Sleeping like a baby?
Want your baby to sleep through the night? Then you’d be wise to avoid co-sleeping arrangements or feeding your child evening snacks beyond early infancy. According to a University of Montréal study published in the April issue of
Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, the way parents put their babies to bed has a direct impact on how well children sleep when they reach 4-6 years of age.
Some 987 moms and dads with 5-month-old tots were recruited to answer questionnaires about their children. Parents detailed their offspring’s psychological characteristics, socio-demographic factors and sleep habits until they reached 6 years of age. They also recorded sleep habits or disturbances, such as bad dreams, total sleep time and delays in falling asleep.
The study asked parents to report on their own behavior when it came to their child’s bedtime – for instance, whether they lulled their child to sleep, laid them down awake or stayed with them until they drifted off. Moms and dads were also questioned on how they reacted to night waking – did they comfort children in bed, take them out of bed, give them food or bring them to the parental bed for co-sleeping.
The researchers found that the way toddlers were put to sleep influenced how they’d sleep between the ages of 4 and 6. Parenting behaviors that most affected children’s sleep included giving children food or drink after they woke, which tended to provoke bad dreams, less than 10 hours’ sleep or delays in falling back asleep. Co-sleeping with children when they woke delayed their going back to sleep by 15 minutes.
However, staying with children at the beginning of sleep appeared protective against delays in slumber. “Giving children food or drink – effective parenting strategies for early sleep problems – can later become inappropriate,” explains lead researcher Valérie Simard, from the University’s department of psychology. “Since moms come to believe that infants cry only when they’re hungry, they might adopt an inappropriate response of giving food or drink when toddlers wake, which in turn causes bad dreams and shorter total sleep when children reach 4-6 years old.”
Beyond parental behavior, Simard cautions, babies can develop poor sleep patterns on their own that affect them into preschool years and beyond. “Parents often opt for co-sleeping as a solution, but co-sleeping isn’t the best option to prevent future sleep difficulties,” she says. “Co-sleeping and other uncommon parental behaviors have negative consequences for future sleep.”