?️ Pleased to please
This week we have twice as many readers as last week! I welcome you with all my heart and extend my gratitude for finding my Apparent Letter worthy of your inbox. ❤️
My piece on sleep training resonated with you guys so much that it got a fair number of retweets on Twitter, spreading the idea further than I can scream.
I'm so happy to see that so many of us are fed up with "have them cry for this many minutes" advice.
But then I got several questions from considerate parents on what to do, how to help our kids to sleep better if it's not for sleep training. I got to thinking: could we all have a deeper look into the way we interact with our kids?
"To improve their sleep?" "Yes, to improve their sleep!"
After reading close to 10 gentle-parenting-slash-sleep books, I've concluded that sleep is a nervous system issue and a child's nervous system is too reliant on the parent-child relationship.
Stay away from techniques, my friends. Free yourself of the burden of applying methods; our children are too precious for that. Offer your warm relationship and ask yourself these 5 questions and you'll discover your own answers one at a time.
This week I've come here to talk about a new topic: people-pleasing.
People-pleasing is the need to please others to build relationships. It involves fear of rejection or fear of saying no or both.
People pleasers are so busy taking care of others that they neglect their own needs.
"What's so wrong about being thoughtful of others?" I can hear you asking. Helping, giving, being considerate are all great acts of kindness. Yes, but in healthy doses.
People-pleasers so desperately want to be liked that they cannot be.
People-pleasers are vulnerable to depression.
"How not to raise people-pleasers?" is this week's question.
The most interesting fact from the article is the concept of healthy narcissism.
If you're like me, you must have thought narcissism to be a terrible thing. But apparently (pun intended), narcissism exists on a continuum and a few narcissistic traits are considered healthy! (It's almost the antidote for people-pleasing.)
5 Lessons From Mister Rogers
Just found out that today is Mister Roger's birthday so I wanted to share a few special messages from him. If you're not familiar, Mister Rogers was the beloved American TV host of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" from 1968 to 2000, teaching kids how to overcome physical and emotional challenges through his shows.
It's also my mom's birthday. Happy birthday, mom! ?
? Weekly nurture
5 questions to ask yourself to improve your child's sleep: Sleep is one of the most complex behaviors of the human body. If we look deeply enough, we can find room for improvement in our parent-child relationship, which will help our children sleep better.
How to avoid turning your child into a people-pleaser: Although people-pleasers neglect their own needs, it's a strategy for being loved and accepted. Find out how to avoid turning your child into a people-pleaser.
? Weekly wisdom
“Mommy, I feel so confused.”
I reply: “What are you confused about?”
She says: “I don’t know, I just feel confused.”
I struggle with my urge to make it better…
“It’s okay to feel confused.”
She says: “It is?”
I say: “Yes, it is.”
She is silent and drifts off to sleep.”
Excerpt from: Everyday Blessings by Myla & Jon Kabat-Zinn
?️ Weekly visual
That's it for today! ❤️
Thanks for reading!
Send me your thoughts. I'm on Twitter and love seeing a DM in my inbox. You can also hit reply or shoot me an email at basak@apparent.today.
Until next Saturday!
Love, Basak (founder of Apparent)