You Can Train Your Mind

As I work with my daughter who is now having some major sleep issues, all that keeps coming back to me is the fact that you can train your mind to think whatever you wish it to think and in turn your body will react to the thought. Now this concept is what has taught me to become the positive person I am today, however, teaching the skills to an eight year old is difficult.

Although I will admit my daughter is usually very good at focusing on the positive of any situation that comes into her life, she is still eight years old and a growing child. Let’s say she has a bad day at school, at home or at her Dad’s house. It is easy for her to report into me all of what upset her during the day, but it’s up to me, her mother … the parent, to train her mind to focus away from the negative or bad parts of her day and focus onto what she enjoyed during the day. I have done a lot of work with my daughter through actions that I exhibit myself during my day to teach her the power of positive, and I firmly believe she truly understands the basic role of positive power in ones life.

The past week or so Ki has been having a real difficult time staying in her bed, it went from one month at our new home to sleeping awesome, loving things about the new house yet still being a little cautious and concerned of new things. I can see that with all of the changes she has had in her life in the past few months that she would have difficulty sleeping and I am compassionate about that, however, when she continuously comes downstairs until the wee hours of early morning I can say that my compassion soon pulls away into concern and then frustration.

Ki can not pin point an exact reason behind her wakening in the middle of the night, but one thing was always consistent and that was the fact that our new house is very quiet in the night time hours. I can see how that would bother a person, some of us need a little bit of background noise to stay asleep or fall back asleep should we arise in the middle of the night. I purchased Ki a cute alarm clock with spa sounds and a radio to assist in her mid night wakings.

I will say my daughter is quite stubborn, just like her Mama and her Daddy! When the alarm clock arrived I had her go through all of the spa sounds and to my dismay she was negative about it. Ki apparently doesn’t like any of the sounds, she prefers to hear her brothers baby music toy that he has on for bedtime in the next room over, however, it only plays for 18 minutes at a time. Ki has finally accepted the radio option but alas 99.3FM doesn’t come in and that has bothered her. Apparently that is the station her father listens to at his house when falling asleep. Such a cutie she is!

I have seen progress in the past two nights with Ki which to me is better than no progress. No longer is she up screaming and fighting us on every turn but she comes down a few times and when told to go back to sleep she does. I know there is a lot on her mind, and therefore I will be getting her into counseling, because even though Ki will open up and confide in me, she is only 8 years old and may not know how to fully communicate what she is holding inside of her mind.

For now I am simply trying to teach her that if she tells herself she can’t sleep that her body will not sleep, that is the training of mind I am speaking of that I don’t feel she can truly comprehend at such a young age.