Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jamesy]

I suppose every kid is different, so I don't think there's a 'one method fits all' solution. Some may be more sensitive and crave human touch, whereas others have more of an independent streak about them. My son has just turned 2, and we've decided to put him in his own room. My wife is sleeping in the room with him at the moment, but we plan to reduce the amount of hours until he can sleep completely on his own. I don't see it being too much of a problem, because he is quite independent and tends to adapt quickly, however we are prepared to do this for as long as it takes. If he is comfortable and happy, he will sleep. If he's not, he won't. I don't really want to put any pressure on him. As long as he's happy, I'm happy.

[Koharski]

Posts attempting to derail the thread have been removed. Pleas, if you have nothing constructive to add to the topic, move on.

Koharski

[PatrickGHBusan]

[sublunari]

Thanks for all the replies. For the last three days I've let my wife deal with this problem completely on her own. The current system in place seems to be working: I shower the boy, read to him, and then she picks him up and carries him around on her back until he falls asleep. Sometimes it takes twenty minutes or so, but this evening she's been at it with him for over an hour. At least he hasn't been crying, and we haven't been screaming at each other, either.

[PatrickGHBusan]

[Jarome_Turner]

Funny seeing this post on here today as I was just reading up on this same topic last night. My wife (Korean) and I have a little boy who just turned 3-months today. We met in Korea but now live in Canada (have for the past 5 years). We've always gotten along fantastically, but nothing has caused more heated debate between us than the proper method of caring for our son, in particular how/where he should sleep. At first, she insisted on sleeping with him in our bed for a minimum of one year. When I voiced my concerns over safety, she suggested I sleep in the spare room. I wouldn't agree to this, and managed to land on somewhat of a compromise - the baby could sleep in our room in a bassinet until 2-months old, and we would then transition him to his crib in his own room. The transition was slow and my wife slept on the floor in the baby's room for a couple of weeks until she was comfortable coming back to our bed.

Now, luckily for us our boy started sleeping through the night at about 2ish months (an average of 10-12 hours straight without waking). The only low-point comes immediately at bedtime when it usually takes us about an hour of rocking and soothing to get him to sleep. We put him in his crib and don't take him out, but sooth him in his crib by rubbing his cheek and speaking softly to him. This works, but that one hour sucks. I started to argue with her that we should "Ferberize" him, and I amazingly got her to agree after reading her excerpts of online articles and testimonials swearing its effectiveness. We started this three days ago. On day 1, after hearing him scream in his crib for about 40 mins before falling asleep and sleeping a solid 12 hours, my wife decided she couldn't handle it. The second night (last night), she went into our bedroom and listened to music with her headphones on while I agreed to 'supervise' his bedtime. I genuinely felt that his crying wouldn't rattle me as I thought it would be for his (and, selfishly, our) greater benefit. After about 20 minutes of listening to him scream, and checking on him 3 times (each time to a red-faced little man with tears streaming down his face), I came to my senses and asked myself a few questions. Why put him through that when he sleeps through the night so well? Granted, as mentioned previously it takes us an hour or so to get him to settle down, but is the one hour a day of annoyance worth risking the long-term health of our child? And WTF was I thinking trying this at 3-months old anyway??

Anyway, my wife was very shocked and relieved when I walked in our room with the baby on my shoulder after 20 minutes, and explained to her that I had 'seen the light' so to speak, haha. This was last night and all day I've felt terrible every time I look at his smiling, toothless, chubby faced picture on my desktop.

[laynamarya]

Jarome, your baby is exactly the same age as ours! (Well, ours was born on the 23rd, maybe yours is one day older?)

One way I've found to help him fall asleep quickly is by putting him in a sling or baby carrier and then getting on the step machine. If he's actually tired, he'll fall asleep in five minutes. Even if he's not really tired, he's out in twenty. If you have a treadmill or elliptical I bet those would work well, too.

Worth a shot, anyway.

[LuckyNomad]

Our first boy slept with us every night...since he came home from the hospital. Two and a half years now. I wish we had done things differently and so does my wife. He can't go to sleep by himself and he still takes about an hour, sometimes two hours, of laying next to him to make him go to bed. Since day 1 he's been spreading himself out in the middle of the bed, taking all of the room while Daddy is stuck at the very edge sleeping uncomfortably. Nowadays he likes to lay on the pillows, exhiling me towards the foot of the bed.

The second one sleeps in his crib in the same bedroom as us. We never even discussed the possibility of a repeat of his brother's experience. Though of course, even if we wanted to, his brother wouldn't budge from his place anyway. He sleeps better than his brother ever did.

[Jarome_Turner]