Principles of sleep: by Dr Linda Davis

Sleep-training programs – do they work? Article by Dr Alicia Depp

Every parent analyses their baby's sleeping patterns, hoping against hope to change it. In desperation people sign up for programs that promise to change their world. Programs promising everything from '4 steps to get a full night's sleep for your baby' to 'herbal remedies to soothe and relax you and your baby'. The internet is full of websites selling CDs with sleep-inducing music, DVD's offering training programs, herbal remedies and what not else.

Should you try them?

Ask around your friends, work colleagues and anyone else you know with small children. Did they try these products? Did they work? You can guess the answer. I can tell you now that most of these products are rubbish, designed to make a quick dollar for some nameless entrepreneur who knows nothing about real parenting.

To be able to make a proper assessment of the usefulness of these products, we firstly need to understand the basics of sleep and sleep achievement.

The previous article, written by my esteemed colleague Dr Davis goes a long way towards explaining this, so there's no need for me to repeat her excellent essay.

Suffice to say that people, including babies, need the appropriate cues to be able to achieve sleep.

Cues for sleep achievement can be divided into 'Parent-dependent' and 'Parent-independent' cues.

Parent-dependent cues contain include parting, rocking, singing till asleep, breast feeding till asleep, pushing the pram inside around the house, or driving the baby around in the car. From a child's perspective these are powerful and effective cues. Parent-dependent cues also include the types of things commonly taught in sleep-traing programs.

This means that the process of sleep achievement is instigated (at least in part) by parental activity. Parental attention is a cue. We now have a problem. Baby needs a parent's attention to be able to return to sleep. Unfortunately this then fragments a block of sleep for several members of the family. Parent-dependent cues of sleep thus lead to disrupted blocks of sleep.

Parent-independent cues of sleep also exist. Generally these cues include a full stomach, a clean dry nappy, baby's pyjamas, her blankets, her bassinet or cot, and bedroom. Say goodnight.

The child will incorporate these cues into a sleep program to develop independent sleep skills.

During a block of sleep the child with independent sleep skills can have hourly arousals, do a cue check, find that all is normal, and then return to sleep. This process will occur silently or nearly silently. The parents can then continue their important task of being asleep and recharging their batteries. Given a full night's sleep, the parents feel refreshed and have more energy and affection to give. The child is able to receive more affection and time from a stronger, more confident parent. Parent-independent cues are therefore more useful for family life!