To The Gates Of Dreaming: Using Guided Meditation to Help Children Sleep

Originally posted on Pagan Families, 7/16/14.  I’ve spent countless hours helping my daughters fall asleep, nursing and bouncing, massaging and singing and praying, lying absolutely quiet or else reciting Mother Goose.  By the time my eldest was preschool age, I turned to magic.  I began using guided meditations with my daughter around the time she …

I’m not tired, I’m just tired of you (Sleep Like A Baby #5)

I lost my momentum on the “How to Sleep Like a Baby” series when sleep turned into a problem for me again.  It takes some chutzpah to post sleep advice when you’ve still got only one kid and (God willing) many more years of childrearing for things to go wrong in.  It’s probably clear from …

Sleeping Across Cultures (Sleep Like A Baby #2)

Parents don’t discuss their own sleep patterns in sleep deprivation posts because we as a culture take it for granted that interrupted sleep sucks, so no one feels the need to explain what’s bad about it. From there, the burden of fixing parental sleep shifts to getting rid of the interruptions. But this approach to interrupted sleep is relatively new in human history, and it isn’t the only way to deal with the problem.

How To Sleep Like A Baby (Sleep Like A Baby #1)

I see a lot of sleep deprivation on baby discussion boards: “Help! My LO wakes up every two hours, and I’m beyond exhausted. What can I do to get her to sleep longer?” “Hey, my baby does that, too,” I think. The week I started writing this she was up every hour and a half or more. However, I’m well rested most of the time. What’s the difference between me and the crazy tired parents? I suspect part of it may be our sleep practices.