Babies, Parenting, Child Health, Infant Nutrition

Child Development – Universite de Montreal Study Finds Parents’ Behavior Can Ease or Perpetuate Baby’s Sleep Problems Later in Life

07.04.2008 | 9:54:12 pm | Posted by admin

By Colleen Hurley, RD, Certified Kid’s Nutrition Specialist

baby development, parenting Whether you rock your baby to sleep or read a bedtime story before bed, you might not be thinking about how this nighttime routine will affect your baby a few years down the road. A new study by the Universite de Montreal suggests that how parents deal with a sleepless baby can affect the child’s bedtime habits well into the preschool years.

Following 987 Quebec children from 5 months to 6 years of age, researchers continually checked in with their parents via questionnaires throughout the 6 year study. The parents answered questions regarding their child’s sleep habits including bad dreams, delays in falling asleep and insufficient sleep times. In addition, parents reported their own behaviors in regards to how they got their child back to sleep whether it was a lullaby, staying with them until they fell asleep, or simply laid them in bed to fall asleep on their own. Also included on the questionnaire were questions detailing how parents cope with their child waking up in the middle of the night such as giving them a snack or bringing their child into their own bed.

The study found that babies with sleep problems including falling and staying asleep or getting less than 10 hours of sleep a night, were more likely to have sleep problems later in life. Published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, the study revealed that parental coping mechanisms with a child’s sleep disturbances can either help or hurt the situation.

Soothing a baby with the breast, food, or a bottle may be an acceptable method during early infancy, but can perpetuate bad dreams when the child reaches 29 months. According to researchers, giving the child something to eat or suck on in the later stages of infancy, around 40 months, increases the likelihood the child will continue to have nightmares at 4 years old.

The best method for ensuring a good night’s sleep, researchers note, is to allow the child to “self-soothe″ so that they may get back to sleep on their own. The same goes for bedtime as researchers state that putting the child to bed awake and allowing the child to fall asleep on her own is common counsel for parents these days. Yet if the child awakens from a nightmare it is certainly appropriate to provide comfort as long as it is not food or drink. Taking the child to the parents’ bed if they awoke during the night did help the child fall asleep faster, but researchers warn it is a slippery slope for the child’s long term sleep behaviors.

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