Sometimes it seems like there is so much information and so many different opinions. Add this article to the list. I'm sure it's a good study, but as I read the article, I kept thinking about the practicality of it all. Why does it have to be so hard for us parents sometimes?
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1728755,00.html?cnn=yes
No. That doesn't really work.
I agree that there's too much out there though. Sometimes researchers are really more "confirmers": they'll have an idea, hear an idea, or suspect an idea and then do what they can to find data that will confirm that idea.
The best science is done by those who are surprised by their results, not by those who suspected it all along. It's too easy to overlook confounding factors if you are already committed to the truth of your conclusion. Chapter 2 of the book The Golem: What you should know about science deals with Eddington's biased, but popularizing proof of Einstein's general theory of relativity, and is a great example of the kinds of biases that can infect conclusions.
http://backpackingdad.blogspot.com
I suppose we've been lucky with our girls to have established good sleeping patterns & habits, have not had many lingering problems in the past several months (knock on wood). We've pretty much tailored a number of practices (at times on a learn as you go basis) that we found to work best for them and ourselves. Our 2nd has benefited from gained experience and has been a much better sleeper.
Perhaps some or much of the inconsistency in research is also because there are so many variables base on the individual child, parents, the environment etc.. This is what led me on a search to find what works best for us. Dealing with and reducing stress is the biggest challenge and contributor of sleep related issues.
Often a catch 22 for parents.
How can anyone say what is good for an individual child? What worked for my daughter didn't work for my niece. Moreover, a sleep study that is as authoritative as all sleep studies claim to be are flawed by the fact that they don’t and can’t follow a child though to adulthood. I was raised to cry it out etc. and I have had terrible anxiety over the years. When I was about 11 I had so much anxiety about sleeping I had to go into my parent’s room for comfort.
In raising my daughter we do a bedtime routine, like most of you do, and if she has trouble we sometimes spend time with her on the floor until she relaxes. I don’t see her having any problem with this. Neither do my wife and I. My daughter is 2.5 and needs to know that Mom and Dad are still watching over her. She can and does fall asleep on her own but not every day is the same. These “anti-affection” studies are weird to me. They exclude so much and but the onus on indulging our children’s emotional needs as the cause of bad sleep habits.
I do agree with Dr Weissbluth in that we allow our children to become over tired which makes sleeping harder. Friends of ours in an attempt to be free flowing non-schedule parents had to change their ways because their 3 year old wasn’t going to sleep until they did around 11PM. They didn’t want to force her but never took the time to build a healthy routine for their daughter to follow.
My mother is as anti nap as a person can be as napping doesn’t make her feel better. That’s how I was raised, but I need naps and often acted out even later in life that I needed some sleep.
Let’s not forget that most of human history we didn’t have lights and the TV/Internet to keep us awake, and sleeping with other people was often the only choice.
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Joined: 2006-11-17
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