Helping children get into a regular sleep routine

Disclaimer: Every child is special and unique and these ways mentioned may not work for each and every child and definitely will need some tweaking to suit each individual child or even parent for that matter.

 
This post is perhaps most applicable to parents with children in the ages between 2 and 10.

The advantages of having a good sleep routine is obvious to many readers. A deeper analysis on the importance of sleep is available at Shane Parrishs' Farnham Street blog article. Another interesting article from Maharishi Ayurveda that introduces on how Ayurveda (the Indian system of medicine) helps one to deal with sleep problems based on one's personality type (Vata, Pitta or Kapha). Both the articles are quite interesting reads and also help one to develop a better understanding of sleep, the advantages of better sleep and foods that help people sleep based on their personality types.

Now onto the topic of this blog article - children and their sleep habits. The video below was made in 1950 called 'Sleep for Health' and it presents the importance of sleep from the view point of a child. It clearly presents the effects of good sleeping habits on a pair of children and contrasts that with the effect of the lack of good sleeping habits on another child. It also seems that the video is made with an intention to open up an new dimension in the children, that of introspection. It gently suggests the children to look into reasons beyond what is superficially evident for their own irritability or the actions of others.

The above video suggests that there need to be some gentle and winding down activities that the children go through to get into a sleepy state. It is hard to make a recommendation what activity will work toward helping a particular child wind down. A parent has to tread the path, observing, learning and adapting as one goes. I knew a 1.5 year old baby that would fall asleep especially if the music being played was some rhythmic hard rock!!!

The following is one of such many possible paths to help a child wind down after a regular day.

Prepare your schedule

Starting backwards helps, figure out the

• Time the child needs to wake up the following day
• Time the child needs to sleep given children need between 8-10 hours of sleep daily
• Time the child needs to have dinner

Eventually you might arrive at some time gaps between dinner time and sleep time. Principles of Ayurveda recommend that one does not go to bed at night immediately after a meal or on a full stomach. Hence if such a time gap between dinner time and sleep time exists in your case, it makes sense to plan some light activities to prepare the child for bedtime. The video above shows that the boy reads before bedtime and the girl plays preparing her doll for its bedtime. These are definitely light activities and are great for preparing the child to wind down.

Plan the activities before bed time

These activities might happen usually between dinner and the time the child needs to be asleep. Many parents prefer their child to have a nice warm bath just before dinner. In addition, there could be many activities that could be done together by the parent and child. Children are by nature very inquisitive and an activity that is interesting but not exciting (that keeps them awake!) needs to be chosen. Such activities  might also be very motivating for them to finish their dinner and prepare for bedtime. Based on experience over time, a parent can improvise and add a different activity for them every night. Low lights, soft music, light lullaby singing, meditation, story reading, passing on information/values/habits you consider worth for your child's betterment .. there is no end to improvisation once you have a routine setup.

Once started stay motivated and persevere

Since this is all about dealing with a child one can never expect things to go as per a plan. It might  happen that a parent might tend to focus too much on the plan and lose sight of the core purpose of having such a plan. For me personally, the core purpose of these activities are to create a 'placeholder', an excuse if you will, for quality time to be spent between parent and child. Another interesting facet to motivate a parent to be patient with this exercise is the fact that 'Parenting is a two way journey' - teaching and learning. A parent has so much to teach to a child, answer their questions, share their know-how, introduce them to the Animal Kingdom, Elvis Presley, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Krishna Das, Kraftwerk, NAO Robots or James. T. Kirk :-) .... Sharing with a child opens up a possibility for a parent to look at things like one has never ever imagined! There is so much for a parent to learn, even correct oneself, gain insights along this path of parenting. This is brought out in this article by Sri Sri Ravishankar and elaborated in the video (1 of 3 parts) below. He speaks about how the parent learns so much from the child, sharing your vision with your child, some very practical measures to deal with situations as a parent and some simple insightful events and their effects on a child. Some parts of the talk might be particularly applicable in India but the essence is applicable wherever there are children and parents.

Groceries at Kaaka shops, Zen Habits and Becoming Minimalist

How do you buy your groceries these days ?

The only way in the 80's in Bangalore, India was to go to stores generally called as 'Kaaka shops' with a list of items they would like to buy. 'Kaaka shops' were stores where a person behind the counter attended to the consumer (kind of like a pharmacy). One went up to the counter and mentioned all the items needed and the person behind the counter would get all of them and bill and bag them. Many people still opt this way for buying groceries even to this day in Bangalore.

These days things have changed quite a bit. One has the additional option of visiting large supermarkets for grocery shopping. One goes to these places, browses and looks around and buys what one needs. This is probably the most popular way of buying groceries in many consumerist societies outside of India. One need not have a list of things nor does one need to carry just enough cash for this purpose (Oh yes! we have credits cards to support this!).

This post merely points out the gentle and gradual change in the consumer thought process that these newer options have brought about and place it in the context of being a minimalist. Please note that I am not for or against either of these ways.

In my opinion, the central and most important change that this causes is in the consumers' awareness of their 'real need'. In the background, visiting large supermarkets (mostly on the way to somewhere else) takes away the necessary thought process required for arriving at the decision of what a consumer's 'real need' is. The consumer is gently and gradually led away from the path of planning the purchase to the path where no plan is required before making  purchase. Having credit cards along with this just adds more comfort for the one taking the latter path. In the process, the purchase plan gets murkier and blurrier.

Eventually for a consumer without a plan who is presented by options and features by marketing and all supportive purchase plans by sales, logic gives way to emotion and purchases happen !

It would be interesting for one to find out how many people in their circles go to shops with lists and most importantly 'stick' to them.

Here is an obvious but interesting observation - Though the need remains the same, I always notice my grocery cart having more items for purchase while shopping on an empty stomach!

Going forward, things bought without a plan for usage will eventually be of no use. The one who has purchased this is not going to let go of it since the value (money) put in for it. Hence, without a plan for purchase and usage everything starting from one's refrigerator, closet, living room or kids' room are eventually going to accumulate stuff and be cluttered.

Eventually things are not found when they are needed, management and maintenance efforts are high. Most importantly, clutter completely takes one's focus away from the important stuff and scatters it around. And this also holds good for your disorganized digital data clutter as well. Having to wade through a hundred thousand pictures each time is not happening when looking for those clicks that captured 'real special moments'. It also holds good for achieving clarity of thought - an uncluttered mind.

So here are options for those looking for smart uncluttering ways for organizing one's material possessions.

Eventually, even with these smart ways, you will hit the ceiling and then might want to explore the core of the problem. The problem starts when you start accumulating. This is where being minimalist helps greatly. To get you started the little book Simplify by Joshua Becker is a heaven send. Joshua classifies himself as a 'rational minimalist' and in his book he describes 7 guiding principles woven from his own personal experiences for becoming minimalist. And all this comes with very convincing rationale as well !

Simplify by Joshua Becker

The book is written in true minimalist fashion, no grand theories, just simple practical steps.

An important take away for me from the book is that 'a very important general outcome of minimalism is that promotes what you value the most and removes anything that distracts you from it'.

Minimalism can be applied to doing the things that mean the most and declutter all aspects of your life as well. For example, minimalism need not stop at being applied to things and material possessions, as it becomes more a part of you, it can be applied to your work - knowing, planning and doing the most important things and avoiding useless tasks. Check out this article by Leo Babuta on 20 practical strategies to defeat the urge to do useless tasks.

Want to continue on this path? Follow these interesting links

• Joshua Becker's site on Becoming Minimalist 
• Joshua Becker's book Simplify
• Leo Babuta's site on Zen Habits
• The book on how to Unclutter Your Life in One Week

Reach for the SKY!

Edited on 26-09-2016 : New updated title 'Reach for the SKY' as Sheriff Woody would say & embedded  a YouTube Video that talks about the SKY

Who said that in the yester-years everyone was content and not greedy? In those days lived a man wanting to make a quick buck. He headed out to the woods - sat, meditated and prayed for a long time. Since in those days, it was easy to have wishes fulfilled the 'Giver of all gifts' appeared soon. The man requested the Giver to provide access to a method (a mantra chant) that when invoked would increment his treasury and decrement the Giver's treasury by one unit. Not too thrilled with the idea, the Giver provided the man the method along with a condition. He pointed to a jumping dancing monkey on a tree and instructed him to never remember it when invoking the method and phfft! he vanished. The man was happy, went off home, sat down and thought about using the method. He remembered that he should not remember the dancing monkey!!! Every time he thought he should not think about it he had already thought about it! How do we quieten such a mind?

Imagine the mind as an area in the PC memory that cannot be accessed directly. Do we have pointer access? Yes, and that is the breath. The breath is like the thread that links the body (the gross component, the material, the hardware) with the mind (the subtle component, the non-material, the software). Every emotion in the mind has a particular rhythm in our breath. In happiness the in-breath is long and the out-breath is short, in sadness it's the exact opposite. We sigh when sad and that's a long out-breath. In anger our breath is hot and rapid. So far we have known the mind-breath relationship as a one way street where the emotion followed by the breath pattern happens within us involuntarily. Can it be made into a two way street? Can more focus on the breath help us have control on our emotions and thereby our thinking patterns ?
 

Stress is a condition where we have (or feel) more challenges in our stride than we can handle. Stressful conditions and events accumulate toxins in the human cells leading to health disorders. Two ways to reduce this stress

• Increase the capacity for handling challenges
• Decrease the challenges you want to handle

Stop and wonder - is the life in the fish or in the water? Is the life in us or in the environment we are in? Studies have shown that a significant portion of the toxins in the body is expelled through the breath. The very first act of our life is to breathe in and the last would be to breathe out. In that sense, you could visualize the lungs as an excretory organ expelling toxins 24/7, 365 days a year all your life.

The Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) taught by the Art of Living Foundation, a non-denominational, educational and humanitarian non-profit organization, is one such breathing practice that helps cleanse ourselves of these accumulated toxins in the body and subtle patterns in the mind. This leaves one feeling energized, fresh, new and enables one to utilize his/her potential to the maximum.