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Authors: Pamela Druckerman
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adds that there’s another reason for The Pause: “to teach them patience.”)
French parents don’t have a name for The Pause; they just consider it common sense. (It’s the American in me who needs to brand it.) But they all seem to do it and to remind each other that it’s critical. It’s such a simple thing. It strikes me that the French genius isn’t coming up with a novel, mind-blowing sleep trick. It’s clearing out the clutter of competing ideas and focusing on one thing that truly makes a difference.
Now that I’m attuned to The Pause, I start to notice that it’s mentioned a lot in France. “Before responding to an interrogation, common sense tells us to listen to the question,” says an article on Doctissimo, a popular French Web site. “It’s exactly the same thing with a crying baby: the first thing to do is to listen to him.”
Once you get past the philosophical sections, the authors of
Sleep, Dreams and the Child
write that intervening between sleep cycles “indisputably” leads to sleep problems, such as a baby who fully wakes up after every ninety-minute or two-hour cycle.
It’s suddenly clear to me that Alison, the marketing expert whose son fed every two hours for six months, wasn’t handed a baby with weird sleep needs. She unwittingly taught him to need a feed at the end of every two-hour sleep cycle. Alison wasn’t just catering to her son’s demands. Despite her best intentions, she was creating those demands.
I never hear of a single case like Alison’s in France. The French treat The Pause as sleep solution number one, and something to wheel out when the baby is only a few weeks old. An article in
Maman!
magazine points out that in the first six months of a baby’s life, 50 percent to 60 percent of his sleep is
sommeil
agit S/emts é
(agitated sleep). In this state, a sleeping baby suddenly yawns, stretches, and even opens and closes his eyes. “The error would be to interpret this as a call, and thus derail our baby’s sleep train by picking him up,” the article says.
The Pause isn’t the only thing that French parents do. But it’s a critical ingredient. When I visit Hélène De Leersnyder, the Proust-quoting sleep doctor, she immediately mentions The Pause, without any prompting. “Sometimes when babies sleep their eyes move, they make noise, they suck, they move around a bit. But in reality, they’re sleeping. So you mustn’t go in all the time and disturb him while he’s sleeping. You have to learn how the baby sleeps.”
“What if he wakes up?” I ask.
“If he wakes up completely, you pick him up, of course.”
When I talk to American parents about sleep, science rarely comes up. Faced with so many different and seemingly valid sleep philosophies, the one they ultimately choose seems like a matter of taste. But once I get French parents talking, they mention sleep cycles, circadian rhythms, and
sommeil paradoxal
. They know that one reason babies cry in the night is that they’re in between sleep cycles or they’re in
sommeil agité
. When these parents said that they “observed” their babies, they meant that they were training themselves to recognize these stages. When French parents pause, they do it consistently and confidently. They’re making informed decisions based on their understanding of how babies sleep.
Behind this is an important philosophical difference. French parents believe it’s their job to gently teach babies how to sleep well, the same way they’ll later teach them to have good hygiene, eat balanced meals, and ride a bike. They don’t view being up half the night with an eight-month-old as a sign of parental commitment. They view it as a sign that the child has a sleep problem and that his family is wildly out of balance. When I describe Alison’s case to Frenchwomen, they say it’s “impossible”—both for the child and for his mother.
The French believe, as we do, that their children are beautiful and special. But
French parents don’t have a name for The Pause; they just consider it common sense. (It’s the American in me who needs to brand it.) But they all seem to do it and to remind each other that it’s critical. It’s such a simple thing. It strikes me that the French genius isn’t coming up with a novel, mind-blowing sleep trick. It’s clearing out the clutter of competing ideas and focusing on one thing that truly makes a difference.
Now that I’m attuned to The Pause, I start to notice that it’s mentioned a lot in France. “Before responding to an interrogation, common sense tells us to listen to the question,” says an article on Doctissimo, a popular French Web site. “It’s exactly the same thing with a crying baby: the first thing to do is to listen to him.”
Once you get past the philosophical sections, the authors of
Sleep, Dreams and the Child
write that intervening between sleep cycles “indisputably” leads to sleep problems, such as a baby who fully wakes up after every ninety-minute or two-hour cycle.
It’s suddenly clear to me that Alison, the marketing expert whose son fed every two hours for six months, wasn’t handed a baby with weird sleep needs. She unwittingly taught him to need a feed at the end of every two-hour sleep cycle. Alison wasn’t just catering to her son’s demands. Despite her best intentions, she was creating those demands.
I never hear of a single case like Alison’s in France. The French treat The Pause as sleep solution number one, and something to wheel out when the baby is only a few weeks old. An article in
Maman!
magazine points out that in the first six months of a baby’s life, 50 percent to 60 percent of his sleep is
sommeil
agit S/emts é
(agitated sleep). In this state, a sleeping baby suddenly yawns, stretches, and even opens and closes his eyes. “The error would be to interpret this as a call, and thus derail our baby’s sleep train by picking him up,” the article says.
The Pause isn’t the only thing that French parents do. But it’s a critical ingredient. When I visit Hélène De Leersnyder, the Proust-quoting sleep doctor, she immediately mentions The Pause, without any prompting. “Sometimes when babies sleep their eyes move, they make noise, they suck, they move around a bit. But in reality, they’re sleeping. So you mustn’t go in all the time and disturb him while he’s sleeping. You have to learn how the baby sleeps.”
“What if he wakes up?” I ask.
“If he wakes up completely, you pick him up, of course.”
When I talk to American parents about sleep, science rarely comes up. Faced with so many different and seemingly valid sleep philosophies, the one they ultimately choose seems like a matter of taste. But once I get French parents talking, they mention sleep cycles, circadian rhythms, and
sommeil paradoxal
. They know that one reason babies cry in the night is that they’re in between sleep cycles or they’re in
sommeil agité
. When these parents said that they “observed” their babies, they meant that they were training themselves to recognize these stages. When French parents pause, they do it consistently and confidently. They’re making informed decisions based on their understanding of how babies sleep.
Behind this is an important philosophical difference. French parents believe it’s their job to gently teach babies how to sleep well, the same way they’ll later teach them to have good hygiene, eat balanced meals, and ride a bike. They don’t view being up half the night with an eight-month-old as a sign of parental commitment. They view it as a sign that the child has a sleep problem and that his family is wildly out of balance. When I describe Alison’s case to Frenchwomen, they say it’s “impossible”—both for the child and for his mother.
The French believe, as we do, that their children are beautiful and special. But
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