Monthly Archives: April 2009

Let’s start at the very beginning…

0-3 months

So… let's get started into the meat of things, shall we? I think I'll start posting on the different stages of cognitive and emotional development chronologically and then try to post questions (and some brainstorming solutions) as they relate to that stage. I've received several emails and, not surprisingly, they coincide with very particular problems that arise at very particular ages/stages in development. I can't really figure out how to prioritize them, so chronological order seems to be the most straightforward way to proceed.

So… what's going on from birth to about 3 months?

    The period of birth to 3 months is often considered the time when babies learn to regulate their basic bodily reactions, their states, and their physiology. These little beings have spent a long time in the womb, developing all the bodily mechanisms necessary to live on this planet, to eat, to breathe, to expend energy in motion, to coordinate muscles and senses so that motion accomplishes something, and to sleep when replenishment is needed. They have also developed the mechanisms for acquiring knowledge and skill—mechanisms that will allow them to pay attention to what is most important, especially the faces, voices, and actions of other humans.
    Most important, this is an age when the baby’s states—alert attention, quiet wakefulness, and sleep—become practiced and differentiated from each other, creating a predictable cycle of daily rhythms. And these rhythms gradually become synchronized with the day-and-night cycle of our planet, so that, starting around 6 weeks, babies sleep more at night and less in the day. And, as they develop, these rhythms will also become synchronized with your rhythms and the household routines that underlie them. During the end of this stage, you will also notice a rapid increase in face-to-face gazing, more smiling and other expressions of pleasure, and a general decrease in fussiness at the end of this stage. Babies learn, by about 2 to 3 months, that they are part of a complex but exciting world of cycles both inside and outside their bodies.
    From my perspective, sleep training prior to 3 months is not a good idea. There is too much going on. The synchronization of brain and bodily systems, the establishment of cycles for eating and sleeping, the coordination of these cycles with the outside world, all need time to develop and stabilize. The sheer number of biological and psychological systems getting wired up, and the rapid rate at which they are becoming connected with each other, staggers the imagination.  A lot of biological events, including cascades of changes in neural pathways and organ systems, unfold with uncanny precision, almost as if there were a master schedule posted somewhere and your baby is diligently following it. Scientists still do not know exactly how this cascade of changes progresses so effectively. But what we do know, as child psychologists, is that it’s better not to mess with it! To attempt sleep training before your baby does the majority of her sleeping at night would be to miss a massive biological leg-up. Why not let natural biological processes do their work, before you begin adjusting the fine points?
    Sleep training during this early period may simply be ineffective. It may be difficult or impossible to establish desirable sleep habits before sleeping at night becomes routine. But it could also confuse your baby’s evolving capacity to synchronize her interest, excitement levels, perception, and communication. Imagine that your baby is just learning to smile at you and to expect a smile in return. This reciprocal smiling sets off an episode of communication that is designed to increase arousal, because arousal is part of pleasure. And now imagine that this smiling takes place just as you are turning out the lights and leaving the room, a necessary step in most sleep-training methods. Now your aroused, excited baby, instead of receiving the ongoing communication she expects, is faced with the prospect of lying still and going to sleep. This might simply not work. Fine. But it’s quite possible that, after a few such scenarios, your baby will become confused as to what to expect when mutual smiling or gazing take place. Maybe the smiling means “game over”. Maybe I should disengage rather than engage when Mom and I make eye contact. This sort of social confusion could result from mixed signals, as the baby sees it. So, my take is better to wait until the interpersonal routines of smiling and gazing become solid habits. As they solidify, security and trust will solidify as well, making the ordeal of sleep training less of a challenge to your baby’s sense of himself, his sense of you, and his sense of your relationship.

So, if you're in the throes of this stage with your baby, you  might be saying:  But I'm DYING over here!  What can I do to maximize EVERYONE'S sleep?
    Our answer (which had to be edited out of the book for copyright infringement but now I'm free to go for the full chorus) is best summarized by John Lennon: “Whatever gets you through the night, is alright… Do it wrong or do it right, it’s alright.” Use a swing, a bouncy chair, tuck your baby in the crook of your neck, lay him across your chest, rock him in a chair, a glider or a hammock, bounce him in a sling or a baby carrier, throw him in a car seat on top of the dryer (my husband insists on my warning you to be careful that the seat can fall off the edge), in the back seat of a car, or in the stroller. Have you tried the quarter-time bounce (oh man… I need to videotape this "bounce" and share it with you all… It seriously worked with EVERY infant I've laid my hands on)? Anything you do, you can undo with proper sleep training at a later stage of development.  This is not the time to stress out about “creating bad habits.” What you’re creating is a tight bond with a rapidly developing little organism that needs your warmth, flexibility and consistency. During this early newborn stage, whatever gets you (and your baby) through the night is just fine.

Is the book coming out in the U.S. (or anywhere else)?

Books, ,

I've been getting several emails about whether the book will be available in the States. Short answer: I don't know. The book is published by HarperCollins CANADA. They (and we) have plans to try to sell the rights in the U.S. But it's not happening in the next month or two. I suspect we have to show that the book did really well in Canada first, and then the American publishers will be willing to consider also taking it on (and even that may be a long shot with the state of the economy down there).

I know the shipping cost is a real pain and I'm very sorry about that. Unfortunately, it's completely out of our hands (but hey!  The cost of the book is only about $12 which converts to something like 75 cents American, right ;-))

And YES, the book DOES ship to the States, no problem, it's just a pain when you see that the shipping is as much as the book. <sigh>

Here from Moxie? Welcome!

My general approach, ,

I am so thankful to Moxie for her thoughtful review and for sending you all over here. I'm really hoping to live up to her generous words of support.

Since I've just started up this blog, I'd love to get your input on what you think might be most helpful to you. What would you like to see featured here?  I've got tons of ideas in terms of posts and some other thoughts on different types of links or "support spaces" that we could create… what do you think?

  • I'd like to create a "space" where parents could come and vent and get support throughout the day, but especially during the horrendous wee hours of the night/morning. I remember logging into Moxie's site when I was pumping at 3 am and feeling just a little less alone when someone else was posting at the same time. You know that feeling of being THE ONLY ONE AWAKE in the world, at 3 am, 4 am, 5 am? Would it be helpful for you to have a place on this site to go and commiserate with other parents during that time?
  • Of course, I'm planning on featuring studies, reviews of research, and highlighting developmental principles that are most relevant to sleep issues.
  • Given that the topic is near and dear to my heart, I'd also like to feature topics that are relevant to parents of twins (or other multiples) and young siblings
  • I'm in Toronto and of course whenever I read Moxie, I wondered if there were Moxie readers in the city that I could hook up with and just be my sleep-deprived self with in my offline life. Would it be helpful for people in the trenches of sleep training or sleep deprivation (if you're waiting out one of those hellish transitional or regression stages) to find others to just stare out into space with? Could we figure out how to facilitate that through this site?

Any other suggestions that you think might help you out with either surviving the "bad" stages or fortifying you for your sleep-training efforts?

The “how” is up to you

Sleep Training Methods to the Madness

If you listen to our radio interviews or read the published reviews (listed on the right sidebar), you'll get a sense of how frustrated some people get when they can't nail me down on the question: What do you REALLY believe is the best METHOD to sleep train a child?

Generally, I don't think any one method is objectively any better than another (with maybe one rather evil exception which I won't mention here because I don't want to give any fundamentalist charlatans the publicity). I think the METHOD you choose to sleep train your child should have everything to do with your own parenting philosophy, your cultural background, the way you were parented yourself, the temperament of your child, your family composition (single, married, grandparents within shouting distance, etc.), and so on. What may work beautifully and miraculously for one family may be disastrous for another. There are people in some cultures who would be horrified by the idea of leaving a small child alone in their own room to sleep while other cultures have disdain for co-sleeping families. Bottom line for me: Do what's right for your own family.

Also? There is no one method that's been empirically proven to be any better than another.  A review of 52 treatment studies conducted by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (published in the journal Sleep) concluded that out of the top 5 types of sleep-training techniques (ranging from "cry-it-out" methods, to Ferberizing, to more "gentle" methods), all were equally effective.

So… no, I don't think cry-it-out methods are the work of the devil, nor do I think co-sleeping will lead to children becoming clingy, spoiled brats and who can blame the mother who relishes the hour-long rocking sessions that ease her baby gradually toward a good night's sleep? Whatever works for you and your child is just fine by me. But when it STOPS working for you, and you want to make a change, then pick the sleep-training method with which you feel most comfortable.  Our main point: try to apply that method at the right developmental window.

I hate the term “sleep training” too

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When we first started writing the book, every time I'd write "sleep train," I'd cringe. Isn't training for pets or something? It just sounded… wrong. But it got to be too clunky to repeatedly write things like: "teaching your child to sleep…" or "helping your infant fall asleep…" and so on. Many people use the term "sleep train" to refer to what parents do to try to teach kids to sleep longer stretches during the night and to nap more consistently through the day. We went with it, but I've never been thrilled with the choice.

Let me also make the point here that when I talk about sleep training, I'm referring to a large class of strategies that are really about trying to induce TRANSITIONS in the way your baby or child sleeps. So sleep training can be applied to a huge variety of sleep issues:

  • helping you child sleep longer stretches at one time during the night or helping her sleep "through the night"
  • getting your child to sleep in a crib after co-sleeping with him for a period of time
  • helping your child wake up less (or put herself back to sleep) in a family bed
  • getting your child to sleep in a crib rather than <insert a variety of desperate yet effective methods including sleeping in a car seat, swing, sling, bouncy chair, buzzy chair, in the car>
  • helping your toddler transition from a crib to a "big boy/girl bed"
  • teaching your child to put herself (back) to sleep without 2 hours of parental rocking, bouncing, shushing, begging, etc.
  • and so on…

Success stories: When did it work for you?

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For those parents still struggling with crazy-making sleep deprivation and the challenges of sleep-training, it would be great to have success stories that could provide some hope. 

If you've successfully sleep-trained your child already, how old was your child at the time?

Was it easy or hard to do?

I'll start: Our twin boys were exactly 6 months when we started sleep-training. I hit a serious wall between 4 and 6 months and COULD NOT COPE anymore with the hourly wake-up calls. I was a physical and emotional wreck, what with the 3 hours of sleep per night I had been getting most nights (these were not 3 hours IN A ROW, keep in mind). The whole process took about a week, but the worst was over by the first 3 days. I'd say we had it really easy — and I attribute some of that ease to luck (yup, very scientific of me) and the rest to the timing of our sleep-training efforts. At 6 months, the boys were secure, cheerful little guys (which was a lot more than I could say for myself), totally absorbed with sitting up and playing with anything that came into their field of vision. They were noticeably less needy than just a month before, so we went for it and our lives completely changed afterwards. It's amazing what 7 hours of solid sleep will do for a person's mood…

Oh…by the way: This was just the FIRST time we did it. Have I mentioned that for most families, sleep-training isn't a one-shot deal?  Stay tuned for the 3 year-old story…

Why a blog?

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This is my first foray into blogging and I'm hoping it proves useful and productive for everyone involved. Let me try to lay out the rationale for starting this site:

I wanted a place to talk about the issues raised
in Bed Timing, to highlight particular research findings that form the
basis of the book and, most importantly, to provide readers a space to
ask questions and trouble-shoot through their own sleep-training highs
and lows. We’ve been on several call-in radio shows as part of the book
promotion tour and my favorite part of this process has been connecting
with real moms who are in the trenches, trying to solve their own young
children’s sleep problems. I’m hoping to do more of that through this
blog.

I’d like this online space to serve several functions:

(1)
To provide a Q & A forum in which readers can send me their own
personal sleep training dilemmas and I can try to provide some tailored advice, based on
my developmental training (and some personal experience!).  Please,
feel free to email me any
question related to your child’s sleep issues, or developmental
challenges that may be relevant to their sleeping. If you’re worried
about something, there’s sure to be many, many other parents in the
same boat. I’ll post questions and answers several times per week. 

(2)
To highlight the latest research findings on the link between
children’s sleep and cognitive and emotional well-being (both the
child’s and the parent’s). I’ve got tons and tons of research that I’ve
compiled, summarized, and critiqued. Much of Bed Timing is based on
that research. I’d like to post relevant studies, articles, and new
research findings on a weekly basis and have you comment about the
usefulness and relevance of that material.

(3) To develop a
supportive community for parents and caregivers that can help parents
help each other through one of the most harrowing developmental
challenges. The extent to which this goal will be realized is all about
you.

So… clearly, this blog isn't going to get very far without your thoughts, criticisms, questions, and general feedback. I'd love to hear what you have to say…

Reviews

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Reviews of our book, Bed Timing: The “when-to” guide to helping your child to sleep

AskMoxie (the most awesome parenting advice blog) — She loved it!

See what our readers have to say!


Top 10 Things Parents Should Know Before Sleep-Training their Child (Not what you might expect…)

Sleep Training Methods to the Madness, , , , ,

Bedtiming_book_cover

Here are some of the highlights from the book. I'll include more in-depth discussions of each point in separate posts soon. For now, here's a summary:

1. Timing is everything: No matter what method of sleep training you use, it is more likely to succeed at particular developmental stages, and more likely to fail at others. The vast majority of children follow a predictable developmental schedule of emotional and cognitive changes in the first 5 years of life.

2. The best times for sleep training are neither early nor late. Many people assume that getting sleep training over with before the child gets too clever or too entrenched in nighttime habits is the best approach. Others assume that waiting until the attachment bond is strong and/or kids are more independent is important. Both are wrong. The best stages to sleep-train follow a pendulum swing from one age to the next, with difficult periods interspersed between periods of relative ease.

3. Stages that make it harder to sleep-train are those of heightened emotional vulnerability. In these predictable periods, your child will be more dependent, vulnerable, or prone to separation distress, jealousy or shame.

4. Stages that make it easier to sleep-train are when your child is less emotionally sensitive. For an infant, these are periods she is more interested in the nonsocial world of objects, actions, and locomotion, and less concerned with other people. Resilient periods in toddlerhood are when children are not feeling
compelled to assess parents' availability, attention, and affection,
when they don't need to define their own territories or intentions
through defiance, when they are less prone to jealousy and shame and
when they are more concerned with winning approval than testing limits.

5. Most sleep-training methods are equally effective. There are at least half a dozen popular sleep-training methods, ranging from "cry it out" to "gentle no-cry solutions." None have been proven more effective than another so pick something that feels right for you. That means go with a method that seems to match your parenting philosophy or approach in general. Ultimately, you have to live with your parenting choices and you know your child best.

6. There are some ages at which particular methods are likely to work better than others. If you understand the emotional vulnerabilities and strengths that characterize each developmental stage, you will be better equipped to match a sleep-training method with your child’s age.

7. Pick a method you know you can stick with. That means apply the method consistently, and do so for at least a week.

8. Things often get worse before they get better. Children already have sleep habits when we decide to sleep train them. Breaking those habits may involve some disruption, disorganization, or outright rebellion on the part of your baby or toddler. As a result your child may sleep less or wake more frequently before she settles into a new routine.

9. Sleep training is often not a one-shot deal. Even after your child learns to sleep through the night, sleep setbacks can occur at (predictably) difficult ages, requiring parents to think about what's different and how to re-implement effective sleep training.

10. A family that is getting enough sleep, is a happy, healthy family. Mothers in particular often feel guilty about sleep training because of messages from the media, friends and family (including fellow mothers, unfortunately) that their first and only priority should be their child’s happiness. Parents who are considering sleep training for reasons beyond just the well-being of their child (gasp!) are not only perfectly normal, but are doing the right thing. A sleep-deprived child is a cranky, inattentive one who will have a tougher time learning and socializing. A sleep-deprived parent is often irritable, angry, depressed and ineffective. A well-rested mother and a well-rested child will both be happier, healthier, more alert and more affectionate.

About Child of Mind

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Family pic

About Us

Hi, my name is Isabela Granic. My husband (Marc Lewis) and I wrote Bed Timing: The “when-to” guide to helping your child to sleep. We both got our PhDs in developmental psychology — he’s a Professor at University of Toronto and I’m a research scientist at the Hosptial for Sick Children in Toronto. We’re also parents of 3-year old twin boys.  We wrote Bed Timing while trying to figure out the ins and outs of our own children’s sleep habits and how to ultimately change those crazy habits so that we could regain our sanity. This blog was first developed as a place to talk about the issues raised in Bed Timing, to highlight particular research findings that form the basis of the book and, most importantly, to provide readers a space to ask questions and trouble-shoot through their own sleep-training highs and lows. We’ve been on several call-in radio shows as part of the book promotion tour and my favorite part of this process has been connecting with real moms who are in the trenches, trying to solve their own young children’s sleep problems. I was hoping to do more of that through this blog.

After about 6 months of focusing on sleep issues in babies and toddlers, I decided to broaden the topics of the blog to any developmental questions and concerns that parents may have about their children. So… this “new and improved” blog is meant to cover almost any developmental topic: discipline, potty training, cognitive milestones, early friendships, literacy, aggression, early fears, school-readiness, separation distress and so on and so on.

Tracy's pic And I have a comrade in arms now to help me write and keep up with comments. Her name is Tracy Solomon. She too has a PhD in developmental psychology. Whereas my expertise are generally in social and emotional development, hers are in cognitive development. Read more about her here. Tracy has a 5-year-old son. He is a child of passionate interests and
some unusual abilities that really keep her on her toes. Tracy’s key
interests are in symbolic reasoning (for example, how children learn to understand different forms of media, from t.v., to videos and so on) and spatial reasoning (how children learn to navigate)
and also at the intersection of these; children’s comprehension of
maps, scale models, graphs, rulers etc. All of this is, of course,
related to more formal learning which is how she came to her current
research in early mathematics education. On top of all that, she’s basically incredibly knowledgeable about just about anything that’s related to how children think and how that thinking changes over time.

We’d like this online space to serve several functions:

(1) To provide a Q & A forum in which readers can send their parenting questions or questions about development that simply interest them. We’ll try to provide some advice, based on our developmental training (and some personal experience!).  Please, feel free to email us any questions you may have; we’ll try to get to as many as possible as quickly as possible. If you’re worried about something, there’s sure to be many, many other parents in the same boat. We’ll post questions and answers several times per week. 

(2) To highlight the latest research findings about children’s development on all sorts of topics — the latest neurscience studies, the latest work on school-readiness, and so on. Between the two of us, Tracy and I have tons and tons of research that we’ve compiled, summarized, and critiqued. We’d like to post relevant studies, articles, and new research findings on a weekly basis and have you comment about the usefulness and relevance of that material.

(3) To develop a supportive community for parents and caregivers that can help parents help each other through some of the most harrowing developmental challenges. The extent to which this goal will be realized is all about you.