Do you want your child to be smart and excel? Help him to establish healthy nighttime sleep patterns as an infant! It sounds lofty and unattainable, but I assure you, it is not.

Dr. Marc Weissbluth, author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, references the intelligence research of Dr. Lewis M. Terman. Dr. Terman’s research, completed in 1925, is unchallenged even today, according to Dr. Weissbluth. Using the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, Terman looked at over 3,000 children. In every case of superior intelligence, there was one singular link: all of them experienced healthy sleep at night.

Fatigue is the primary cause of fussiness, daytime irritability, crankiness, discontentment, colic-like symptoms, hypertension, poor focusing skills, and poor eating habits. In fact, some researchers even believe there is a cause-and-effect relationship with poor sleeping habits and the increasing rate of Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disorder (ADHD).

Now that we’ve established the importance of achieving good nighttime sleep, let’s talk about some things that get in the way of it:

• Intentionally nursing your baby to sleep: this practice, although it can be comforting, provides an unnecessary dependence on mommy to fall asleep and prevents your baby from learning how to fall asleep on his own.

• Rocking your baby to sleep: it used to be just a rocking chair, but now parents will put a bouncy seat on the dryer or take their baby for a ride in the car to encourage sleep. While these droning noises and motions do encourage sleep, your baby will quickly wake up and be unable to fall asleep again without the motion that encouraged him to drop off in the first place.

• Shared sleep: sleeping with your baby puts him at physical and emotional risk. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, bed-sharing might actually increase the risk of SIDS. Additionally, there is the risk that your child might develop long-term sleep disruption from co-sleeping. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have noted that the families with the most sleep-disorders in their children are also those who practice co-sleeping.

So what’s the solution? Put your baby to bed while he’s still awake. He will learn to calm himself and doze off (and fall in to deeper sleep) in his bed, by himself. By all means, feed your baby, rock him, and love him. But put him to sleep awake and allow his body to fall in to natural sleep-patterns that are the healthiest for him and his development.