Habits and Needs: Are we really breaking something? Or building something?
The following article expands on ideas presented in a September 2020 video in Family Sleep and Development group on facebook.
One of the primary concerns I hear from parents is that they are worried that how they are parenting is causing bad habits. I often hear:
“I better change this now or it will be harder later”
“If I do this will I regret it?”
“Will _________ (responding to them at night, nursing them to sleep, bedsharing) hold them back from becoming independent?”
“They’re in a bad habit of needing me in the room to fall asleep”
“We’ve gotten into the bad habit of letting him sleep in our bed”.
Behind these concerns is a feeling that what they are doing is wrong, even though, most of the time, it’s working —and working well! Parents worry that if they’ve heard it’s a bad habit, it must be a bad habit, even if it is working really well for their family at this particular point in time.
Most often their worry stems from inaccurate things they’ve heard about bedsharing, breastfeeding to sleep, and responding with compassion to their baby’s big feelings (“spoiling” them might be their way of describing it). It extends to how we respond when our child is hurt, or how much we help them get dressed, or the fact that we need to clean up the trail of discarded toys, corn flakes, or shoes that are not put away. Parents have been given the impression that these things are inherently bad, and that they are bad because it will be difficult to change if they aren’t strict about it now, and because they are not encouraging enough independence in their child.
I want to break this down a bit. Because when we get caught in a whirlpool of doubt around whether how we are parenting is “good”, we sometimes forget there are signposts and reassurances, built right into your relationship with your baby, to tell you whether you are on a workable path. (I feel tempted here to say “on the right track”. But the truth is, everyone’s parenting path is different, and what works for one family may not be “right” for another. And what works one week may not the next.)
Most of the time, if it’s working, it’s working, and we can leave well enough alone. But of course we also have responsibiltiies as parents to think ahead to the kind of people we want to guide our kids into becoming. We’d like to guide our children to be empathetic, kind, and to know themselves well enough and have the confidence to speak up for themselves and pursue a meaningful life. And so we worry about whether we are parenting in a way that encourages “bad habits” despite also feeling that being a nurturing and present parent is the “right thing”. No wonder so many parents feel so conflicted!
SO HOW DO WE BALANCE
“IF IT’S WORKING FOR NOW, LET’S CARRY ON” WITH
“BUT YOU MIGHT REGRET THIS LATER”?
We can balance this internal conflict by taking the fear out of these so called habits that we’re causing our children to develop. Are habits really bad? Is it true that they are difficult to change? (Are they more difficult to change than to prematurely try to teach a child not to fall asleep at the breast, or other skill they may not be ready for? How do we figure out if it is a habit or a need? And is it entirely necessary to know one way or another? And when we do decide a habit is getting in the way of something, and we want to change it, how do we do that?
One way to understand habits (and take the fear out of them) is to take the view that almost everything we do as adults is a habit, and almost our babies do is a need. I take this view in my facebook video. and although it’s an oversimplification, it can help in taking the pressure off of whether you are making mistakes.
Habits are there to allow us to think less about all the routine things we do during the day, which is why so much of our adult behaviour is habit-based. We end up relying on them and taking comfort in them. They become routines or rituals that round out our day, like automatically taking shoes off when coming in the house, or boiling water for tea every morning. A lot of things we do as adults are habits, including the internal dialogue we have about whether we’re “good” parents, or the excuses we give ourselves for not doing something that we value. But habits are not inherently good or bad. They either serve us in being who we would like to be (or getting done what we’d like to get done), or not.
Needs are more fundamental, and less negotiable. We have needs, and certainly our babies do too. We can turn to anthropology and biology to understand the needs of babies. The need to be held. The need to feel safe. They need to feed (even in the middle of the night at 12 month, when some experts suggest it’s entirely unnecessary from a nutritional point of view —the underlying suggestion is it’s a “bad habit”).
When we break down needs and habits this way we can start to see how often people (some paediatricians, family members, advice-givers) make infant needs look like habits. And the conotation is clear: habits are bad. Further, we forget that if we can develop habits that support the vision we have for our families (the habit of family dinner, the habit of a walk every evening, as examples), on some level they are needs —we need them to lead the lives we lead.
DO YOUR HABITS SERVE YOU?
By looking at habits as ways of organizing our lives with less conscious thought, we can take the idea of “good” and “bad” right out of it. And so, it may be helpful to look at habits as either serving you or not.
Does this habit serve you (or your baby, or your family)?
If the answer is yes, there is no need to change it, despite any strong convictions about the future. It may be that you know you do not want to nurse your child through the night when they are five. But that does not mean that having the comforting and consistent “habit” of feeding your baby to sleep through the night when they are one is a problem! If it works, carry on. And at some point either your baby will naturally wean, or you will decide you’d like to actively shift away from this because it no longer works.
CARRY ON IF YOUR HABITS ARE SERVING YOU. CHANGE THEM WHEN THEY NO LONGER DO.
So how do we establish habits that support ourselves and our family? Here are three broad steps to take to work towards a habit-filled life that adds value rather than take value away from your daily life:
Break down what exactly the problem or goal is:
What is going well?
What is not working any longer?
What might feel better?
Is our baby mature enough to manage a shift in the routine or habit we have with them? (Is it a need?)
Is this something you want, or something you feel you “should” do? (“Should” is a pretty clear sign that this may not be based on what you know your child needs, or about your family’ circumstances. “Should” and “bad habits” often come in the same sentence, and if you find these words coming up often, pause, and reflection on whether this is really a problem or not).
Break down the steps or the action that could change and move you towards a new habit:
What actions happen that could be rejigged or fill the space of the old habit?; what steps do you take leading up to the habit you want to change that could be rearranged? What circumstances would make it easier to change what you do?
If bedtime is getting later, and you realize you aren’t bringing your baby up to bed a soon as may be ideal (they are overtired), what actions can you start doing to make it easier to bring your baby up sooner? Are there things you do now that delay bedtime and that you could stop?
Where can you develop new steps that make it easy to bring your baby up sooner? Use the path of least resistance to make things go more smoothly.
Are there things you do now that delay bedtime and that you could stop?
Take a top down (parent as the leader) approach:
Gordon Neufeld talks about alpha parenting: the leadership role that parents take in ensuring children are securely attached so they are more likely to cooperate, and that parents are providing security and feelings of safety through their consistency, predictability, change thyself). This positions parents not as dictators but as leaders. If there is a change that must be made, often it starts with us.
What could I change about my approach that sets us up for successfully changing a pattern?
What shift in how I look at this problem could help me come up with a novel or creative new solutions?
Make it as easy as possible:
Habits can feel hard to change because so much of our lives revolve around them. Things come before hand and happen afterwards that reinforce the habit. This is a great thing if it is a habit that is working for us! It’s not so great when it’s a habit we want to change
Find something easy to do that naturally leads to the new habit. If bedtime needs to be earlier, it might be something happening 2 hours earlier in the evening that holds the key to smoothly transitioning to an earlier bedtime.
So what’s the short version of all this?
Habits versus needs: it may not matter. It’s about whether a change would truly benefit your family;
Change what is not serving you, don’t change what is;
Break down the task to find the little changes that can make a big difference;
And last but perhaps most importantly, most of the “bad habits” parents worry about are not bad habits at all: they are biology. If change feels hard, re-evaluate the importance of the change. It may be that in a month or so the time will be good, and change will be easier.
I’ll finish with this short list of “not habits”. If you find yourself concerned about any of the following, explore whether it is working well at this moment, why your baby may need this right now, and what your ideal alternative might be if you decide to change it. Also know that if you decide to change a “habit”, and then change you’re mind, it’s all good!
Habits that aren’t habits (or at least aren’t bad ones unless they have stopped serving you!):
breastfeeding to sleep
turning right when you pull out of your driveway
waiting till baby is fully asleep in your arms before transferring to the crib
clearing the table after dinner (not a habit in our house!)
bedsharing after first wake up
brushing your teeth before you go downstairs
bedsharing before the first wake up!
nursing on cue
responding with care to your baby in the middle of the night
flushing the toilet
carrying your baby or toddler
Hopefully this list takes the “bite” out of your fear of habits. They really are an integral part of our lives, and they can help us spend less energy, giving us more energy to focus on things we’d truly like to be mindful of.
For last words I will say this:
THERE ARE NO BAD HABITS.
THERE ARE ONLY HABITS WORTH KEEPING, AND HABITS WORTH CHANGING.
Resources
Heather Boyd, Habits versus Needs. Available at Family Sleep and Development group facebook live video, September 2020.
Tracy Cassels, Creating Bad Habits. Available at: http://evolutionaryparenting.com/creating-bad-habits/ Published April 13, 2014.
James Clear (2018)., Atomic Habits: An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones.
PS: Did you know that the Infant Development Circle 5-week series covers infant development through the lens of attachment-based, empowered parenting? We talk about bad habits in the sleep module in week 4. To find out more, click here.