Barriers to Sleep Solutions: #4 of 7

Barriers often interfere with executing a treatment plan to help a much younger child sleep well. Perhaps they are only speed bumps that slow down the process of treating your child. On the other hand, if these barriers are major roadblocks preventing you from treating your child’s sleep problem, then consider getting professional counseling to overcome these barriers first before working on your child’s sleep problem.
1. Parents lack information or tools.
2. Working parents’ guilt, exhaustion, or absence.
3. Bad Marriage
4. Parent has abandonment issues.
Because they had bad relations with their own parents, new parents might desperately want their child to like them. New parents might feel that their parents were not in tune with their feelings as a child so they want to be very sensitive to and always address their child’s feelings. They want to be their child’s best friend. They do not want their child to feel hurt as they had felt hurt as a child. This might lead to giving in to your child’s every demand. A variation is that the parent does not want to break his child’s spirit or damage his self-esteem. An alternative view is not that bad parenting makes parents over indulgent but rather, bad parenting makes parents inept.

It is important to locate the barrier that prevents parents from changing in order to solve problems. After all, the failure to locate the barrier makes it difficult to concentrate energy on the solution of the problem.
What is the desired behavior you want from your child? What is the desired outcome? What is the endpoint of treatment? What would you like to see happen? Both parents need to agree on what the goal is and how to achieve the goal before beginning a treatment plan. The failure to agree on a goal makes it difficult for parents to cooperate with each other to achieve success. Most parents agree on the goal but not necessarily on the path to accomplish the goal. Parents have to see that there is a direct connection between what they do and the effect it will have on the behavior of the child. Parents have to be more focused on their behavior than worrying that their child has a problem or peculiar trait. For example, focusing on “He has a strong will” instead of your own behavior interferes with success.

Consider and deal with issues that might interfere with successfully completing a permanent treatment plan for a sleep problem. Ignoring these issues might prevent having a well rested child and well rested family.

Our goal is to focus all our energy on soothing our baby and helping our baby sleep during the first few months. Therefore, it is important for parents to try to figure out a way to separate their marriage issues from bedtime issues, compartmentalize other barriers, restructure their priorities, or seek professional counseling in order to heavily invest in soothing their newborn during the first few months. By gathering up all their resources for soothing, during the first few months, parents are more likely then to prevent sleep problems in the future.

The Most Important Point.
If you see in yourself or your family barriers to treatment and therefore know that treatment of sleep problems will be difficult for you, then work extra hard with the resources available for soothing during the first four months to prevent sleep problems for ever arising in the first place.
Marc
www.sweetbabies.com, www.drweissbluth.com

Happy Holidays! (We’re going on vacation!)

We will be catching up on our sleep in a media-free environment that is warmer than Chicago for the next week and, therefore, will not be mediating the blog. Happy holidays!
-Marc and Dan

Sleep Log

When there are sleep issues, keeping a sleep log allows you to see the big picture and tweak the schedule. The sleep log shows trends and helps keep you on track. Diary data is too detailed to see the forest for the trees. Have any of you kept a sleep log?
Marc

Do you Know What’s on Your Kid’s iPod?

I was on CBS news talking about how parents and pediatricians can get more involved in the musical media environment of children. The story references the policy statement by the AAP in November: “Impact of Music, Music Lyrics, and Music Videos on Children and Youth”.
-Daniel Weissbluth

Barriers to Sleep Solutions: #3 of 7

Barriers often interfere with executing a treatment plan to help a much younger child sleep well. Perhaps they are only speed bumps that slow down the process of treating your child. On the other hand, if these barriers are major roadblocks preventing you from treating your child’s sleep problem, then consider getting professional counseling to overcome these barriers first before working on your child’s sleep problem.
1. Parents lack information or tools.
2. Working parents’ guilt, exhaustion, or absence.
3. Bad Marriage
Three themes occur here. One is that one parent wants their child for support and love and thus becomes overly permissive in order to keep the child allied with him or her. This alliance maintains his or her self esteem. The second is a control issue. A parent arrogantly asserts that (s)he is right no matter what; (s)he knows best, end of story. The third is lack of communication. The parents are unable to communicate effectively with each other to develop a practical plan that they can consistently implement.

Consider and deal with issues that might interfere with successfully completing a permanent treatment plan for a sleep problem. Ignoring these issues might prevent having a well rested child and well rested family.

Our goal is to focus all our energy on soothing our baby and helping our baby sleep during the first few months. Therefore, it is important for parents to try to figure out a way to separate their marriage issues from bedtime issues, compartmentalize other barriers, restructure their priorities, or seek professional counseling in order to heavily invest in soothing their newborn during the first few months. By gathering up all their resources for soothing, during the first few months, parents are more likely then to prevent sleep problems in the future.

The Most Important Point.
If you see in yourself or your family barriers to treatment and therefore know that treatment of sleep problems will be difficult for you, then work extra hard with the resources available for soothing during the first four months to prevent sleep problems for ever arising in the first place.
Marc
www.sweetbabies.com. www.drweissbluth.com

Audio: Free iTunes Talk at 92nd St. Y

If you would like to hear Marc Weissbluth’s “Sleep Smarts” talk at the 92nd St. Y (in 2007) but do not want to watch the YouTube videos , you can go to iTunes and download the audio track for free. You can also find the ninety minute track under the “iTunes U” section and/or search for “weissbluth” within the iTunes store .
-Daniel Weissbluth

Television Viewing In Daycare Settings

You ask what they eat and what they do in daycare…Have you ever asked your child what they watched on the television in daycare?

In the most recent publication of Pediatrics, “Preschool-aged Children’s Television Viewing in Child Care Settings” (Christakis and Garrison) details the degree of underestimation of television viewing in child care programs. Preschool-aged children in home-based child care programs watched 2.4 hours a television a day on average compared with 0.4 hours a day in center-based child care. The disparity was not statistically significant in the infant group, however, the amount of screen time that these preschool-aged children in child care settings (regardless of home-based vs. center-based) are being exposed to is double the television than what previously estimated.

Bottom line for parents: Ask how television is used in your child’s daycare. Are there media-free days where other activities are scheduled?

Do any of our readers have any daycare television stories to share? –Daniel Weissbluth

Sticky Sleep Problems

Some of the comments describe how despite doing everything right, sleep problems do not go away. Here are some suggestions to consider:
1. If you are exhausted and sleep-deprived yourself, take a break and do whatever minimizes crying and maximizes sleeping for a few days to get your strength back, regroup, and try again to rethink through the problem in a better rested state.

2. Take data; make a sleep log as outlined in my book so you can see the forest for the trees. Diary data is too detailed to be useful. Look at the big picture to see if there is a pattern that explains why there are good sleep times and not good sleep times.

3. Assign to Dad the responsibility to read stuff on sleep, analyze the data, create and execute a plan. Allow a few days to go by before tweaking or abandoning the new plan. Even if Mom does not like the plan, stand down for a few days to give it a chance.
Good Luck,
Marc
www.sweetbabies.com, www.drweissbluth.com

Barriers to Sleep Solutions: #2 of 7

Barriers often interfere with executing a treatment plan to help a much younger child sleep well. Perhaps they are only speed bumps that slow down the process of treating your child. On the other hand, if these barriers are major roadblocks preventing you from treating your child’s sleep problem, then consider getting professional counseling to overcome these barriers first before working on your child’s sleep problem.
1. Parents lack information or tools.
2. Working parents’ guilt, exhaustion, or absence.
Parents feel guilty because they are not available or feel guilty because they do not want to be available to their child. So they give in to whatever their child wants. Or selfishly, they feel that their child has to adapt to their schedule and stay up late at night. Perhaps it is not guilt but sheer exhaustion from the demands of work that prevents the parent from being persistent and consistent. Too often, out of fatigue from work, the parent simply surrenders whenever the child cries. Sometimes it is neither guilt nor exhaustion but simply absence. Many modern parents do not do a lot of parenting. Because they spend so much time at work, they heavily rely on day care or nannies. This absence can render them powerless with regard to resisting demands from their child.

The Most Important Point.
If you see in yourself or your family barriers to treatment and therefore know that treatment of sleep problems will be difficult for you, then work extra hard with the resources available for soothing during the first four months to prevent sleep problems for ever arising in the first place.
marc
www.sweetbabies.com, www.drweissbluth.com

Point, Shoot, Retouch (and Definitely Label!)

France is considering legislating photo retouching in advertising. This article and video highlight the prevalence of this practice. The writer also considers the negative impact of these altered images on women’s self esteem and cultural norms. Although legislation is a good backstop, more media literacy in schools, families, and communties needs to occur. As a society, we need to start thinking of children and adolescents as an especially vulnerable population to unhealthy media images. -Dan Weissbluth