5. Children's bedtime puts heavy weight on parents shoulders

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225590/New-parents-drive-1-300-miles-year-driving-children-sleep-spending-547-petrol.html

Already for ages new parents drive their babies to sleep, wherein desperate fathers are winning over the mothers. In Great Britain parents drive an average of 1,322 miles/ 2.128 km a year, while driving their babies to sleep. Parents use their cars at least once a week as a "drop-off-to-sleep" vehicle for at least half an hour. With the expensive petrol costs one can consider this way of putting ones child to sleep as an expensive nanny. Manufactures of baby car seats cleverly come in to advice the perfect seat for your dear child, in order to fall asleep in only 15 minutes.

This phenomenon of putting ones baby asleep by driving around goes even back to the fifties, so nothing new here. Besides cars many parents use household utilities such as hairdryers or vacuum cleaners to produce a monotoom noise to get the baby to sleep. No one actually questions the point of, why am I experiencing so much bedtime stress with my child. A parent almost never questions him/herself it's always the child that is unwilling or incapable to go to sleep. Not realizing that as a family one live as a family system together and what one in the system does effects all in the system.

Parents have always been tremendous insecure about their parenting skills and are willing to take on any advise from any person that labels itself as a professional. Professionals and research are strongly advising the amount of sleep in hours, what to do with your child during the day etc. When the night falls there is no professional to be found in your family system and you are on your own with an overstimulated child while you are tired from work or entertaining your child during your day.

Instead of thinking up ways to get the child to sleep we have to step back and realize that wondering why the child won't sleep is bearing the implications. When you are able to watch your child closely and start understanding and seeing when the child had enough stimuli during the day, then stop. When in the evening the house is full of noise and the child is placed in front of the tv, it will not calm down when it has had a normal day and isn't exhausted.

Before we eat we prepare our food, before we go to bed we should also prepare ourselves and not throwing in some noise and activities that keep us awake. The same counts for our child, we mostly do not go to bed at the same time every evening and so does the child have days whereas it needs less sleep or more sleep than other days. A child isn't a thing with an manual, your child is a reflection of you and when you do not treat yourself properly you most certainly are not treating your child properly. Go with the flow of the family dynamics and do not go into extremes. Always check your starting point of why you want your child to go to bed now and treat your child how you would want to be treated as a child yourself. Also here do not act from a starting point of guilt and don't go into extremes. Your child is your best parameter of how you are doing as a parent. When things go smooth, while you are really parenting and not spoiling the child for your own convenient, you are doing okay.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to hate the evenings knowing that my child will not go to sleep voluntary, which means that there will be no evening left for me to do the things I want to do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to feel limited by my child that is keeping me from doing the stuff I like to do in my evenings/spare time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to see my child as a trouble maker for not wanting to sleep at night and keeping me from what I want to do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to buy anything or do anything that will make my child to go to sleep as long as it doesn't take too much of my own time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to feel frustrated that I can't get my own child to sleep and lacking support from the professionals that claim to have all the answers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to feel alone in this fight of getting my child to sleep, when I ask other parents they seem not have the same problems as I have.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not express towards other parents that I have difficulties with getting my child to sleep, while fearing they will see me as a failure as a parent.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to feel ashamed that I am incapable of putting my child to sleep, while feeling myself the victim of my hyperactive child that will not submit itself to my parental regime.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not understand what is wrong with my child, while I feel unwilling to look inside myself to find the answer to my problems, since the child is mine, but I experience it as separate from me while it is bullying/terrorising me with it's non sleeping behaviour.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that the environment I'm providing my child is the very reason why my child is unable to sleep at night, since there is no physical discomfort or problem that keeps my child awake.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that whenever the family system is still at full blast I can't expect my child to be calm all of a sudden and fall asleep within a snap.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that parenting isn't about using tricks and short cuts to provide me with more spare time, it's about learning from my child and walking a process of understanding the world as ourselves and learning from all the ups and downs we encounter together.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that only going for my wants and needs in life will eventually give friction between me and my child and can be a cause of why I experience lots of stress when bedtime arrives.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that having a child isn't to complete the picture I once had when longing for my own family, but is hard working and can't work when I as a parent do not put much effort in it and are only seeking for the easy way out.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that the friction I experience between me and my child at bedtime is originating from the picture in my mind about being a mother and the physical reality I'm walking that isn't matching up to the picture.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that I'm mad at the outside world for not leveling with me what parenting is all about while I'm confronted now with my own created reality wherein I have a child that I am incapable of to put asleep at night.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that my anger at the outside world is the anger I feel towards myself for buying into nice pictures of having a child/family while the reality is almost always the contrary.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that I am not the caring mother I pictured myself as, but see myself developing into an impatient and selfish monster that can cry for hours about the miserable life she's in.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a mother to not realise that I am the key to all the problems I encounter with my child and that I can/have to direct my life and that of my child when it comes to sleeping at night, without using all kinds of machines to do the job for me and making a small issue into a big problem that spreads itself into the coming years of my child's life for no reason at all.

I commit myself as a mother to see/realise/understand that I am the one that controls the environment of my child and therefore I am the one that can calm down the environment in order for my child to prepare itself to go to bed.

I commit myself as a mother to no longer put my child before the tv and overstimulate my child before bedtime, but instead put it in bath and read a story even if my child is still small, it will provide my cild with a bedtime rhythm and will announce bedtime and going to sleep every time I'll start the bedtime ritual.

I commit myself as a mother to learn and see what activities are non overstimulating my child so that it is easier for my child to prepare itself together with me for it's bedtime.

I commit myself as a mother to no longer stick to bedtime hours, but instead weigh the day with it's activities and see how sleepy my child is, in order to pick the right moment to start it's bedtime ritual.

I commit myself as a mother to stick to the bedtime ritual, while not making it longer than necessary, to avoid frustrations from my side about not having enough spare time left in the evening. When using flexibel sleeping hours for my child I need to be flexible too with my spare time hours.

I commit myself as a mother to adjust the picture I had about parenting and slowly but surely go over in a momentum way of parenting taking it breath by breath equal and one to myself.