What is consistency?
A developing brain thrives on repetitive patterns. When a baby experiences the same things over and over, the pathways of connections in their brain becomes stronger and stronger. You can provide this for your child by creating a world of consistency around them.
Babies start to evolve their emotional security when their environment is nurturing, consistent and predictable. This same routine over and over helps strengthen connections that will lead to trust and secure attachments. Raising a child in a consistent environment also gives the added benefit of teaching them how to regulate their own emotions and behavior as well since they know what to expect.
Ways you can incorporate a consistency in your child’s day to day can be the following:
Predictability. Doing things in predictable ways builds a baby’s trust of adults. Responding to your child’s needs in the day when they are hungry, sleepy or need comfort grows that feeling of security.
Routines. Even with a newborn you can put them on a day to day routine, this helps make them feel stable and predictable. Babies don’t follow a schedule, repeating the same events about the same time every day helps strengthen that connection and build confidence because they learn to know what to expect throughout the day and cue their brain for what comes next.
When introducing a new habit or a new pattern, it is very important to stay consistent, follow through and practice it daily. This can be applied to all aspects of a baby’s life, from breaking old habits to creating new ones. The follow through is the hardest part, most parents give up and go back to habit they are trying to change but this behavior only confuses the child and delays the progress.
When it comes to resetting a child’s biological clock, cutting out a nighttime feed, installing positive sleep associations and removing negative ones, consistency is key. Be patient with your child, be understanding and more importantly remember it is short term pain for long term gain. Your child is just repeating behavior from pattern and what he/she has been accustomed too. This wont change over night but it can improve and with follow through it can alternate. Stay the course and you will ride out the wave.
If you would like to talk more about this topic or have questions, you can email contactsoundsleep4bubbies@gmail.com.