’s the one who lies awake for hours sometimes quietly. He’s the one who won’t say anything until he’s really worked up and just can’t calm himself down on his own. It’s a pattern that has been getting progressively worse since the beginning of the year. I’ve been sitting with the guilt and the discomfort of it, wondering if it’s because he didn’t get the comfort he needed, because he learned not to ask or call for it at such a young age, because of the state of my nervous system in his early years and how I was unknowingly calibrating that with his. I’ve been feeling triggered and blinded by these thoughts and unable to do much for him other than answer his calls, reassure him and share some relaxation and breathing techniques with him. I’ve been wracking my brain for how to approach and help him to unravel it. This morning out of nowhere while I was driving, something connected. I thought about EFT. Something I use all the time but hadn’t considered for him or this.Tonight I told him I had something for him to try. I sat with him and we did a short session together. I showed him how to tap as we both listened to the meditation. For the last two minutes he agreed to me tapping for him because he was too sleepy to keep going. He was asleep before I left the room. The script we used talked a lot about patterns and stories and I watched him settle as the words coming out of the phone matched so closely to feelings he has been trying to express about not being able to fall asleep. It gave me a tool to share with him, a reason to be sitting with him and providing my presence and also something that he can take over and use himself when he’s ready so we’re not creating a new pattern of reliance on me at a time in his life when he’s wired for increasing independence. We all have patterns, we all have struggles. Our kids have them and they’ve all come from and started somewhere. None of them need to be permanent though because our brains and nervous systems are capable of remoulding and repatterning. We just need to be aware of what the troublesome pattern is and where it originally came from. Aware without attachment or blame and willing to work with it. I recommend ‘The Tapping Solution’ App to so many people. There really is an EFT meditation for everything in the library and you get to try it for free to see if it’s something you’ll use before subscribing. I thought it was a great tool when I just used it for myself but after tonight I’m so grateful for it and the way that it will potentially help and empower my children in the future too!