Settling Down for a Nap

The September broadcast of the WLDY Talk Line show version of Bringing Up Baby produced some great conversation with two grandmothers who called in their ideas for settling babies down for naps or bedtime. Their suggestions were very good and so I would like to use today's Ladysmith News column to share and comment on the different kinds of strategies they presented.

We need both pro-active and re-active strategies in our repetoire to meet the challenges of raising young children. Pro-active strategies are those that are consciously built into parenting. We think about them ahead of time and we decided to use them. We use pro-active strategies because they are good, they work, and we use them whether or not anything goes wrong.

Re-active strategies can be good or can be not so good. They are the strategies we turn to when everything else seems to be failing. We sometimes use them appropriately when children are sick or fussy. We sometimes use inappropriate re-active strategies when we are overtired or sick and have lost our patience. If we rely only on re-active strategies, we may be driven to do them all the time and this will make it harder for us and our children.

Both callers provided good strategies. One was a pro-active strategy and one was a re-active strategy. See if you can understand which was which and how and when you would consider using them. The first caller's strategy was to take a fussy baby for a car ride around the block a few times and play the radio to lull the baby to sleep. The second caller's strategy was to develop a naptime/bedtime routine that could involve a warm bath, lowering the lights, reading or singing, and most importantly to keep a daily consistancy in the routine. Which strategy is best to rely on every day? Which strategy could you use when you are at the end of your rope?

Thank-you readers and listeners for your great contributions to the column. The next WLDY talk-line edition of Bringing Up Baby will be September 25th at 8:30. I hope readers of the column will listen and call in suggestions for great parenting ideas.

Toad House Publishing

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