If you have not already done so, please read Blog Posts 1 through 5 that describe how sleep is important and beneficial. I will post specific information for parents and children based on my book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Please do not be put off by my book’s length. This is a reference book. Read only the topic of interest to you.
4. THE MARRIAGE
Blog Post 18
COPARENTING
Coparenting is the manner in which parents work together to raise their children. Within the context of specific family differences (Blog Posts 14 and 17), to achieve healthy sleep for your child, focus on teamwork. Coparenting quality may be evaluated by asking parents to report on how they see their partner as a coparent regarding positive features such as:
∙ Agreement
∙ Closeness
∙ Support
∙ Endorsement
∙ Division of labor
Also, coparenting quality may be evaluated by asking parents how they see their partner as a coparent regarding negative features such as:
∙ Exposure to conflict
∙ Undermining
In a study of infants during the first year, parents were asked these questions and questions about parents’ beliefs about responding to night wakings (“My child will feel abandoned if I don’t respond immediately.”). When the mother strongly endorsed beliefs about immediately responding to night waking and the father did not, the positive coparent quality features were lower. The more strongly parents endorsed immediate responses to the infant night wakings, the higher the negative features of coparent quality were rated. “Results emphasize the importance of communication and concordance in nighttime parenting practices for aspects of parents coparenting relationship.”
PARENTAL TOLERANCE FOR INFANT CRYING
Professor Sadeh used “a two minute video clip of a 6-month-old baby playing on a carpet who then starts crying (after 10 seconds), with a gradual increase in crying intensity and visual distress signs. Prior to watching the video, a written cover story was presented to the participants: ‘The following video is of a very demanding baby. His parents are trying to ignore some of his crying to allow him to calm down by himself. Please look at the video and decide when you feel it is absolutely necessary to intervene.’ The purpose of the cover story was to create a standardized description of the situation and to increase motivation to tolerate the crying and delay the response.” They studied:
∙ Childless couples
∙ Parents with child with no sleep problems
∙ Parents with child with sleep problems
Parents with a child about one-year-old who has sleep problems “demonstrated shorter intervention delays in the crying clip and tended to attribute more distress to the crying infants compared to parents in both control groups. Our results suggest that parents of sleep-disturbed infants appear to have a lower tolerance for infant crying, which may be a predisposition underlying their excessive involvement in soothing their infants to sleep which may lead to the development of sleep problems.”
Maybe if parents could delay their responses to night awakenings, after 3 months of age, just 5-10 seconds, their child would have more opportunity to develop self-soothing skills. Why 3 months? In a separate study, Professor Sadeh, using the same video clip, again measured the number of seconds delay before intervention in couples from pregnancy to 6 months postpartum.
∙ Prompter responses during pregnancy predicted better infant sleep at 3 months of age.
∙ Prompter responses at 6 months are associated with poor quality sleep (more night wakings and more wakefulness after sleep onset) at 6 months.
Also, as in the previous study, husbands showed more delayed responses than mothers.
Blog Post 116
If your marriage is stressed, please read some of the following:
A. Blog Posts 17 describes how the individual role of the father and the mother helps or hinders healthy sleep in their child.
18 and 23 describe how parents working together as a team promotes healthy sleep in their child.
B. Posts by Topic
Section 6: ‘Understanding why parents might have difficulty helping their child sleep well’.
Section 7: ‘Sleep Solutions’ to help your child sleep better.
Section 15: ‘Children’s sleep in different countries’ to recognize speed bumps or roadblocks in your own marriage or culture that might make it difficult to achieve peaceful sleep for your child.
C. What a Parent Can Do
Specific steps that might solve your child’s sleep difficulty.
D. Parents’ Reports
Topic 1: Graduated Extinction and Extinction.
Topic 4: Reset.
Topic 8: Sleep Rules.
E. Get outside help.
Perhaps a discussion with your child’s primary caregiver or a community sleep consultant (Blog Posts 27, 64 and 65) will help clarify the issues around your child’s sleep difficulties and save your marriage.
