This Nurse’s Story about Rocking Your Child to Sleep Is a Powerful Read

One of the biggest challenges of parenting is figuring out how to get your kids to go to sleep—and stay asleep. There are many schools of thought on how to make that magic happen, one being the soothing motion of a rocking chair. Do you rock your kids to sleep? If so, you must read this powerful message from one mom who explains why it’s totally worth it.

Like with all aspects of parenting, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that works for everyone when it comes to sleep. Some prefer the cry-it-out method, while others will drive aimlessly for hours just to get a few minutes of peace. Whatever your method, you should do what works best for your family. For one mom, that meant rocking her baby to sleep, even when others advised against it.

Photo: skimpton007 via Pixabay

In a Facebook post making rounds on the internet, one mom describes her conversation with another mom, a nurse, about the merits of rocking a child to sleep. As the mom writes, “I’ve been rocking and cuddling my baby to sleep since the day he was born. I mentioned this to a nurse at my clinic recently. She said that she did the same thing with her son, and everyone warned her that she would still have a teenager sleeping in her bed.”

Despite the warning, the nurse attributes her close connection with her now teenage son to those early days in the rocker. “A few weeks ago, her teenage son came home from school very upset. He didn’t want to talk, and just went to his room and listened to his music, typed on his phone and cried.”

Photo: Matthew Henry via Burst

“The mother gave her son space, and night time came and she went to bed. Just as she was about to turn off her side light, the door opened, and her 15-year-old son padded into the room. He climbed into the bed with her, laid his head on her shoulder and cried. He told her all about the girl that broke his heart, all about the friends who laughed, all about the stresses of being him.”

They talked for hours in the dark, sharing their thoughts until they both fell asleep in the bed together, she explains. “I was so scared that I would wind up with a teenager who would ‘need me’ at night, that I never stopped to consider how beautiful that would really be.”

Photo: Bruno Nascimento via Unsplash 

The post received an outpouring of support and stories from other parents with similar experiences—and we couldn’t agree more with all of the support.

—Shahrzad Warkentin

Featured photo: Engin Akyurt via Pixabay

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