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from the zzzzzz-WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! dept.
Some Soylentils have managed to reproduce, so this study, which has findings on how to keep the young ones keep sleeping through the night, might be useful.
Overall, studies indicate that 15 to 20 percent of one to three year olds continue to have nightwakings. According to Stephanie Zandieh, M.D., Director, Pediatric Sleep Disorders and Apnea Center, The Valley Hospital, "Inappropriate sleep associations are the primary cause of frequent nightwakings. Sleep associations are those conditions that are habitually present at the time of sleep onset and in the presence of which the infant or child has learned to fall asleep. These same conditions are then required in order for the infant or child to fall back to sleep following periodic normal nighttime arousals."
Sleep associations can be appropriate (e.g., thumb sucking) or problematic (e.g., rocking, nursing, parental presence). "Problematic sleep associations are those that require parental intervention and thus cannot be reestablished independently by the child upon awakening during the night," adds Dr. Zandieh.
Here are some helpful tips to help your child sleep through the night:
Every child is different, but the techniques seem sensible and worth trying, such as giving them a security blanket (or teddy bear, etc) when being put to bed to signal it's time to sleep.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mth on Wednesday January 04 2017, @12:49AM
It also seems strange to me why they would call sleep associations that require a parent "problematic"; inconvenient for the parent maybe, not I don't see why they'd be inherently bad.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday January 04 2017, @03:30AM
I have to agree with this. There are all sorts of judgmental folks who have opinions about the "correct" way to parent or what is "problematic" (generally with no conclusive studies ever backing it up). Kids have been raised in all sorts of different ways in all sorts of different cultures over the millennia, and most of the judgmental stuff comes from cultural traditions or opinions, rather than clear evidence of any harm (or benefit) to the child.
With my son, we "fought the good fight" for trying to get him to go to sleep by himself for many months. Sometimes it would seem to work for a couple weeks, and then we'd be back to a kid who would rather scream for a long time rather than go to sleep in a room by himself. It was not only exhausting (woken up at odd hours all the time), but stressful.
Sometime around the time he turned 1, we just started doing co-sleeping. Once he was used to it, it frequently would only take 5-10 minutes with one of us before he was SOUND asleep and would stay that way for several hours, so we could get back up and do what we wanted. He slept through the night a lot better, with few issues. And he kept sleeping with us until close to the time he was 3, where he finally became interested in sleeping in the "big boy bed" (toddler bed) we got for him. And then we'd stay in the room with him for a couple minutes, and again he was usually "out" quite quickly.
(And just to note: Though co-sleeping is a less frequent choice in modern Western society, it was the norm before we all adopted this idea of separate "cribs" for infants and toddlers sometime in the 19th century in Western society for middle and lower classes. Co-sleeping still is the norm in most parts of the world, particularly outside of Europe and North America.)
One thing I learned during my first year as a parent was -- just don't judge other parents. Unless they're actually physically abusing a kid or something, I'm not going to judge anybody's choices or methods to figure out what works best for their family. Even within a family, every kid is often different.
For some people, they believe that having a kid "put himself to sleep" even when still an infant is some sort of achievement. For some, the annoyance of having to stay with kids for a few minutes at bedtime is a problem. For others, they don't mind the time. For other parents, they keep lying down with their kids as they go to sleep until they're 6 or 7 or whatever. Over the years, I've talked to a lot of other parents, and I've heard all sorts of opinions, but I'm pretty sure there's no psychological or developmental study that shows any particular "method" is going to guarantee a better outcome or whatever... it's just between you and your kid to "figure it out."