A good night’s sleep

Some of you know that during my maternity leave, I got into crochet.

Having a baby means that you spend a lot of time sitting around either feeding or because little one has fallen asleep on you (a term known as being “nap-trapped”). Because I am normally quite a busy and active person, I found this quite challenging and needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t endless scrolling on my phone.

This led me to crochet as I’d always wanted to try it, it is an easy thing to do while baby is in your arms and I love the idea of making little hats or cardigans for Beatrice.

The beginning was an absolute nightmare, and I admit that I lost the plot quite a few times, especially when attempting my first cardigan. One thing that was a real challenge was keeping count of all the stitches, I am not numerically minded and it took a level of maths that was quite beyond me.

One day, after almost throwing my crochet needles out in despair the day before, I woke up and found that this counting that I had struggled with for weeks suddenly came naturally to me. It was almost an automatic thing that I didn’t even need to think about consciously anymore. It felt like magic. I’m sure you know this feeling too. After days or weeks of grappling with the present perfect or a new set of vocabulary and then on day you realise you are spontaneously using it. Why does this happen?

Well, it has a lot to do with sleep. When we get a good night’s sleep, during our REM cycle (the part where we dream) our brain consolidates learning, and transfers recently learned skills and facts to our long-term memory, where we can more easily access it. It’s brilliant because we don’t need to work quite so hard once our brain has transferred what we want to learn. The bad news is we don’t have much control over when this happens. However, there are two things we can do to speed up this process. The first is prioritise sleep and minimise stress, make sure you’re getting a good night’s sleep every night especially before important meetings or exams. The second is to practise regularly the skill you want to learn-thinking about it also helps! The more you think and practise (in a positive way!) the more likely it is your brain will prioritise learning this skill.

So, before our first lesson I hope to see you bright eyed and bushy tailed after a good night’s sleep!



Vocabulary:

Lose the plot-go crazy
Grapple with-deal with something challenging
Bright eyed and bushy tailed-Wide awake and alert (usually in the morning)