When Ramona and I are talking about our little baby girl Apra, we often also talk about how other people raise their children. It is not possible to avoid in such situations that there are some comparisons in between what is usual in the west and what is usual in India. And one thing that I would say to my friends in the west is to take it a bit easier and go a bit more with the flow, especially with your baby.
It is a general thought that I can actually recommend anybody. I know however from experience that people in the west, and maybe especially in Germany, like to put everything into a system, a structure, something that looks neat and organized. That is very practical if you have to organize appointments, and I appreciate my wife’s skills in that area very much, but there are some things which I believe don’t have to be planned that much in detail. Having a small baby, we are just discovering a few of these.
While I was travelling in the west, I have had this kind of situation several times that the friends with whom I was staying or whom we were visiting got up and told that it was now bedtime for their baby. The tiny toddlers all had to go to bed at a fixed time, for example at seven o’clock. Often the kids were not even tired. When I asked them if their child really stayed in bed then and slept, they replied ‘He was crying in the beginning but when we did it every day, he got used to it.’
You may already have read my thoughts about certain methods that parents use to get their child to sleep and thus know that I will definitely not let my baby lie there and cry while I do other things, even in other parts of the house! This is however not my main point today. Today I am actually thinking about the strict time plan that you already give this little baby. It is really necessary?
I just think it is a bit too much to schedule the little one’s life already that strictly. I don’t disagree that a child needs a certain structure of the day. It is of course difficult for parents, especially working parents, if the baby is awake the whole night. It is good to help the child from the beginning to have its main sleeping time in the night. In this way, the deep sleep will be mainly in the night and the parents can rest in that time, too. This does not mean however that you need to go by the clock. Life does not work like this.
In today’s stressful world, you have to get up at a certain time, be at the office at a certain time and have hundreds of appointments in a single week. Your baby does not have any appointment. It does not have to go anywhere or fulfill anybody’s expectations. Its only task is to learn and explore. Why do you stress yourself and ultimately your baby with a schedule of when and how your little one has to eat and sleep?
Be natural with your baby and go with your feeling. You are the mother or father and you can recognize when he or she is hungry or sleepy. Your baby does not have to sleep at seven o’clock! It is fine if it gets one hour later! Just go with the flow and don’t try to fit the baby into your strict timeframes. Don’t try to teach him or her the life of an adult already at that young age. Instead, see the world from your child’s eyes. Watch your baby and enjoy the freedom, the complete lack of tasks and responsibilities. See this lightheartedness and let it inspire your life instead of putting the burden of timing onto your baby.
Relax, enjoy and trust that your baby’s schedule will naturally be just fine and alright.
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