Treatment of Behavioural Sleep Problems: Asking the Parents

Treatment of Behavioural Sleep Problems: Asking the Parents

Background: Behavioural sleep interventions, which can have significant mental health benefits for parents, are commonly and successfully utilised to teach children to self soothe at night. In most methods offered in South Australia, these often require parent(s) to ignore their child’s cries for extended periods, a technique parents may find difficult. It is important to understand why parents find this difficult as this impact on intervention compliance. This paper presents pilot data from two studies to address these issues. Methods: Study 1: As part of a larger clinical trial, 73 families of sleep disturbed (aged 8-51 months) children who had previously attempted ignoring their child’s cries, anonymously and voluntarily commented on their experiences and success of a technique that did not ignore their child’s cries (3-4 week previously published behavioural based sleep intervention). Study 2: Those comments were used to conduct and further explore in an online anonymous survey, parental opinions of sleep intervention techniques and sleep disturbance. Parents (n=104) were asked if and why they would or had used techniques that included ignoring their baby’s cries, specifically “controlled crying”.