Helping Your Baby Develop a Healthy Sleeping Habit

Once your baby is sleeping through the night, life as a new parentis easier. You will not feel like a walking zombie during the day and you feel much confident leaving your little one with a babysitter knowing that he is not likely to wake up in the night screaming his head off because you’re not there.

However, helping your baby to develop a healthy sleeping habit is more than just making sure he goes to sleep and stay asleep through the night so you can rest. It’s about teaching your baby to find sleep a good state to be in. It’s about making bedtime hour less stressful for you and something for your baby to look forward to.


Why sleep is important?

Getting a good night sleep is important for you and your baby. During sleep, your body does all the necessary repairs of the cells that got damaged during the day. It allows your brain to sort and store information; solve problems and replace chemicals that have been used during the day. Your immune system on the other hand, increases production of substances that helps protect your body from infections.

As babies have a lot of learning and development, they need more sleeping time. Babies need about 12 to 15 hours sleep a day. That goes down as they grow older. Kids up to 12 years old still need about 10 to 11 hours sleep while adults need about 7 to 8 hours.

Not all babies are born to have the same sleep pattern
Some babies are born to be good sleepers and some aren’t. Some likes to sleep longer periods while others like to sleep in short periods but more frequently.

Trying to set your baby’s sleeping pattern to suit your preference is going to make your life difficult. It will be less stressful if you understand his sleeping cycle and work around it.

It is also important to understand that babies sleep differently from adults. Contrary to common beliefs, babies don’t just fall asleep. They have a longer period of being sleepy before they finally fall into deep sleep. They can’t just go to sleep when you want them to. To expect them to sleep on demand is unrealistic.

How to help your baby settle in the evening?

If you have a bedtime routine that you follow every evening, it will help make putting your baby to bed a lot less stressful. Here are some suggestions for routine:

• Set a time when you should start putting your baby to bed. Make sure that you choose a time that suits you and the whole family. Try not to put your baby down for a nap closer to his bed time hour; otherwise your baby will not be sleepy enough when it’s bedtime.

• Start your bedtime hour routine by reducing stimulation, less rough play and more gentle and calming activities.

• Give your child a verbal warning before you take him to his bedroom. Although baby can’t talk, they can understand much of what you are saying.

• Keep the light in his room low.

• Give your baby his last feed before you put him to bed.

If you are going out in the evening and a babysitterwill be looking after your baby, it’s best for your babysitter to arrive before you prepare your baby for bed. This allows your baby to get used to the babysitterso he will not freak out if he wakes up in the night and find a different person looking after him.

by Bayo Ajibola

How to teach your child to make decisions

Decision making is a normal part of daily living. We make decisions every day from mundane things like “what to eat”, “what to wear”, “to go out or not to go out”, to more life changing things like “to marry or to remain single”, “to have kids or not to have kids.” Although we make decisions daily, making responsible decisions is a learned process.

Irresponsible decisions can lead to all sorts of trouble. Debts, bad marriages, unwanted pregnancy are just a few problems that bad decisions can land us. And there’s nothing scarier for parents than the thought that their children are in trouble, even if their children are already adults. And children who are not allowed to make decisions at home grow up making poor choices or allow others to do it for them. Many of them end up bowing to peer-pressures. So if you want your children to make responsible decisions in life when they are older, you need to start teaching them how to do it while they’re young.

But how and when is the right time to teach children to make decisions? When children start to assert themselves is the right time to slowly allow them to make choices. Of course, you can’t let them make all the decisions; after all they don’t have the experience and wisdom to know what’s right and what’s wrong.

So, here are some dos and don’ts when giving your very young child some choices:

Don’t offer choices if there isn’t one. For example, don’t ask your children what to eat when you know you’re only going to offer them one thing.

Don’t offer choices that will put them at risk. For example, don’t give them a choice to wear or not to wear a coat at below freezing temperature, or to hold or not to hold your hand while crossing the road.

Don’t burden your child with a decision that has a great consequence. Don’t ask which schools they want to go to. You may ask what they want and you’ll consider them but never ask them to make a final decision. It is not fair on the children.

Do offer fewer choices. More choices will confuse the children.

Do talk about the choices, especially why they’re bad or good choices. For example, if your child wants to go to the playground but it looks like it’s going to rain, don’t refuse. Instead explain that he has a choice. He can go to the playground but it may rain and he will get wet and cold and you have to go home. Alternatively, he can go to the library where he can play for longer.

Finally, let your child know that you sometimes make mistakes even if we try hard to make the right decision. That way, your child will feel freer to risk making decisions.

by Bayo Ajibola

3 Ways to Keep Your Cool while looking after your toddler.

If you think that you can keep calm, cool and collected all the time when there’s a toddler at home, you have to think again. Looking after children can be particularly stressful. Even childminders or babysitters who only look after children for a few hours can buckle under the stress of running around little children. People don’t expect you as parents to keep it all together when you’re with children almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But blowing your top in front of the children you’re meant to look after isn’t good for you or the children.

Here are the three tips to minimise your explosions in front of the children. Note that I said minimise, not totally stop because it’s unrealistic. So, if once in a while you can’t help but let off steam in front of the children, don’t beat yourself over it. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent.

1. Escape “stressful days”

This may sound a really silly thing to say because “stressful days” is almost every day in a household with a toddler. It’s days when your toddler is over-tired and that’s every day, when you have PMS, it can be two weeks a month, when the babysitter doesn’t turn-up, when your husband comes home and complains about his day.

How on earth will you be able to escape those “stressful days” when they’re almost every day? Well, it’s not simple but you can do it with lots of practice. If your child is whining because he is over tired, try and rest with him. Ok, there might be loads of washing up to do and your house is resembling like a tip, but if you rest with your toddler when he’s tired, it means you will have some energy later to do your chores. Remember, as long as it’s not a matter of life and death, house chores can be done later.

2. Step away from the situation

If you feel you’re about to lose your temper with you toddler, walk away. As long as you make sure your toddler is safe, it’s ok to leave him crying. Sometimes, by giving yourself a breather, you’re also giving your toddler the time to calm down without you breathing down his neck.

3. Keep time for yourself

Yes, it’s very important that at least once a week, you have some time for yourself. It may just be a time to have a long soak in the bath or have a lie-in one morning a week, but it has to be for you. Ask your husband to be in-charge. Since he’s in-charge allow him to do it his way and just enjoy your time.

Enjoy.

by Bayo Ajibola

Is my child fat?

Parenting is full of challenges and one of them is ensuring that your children are healthy. With the current focus on healthy living and balanced diet, many parents are feeling the pressure of ensuring that their children aren’t over weight. But how do you know if your child is over weight? Not so long ago, there was media frenzy about a parent who received a letter from her GP telling her that her son was obese. The letter outlined all the danger that he could be in. This of course upset her because she’d made sure her child is active and eating healthy. In fact, looking at her son, you would never consider him fat.

Obesity in children is a real problem. If children are overweight, they’ll likely to grow up as overweight adults. They will end up with all sorts of health problems like diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and body image problems. But determining if your child is obese isn’t a straight forward process. BMI is widely used to screen if your child is underweight, normal weight or obese. However, using this tool alone can be misleading. If your children are muscular they will have high BMI without being obese because muscle is heavier than fat.

Additionally, your children’s weight fluctuates regularly as they go through rapid growths. Therefore labelling them as obese based on BMI alone is almost bordering to being irresponsible. Before health practitioners tell you that your childrenare obese, they should first perform other assessment such as skin fold test and evaluate your children’s diet, physical activity and family history.

I find that clothes retailer are as bad at making parents feel that their children are fat, especially girls. I personally find this really worrying as the thought of being fat can do more damage to the children’s self-image than the reality of being fat. Having been in the clothes manufacturing business for 4 years, I know that there’s no standardised sizes for children. Each retailer set their own sizes based on their perceived target market. Unfortunately some girls’ clothes are just smaller version of the adult sizes. Therefore, they don’t take into consideration children’s shape. So, it’s not a good idea to think that your children are fat if they don’t fit into the sizes of the high street retailers.



The best way to make sure that your children have healthy weight is to ensure that you’re feeding them a balanced diet, with moderate amount of sugar and fat, and that they are actively playing daily. Research shows that playing is more effective at keeping children’s weight healthy than a structured exercise.

Teaching your kids the value of money

The current financial crisis isn’t unusual. There was the Wall Street Crash in the late 1920’s followed by the Great Depression. There was the collapse of the Japanese Asset Price bubble in 1990, the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997-98, and the burst of the Dot Com Bubble in 2001. Still, if you have only lived during the time of abundance, the current economic climate is worrying. Especially if you’re a parent and has childcare cost and mortgage to worry about.

The recession that we’re currently experiencing has highlighted the need for us to be savvy at handling our finances and for our children to learn the value of money. The media is full of worrying stories about unemployed university graduates with big debts hanging over their heads like a ton of bricks. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are many people who are surviving the recession quite easily. They are the ones who know how to handle their finances and haven’t lived beyond their means.

So, if you want your children to weather any financial crisis in the future, it’s important to teach them the value of money.
It’s not unusual for children to think that money just comes out of the hole in the wall. After all, they see that if you need cash, you just insert your card in the hole in the wall and the money comes out. It is therefore important that youmake an effort to explain to them that you have worked for the money you’re taking out.

You don’t have to be a whiz at Maths to teach your children finance. And it doesn’t have to be complicated either. Here are some simple tricks you can use to teach them.
Make them earn their pocket money. Of course, you don’t want to be accused of child labour, but if your children want pocket money, this is a chance for them to learn the value of it. People are more careful with the money they earned than the money given to them. Even if your kids are young they can still earn their pocket money by doing things at home that they won’t otherwise have to do, like washing the car or taking the rubbish out. For example, I ask my daughter to be a babysitter to her 4 year old brother while I finish work in the other room. Although I’m still around to look after them, in her mind she’s being responsible to ensure that her brother is entertained while I’m working. Therefore she gets paid just like their babysitter.

You can also involve your children with budgeting. When shopping, discuss with them the cost of food and their treats. If you’re on holiday allow them to be responsible for some of their holiday money. Make sure that they know you won’t top it up if they spend it all in one go. They may not listen to you at first but if you stick to your guns, they will soon learn that if they want to buy something and afford it, they need to think their buying decision very carefully.
It’s easy to give your children everything if you can afford it, but for their sake, it’s best that don’t get everything they ask for.