Key takeaways for caregivers

• Co-sleeping, typically defined as infants sharing a room or a bed with parents, is common worldwide but varies in acceptability across cultures. It is practiced less in U.S. culture and parents vary widely in how they view it.
• Pediatric organizations (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics ) do not endorse bedsharing, and although the AAP does not appear averse to roomsharing per se, research in Western cultures has linked persistent co-sleeping (i.e.., bedsharing, roomsharing, or a combination of both) beyond six months to parent and infant issues.
• Our research found a link between co-sleeping and more sleep disturbances among parents, especially mothers, which may occur in any culture where co-sleeping occurs.
• Co-sleeping was also associated with greater co-parenting distress and poorer quality of bedtime parenting, which may be more likely in cultures where co-sleeping is less accepted.
• Infants’ sleep did not appear to be affected by co-sleeping.
• Decisions about co-sleeping with one’s infant are ultimately personal choices. If practiced, co-sleeping should be done safely, following AAP guidelines, and co-sleeping parents should take steps to nurture their relationship as a couple.

Article contents:

1. Questions about parent-infant sleep arrangements are complex
2. Do infant sleep arrangements relate to infant and parent sleep quality or parenting behaviors?
3. Parent-infant co-sleeping was linked to poorer maternal sleep and parenting issues
4. Effects of parent-infant co-sleeping are likely to be culturally specific
5. Promoting co-parenting and safe and healthy sleep may be most critical

1. Questions about parent-infant sleep arrangements are complex

How parents should structure their infants’ sleep and whether infants should sleep by themselves (in a separate room) or co-sleep with their parent(s) (i.e., in the same room or the same bed as the parent(s)) is a controversial, sensitive, and personal topic. At the heart of the matter are arguments about what is best for babies and beliefs about that vary widely.

These beliefs are informed by cultural prescriptions, recommendations from medical professionals who argue against bedsharing for safety reasons, evolutionary biologists who argue for bedsharing because it protects infants, individual parental beliefs, availability of sleep spaces and other practical considerations (e.g., convenience), and infants’ age.

Adding to the confusion and controversy, in Western cultures, infant sleep arrangements are fluid during the first year, with parents more likely to co-sleep soon after birth than later. This makes it more challenging to identify whether a family co-sleeps.

Photo: Sarah Chai. Pexels.

Choices about where infants should sleep and for how long may not be just about what is best for the baby, but also about what is best for the family.

Some studies suggest that parents who co-sleep with their infants may be at risk for marital and co-parenting distress. Parents, particularly mothers, who co-sleep with their infants also awaken more at night and have more sleep problems than do parents and infants who sleep in separate rooms.

2. Do infant sleep arrangements relate to infant and parent sleep quality or parenting behaviors?

Choices about infant sleep arrangements can be confusing and may be influenced by competing needs and demands. To better understand how parenting and infant and parent sleep affect family life, in our recent study, we examined sleep arrangement patterns across infants’ first six months of life.

We assessed 124 U.S. families when infants were one, three, and six months old. Most mothers and fathers were White (8%), married or living with a partner (95%), and in their 30s; 57% of the infants were girls.

Ninety-nine percent of parents had completed high school and about two-thirds had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Most fathers (89%) and mothers (61%) mothers worked full or part time when their babies were one month old; median yearly family income was $65,000.

To measure participants’ nighttime sleep, we used activity monitors (actigraphs) that parents wore on their wrists and put on infants’ calves at bedtime for seven consecutive days.

We also measured mothers’ emotional availability with their infants (e.g., warmth, sensitivity) during infants’ bedtimes (from video recordings made by parents).

Mothers also completed questionnaires to assess the quality of positive co-parenting (e.g., support and endorsement of one’s partner) and negative co-parenting (e.g., amount of conflict with and undermining by one’s partner). Infant sleep arrangements were determined from the video recordings of the infants at night.

It is parents’ sleep, and particularly mothers’ sleep, that may be affected most by co-sleeping.

3. Parent-infant co-sleeping was linked to poorer maternal sleep and parenting issues

From the video recordings when babies were three and six months old, we identified three patterns of sleep arrangement:

• Solitary sleeping (infants slept in a room separate from their parents at both ages),
• Co-sleeping (infants slept in the same room or the same bed as their parents at both ages)
• Co-sleeping to solitary sleeping (infants roomed with or shared a bed with a parent at three months and were moved to a room of their own by six months).

Babies who slept in the same room as their parents rarely spent all their time on a sleeping surface separate from their parents, even with a crib in the room. Videos showed that mothers frequently brought their babies to the parents’ bed in response to infants’ distress, with infants falling asleep in the parents’ bed without being immediately returned to the crib.

Consistent with other research, co-sleeping families were more likely than the other two groups to have lower socioeconomic status, be non-White and unemployed, and have fewer years of education.

We also saw patterns relating to duration of breastfeeding and parents’ symptoms of depression and anxiety. We used statistical techniques to consider those patterns and explore specific relations between co-sleeping and both sleep quality and co-parenting, finding that:

1. Mothers had poorer sleep quality if they co-slept. Fathers who co-slept with their infants experienced more varied sleep quality across the week than fathers whose infants slept alone.
2. Infants’ sleep quality was not related to sleeping arrangement at all.
3. Mothers reported less positive and more negative co-parenting, and were observed to be less emotionally available to their infants at bedtime.

Our results are consistent with other work showing that compared to non-co-sleeping, persistent co-sleeping is linked to poorer parental sleep, particularly mothers’ sleep, and with more co-parenting distress and less emotionally available parenting.

Photo: RDNE Stock project. Pexels.

Our finding that infants’ sleep was unrelated to sleep arrangement indicates that it is parents’ sleep, particularly mothers’ sleep, that may be affected most by co-sleeping. This does not bode well for long-term maternal well-being: Chronic sleep problems can increase individuals’ risk for depression, which can affect relationships with other family members.

4. Effects of parent-infant co-sleeping are likely to be culturally specific

Our study was done in the United States, a culture that, by and large, does not support persistent co-sleeping. Parents who engage in persistent co-sleeping in a culture that does not support it may be criticized for engaging in a practice some consider harmful to babies – despite that fact that our study did not find any negative associations between co-sleeping and infant sleep.

Such criticism is based solely on the tendency of members of a culture to accept a cultural prescription as “the right thing to do” without supporting evidence. Researchers should replicate our study in a culture in which co-sleeping is more accepted to determine whether findings are similar or different.

When co-sleeping is culturally embraced, parents who co-sleep are less likely to be criticized by family members and friends.

We suspect that the link that we found between co-sleeping and heightened sleep disturbances among parents, especially mothers, would be culturally ubiquitous, but the links among co-sleeping, co-parenting distress, and reduced maternal emotional availability with infants at bedtime would not.

This is because sleeping near one’s infant is likely to affect parents’ sleep, regardless of the cultural backdrop. In contrast, the association of co-sleeping with heightened family stress should be less likely when co-sleeping is culturally accepted.

For example, when co-sleeping is culturally embraced, parents who co-sleep are less likely to be criticized by family members and friends.

Photo: Kevin Liang. Unsplash.

5. Promoting co-parenting and safe and healthy sleep may be most critical

Do these findings lead us to recommend that parents not co-sleep with their infants?

Assuming parents follow medical recommendations for safe sleep (e.g., the AAP guidelines; i.e., avoiding bedsharing, eliminating loose bedding and clothing, and placing infants in a supine position on the sleeping surface), we do not make such a broad recommendation.

Although our study’s co-sleeping parents as a group appeared to be at higher risk for family distress than were parents who slept without their babies, even when they said they preferred to co-sleep, some parents who co-sleep did not experience heightened co-parenting distress, nor were they less emotionally available to their infants at bedtime than parents of infants who slept alone.

It appeared that these parents were on board with their choice of sleep arrangement. The parents’ relationship with each other was not compromised, which suggests that they took time to nurture their relationship as a couple (e.g., not just in terms of co-parenting but by making time for themselves and each other) and that co-sleeping with their infants did not interfere.

Thus, to the extent that parents are aware that co-sleeping can interfere with their sleep and their relationship as a couple, and take steps to promote each other’s sleep and their relationship with each other, the choice to co-sleep may not be at all problematic. We did not conduct interviews or collect information about this idea and believe it would be an important question to explore.

The post Infant-parent co-sleeping: What do sleep arrangements mean for families? appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Babies’ intake of new information that is emotionally relevant might vary depending on when they last slept.
• After being awake for an extended period, babies become attuned to negative emotional information.
• Supporting babies in their sleep requirements, such as by maintaining consistent bedtime rituals, can support their well-being.

Sleep helps babies grow and develop

Have you ever planned to take your baby to playgroup but decided not to because it was nearly naptime? Many parents assume that their baby’s readiness to engage with others is connected to how wide awake or sleepy they are. But does all their learning happen only when they are wide awake?

Babies were actually better at recognizing angry and sad faces after they had been awake for a longer time.

Babies spend most of their time sleeping. Rather than being a waste of time, sleep helps their growing bodies and brains: Sleep plays an important role in babies’ physical growth and cognitive development, including their learning and memory.

Babies who nap soon after learning new information remember more of the newly acquired information and can use it more effectively to solve new problems than can infants who do not nap soon after learning.

Compared to these insights into the benefits of sleep when it occurs after learning, we know little about the relevance of infant sleep that occurs prior to a learning opportunity.

In everyday life, parents might observe their baby getting cranky when naptime or bedtime approaches. However, researchers have not extensively studied whether babies process information differently depending on whether they have recently slept.

Does sleep enhance babies’ learning of emotional information?

Surprisingly little research has been conducted on whether infants’ learning of emotional information is affected by their sleep patterns. To start addressing this gap in knowledge, we asked: What are the effects of sleep timing on six-month-olds’ recognition of emotional faces?

Photo: Tim Dennell. Creative Commons.

We focused on recognizing emotional faces because faces are frequently encountered and are important visual stimuli for babies. Babies learn about faces quickly.

From birth, babies prefer to look at faces over other visual patterns. They quickly begin to recognize the face of their caregiver, and prefer to look at faces more like the ones in their environment (e.g., preferring faces of people of their race over faces of people of other races).

Beyond the value of recognizing familiar faces, faces are also important because they display social and emotional cues that mirror a person’s mood. Keeping in mind who looked friendly and who looked angry might be particularly important for babies, who depend on the care of others for their survival and comfort.

Studying infant sleep and recognition of emotional faces

We were interested in discovering how easily babies recognized human faces showing different emotional expressions based on whether the babies had recently slept or been awake for an extended period.

Because research has shown that sleep benefits babies’ learning and memory, we predicted that babies would find it easier to keep emotional faces in mind when they were well rested than to do so when they were sleepy.

We visited 17 six-month-olds and their caregivers in their homes over two days. One day, we visited after the babies had awakened from a recent and long nap. The other day, we visited toward the end of the babies’ longest period of wakefulness (which averaged 140 minutes).

The babies in our study may have been better at recognizing sad and angry faces when they were sleepy because the negative information matched their own current emotional state.

On both occasions, we had each baby sit on their caregiver’s lap and tested infants’ visual memory through a procedure commonly used in research.

Babies were shown pictures of female adult faces displaying neutral, sad, or angry expressions.

We filmed babies’ looking times to each face using a hidden camera, arranging the presentation in the same way each time: First, babies saw a picture of a person (for example, looking angry). Next, they saw the same picture next to a picture of a new person with the same emotional expression as the first one.

When babies are shown a picture for a longer time, they grow tired of it (just as adults do) and pay less attention. When they see a new picture alongside the old picture, they pay more attention to the new one, but only if they remember the old one. If they do not remember the old picture, they might look at both the old and the new pictures for the same amount of time.

Photo: Hessam Nabavi. Unsplash.

Babies had better memory for angry and sad faces after being awake

Using this logic, we found some surprising results. In contrast to our predictions that recent napping would strengthen memory, babies were actually better at recognizing angry and sad faces after they had been awake for a longer time.

They failed to recognize these kinds of faces when they had recently slept. In other words, it appeared that the babies were particularly receptive to emotionally negative information after they had been awake for a long time.

How might babies see their social world at different stages in their sleep-wake patterns?

The babies in our study may have been better at recognizing sad and angry faces when they were sleepy because the negative information matched their own current emotional state.

As babies get tired, they can become grumpy which, in turn, might lead them to process information that matches this state. Researchers call this mood-congruent learning. While we did not test this explanation in our study, it should be an avenue for further research.

Photo: Jerald Jackson. Creative Commons.

Although our study was small, the results suggest one mechanism that might link early sleep problems and later impairments in mental well-being. Assuming that sleep problems regularly lead to fatigue and delayed sleep onset, affected babies might be susceptible to taking in emotionally negative information efficiently and storing it in their memory.

As a consequence, the developing knowledge base of infants with sleep problems versus infants without sleep problems could be quite different, leading to different, perhaps more pessimistic, views on the (social) world.

These speculative ideas clearly require more research. Our results suggest that timing of sleep could influence which type of information babies focus on and process.

What does this mean for parents?

Due to the small size of our study, our findings about processing emotional information must be considered preliminary. However, it is clear from previous research that sleep plays an important role in early development.

Having a calm and consistent bedtime routine helps babies make the most of their learning and the fun interactions they have had during the day. Learning to read babies’ early signs of tiredness, and adjust to changing sleep schedules as they grow, can help babies enjoy the benefits of good sleep.

The post Tired and cranky: Babies who have been awake for a while are more sensitive to sad and angry faces appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Naps help learning in early childhood.
• Infant sleep is typically distributed across multiple bouts of sleep (morning and afternoon naps) until around 12 to 18 months.
• Multiple naps benefit infant learning while missed naps can harm learning.
• Research suggests the importance of healthy sleep routines for infants and caregiver education to support healthy sleep.

The benefits of  distributed sleep for memory

For adults, naps offer a period of solace, something we typically allow ourselves only on weekends or vacations. We long for these moments to replenish lost sleep due to our busy lives and to reset our minds after being overloaded with to-do lists.

Science supports the benefits of naps. In adults, naps benefit attention, emotion, and cognitive performance. Other researchers and I have shown that these benefits extend to naps in early childhood. For instance, the benefits of naps for memory have been observed in infants as young as three months and extend through three to five years, when children typically transition away from naps.

Why does distributed sleep help memory?

It is tempting to assume that naps help memory just by blocking out other stimuli that interfere with memories. Later in the day, we may forget the name of a person we met in the morning simply because we encountered so many other names and faces during the subsequent time awake.

Distributed sleeping may protect us from such interference. However, the benefits of sleep extend beyond just protecting memories from interference with ongoing learning.

Naps have been consistently shown to support memory consolidation, even in early infancy.

Memories are strengthened during sleep

While we sleep, memories are strengthened through a process called consolidation.

When we learn something, the memories are initially stored in the hippocampus in the brain.

The hippocampus is small and not a very “smart” storage area  –  all memories get put into a single bucket regardless of their content (e.g., memories of family, a book you read, and your work are all in one place).

Memories are replayed during sleep

When we sleep, these memories are replayed. Memory replay is akin to rewatching (or replaying) the “movie” of your day. Just like repeatedly watching a scene from your favorite movie to learn all the words, the hippocampus replays memories while we sleep.

Replaying the memory makes a copy of the memory that is stored in the cortex. The cortex is a much smarter organizing system – more like a filing cabinet where similar memories can be stored together. This makes it easier and quicker to recall memories from the cortex later.

Does distributed sleep help memory in infants?

Parents and caregivers may wonder how often their child should nap during the day and whether having more than one nap makes a difference in their child’s development.

Infant sleep is initially distributed across multiple naps (polyphasic sleep) but by nine months, most infants regularly have just two naps a day (triphasic sleep).

Photo: NICHD. Creative Commons.

The transition to one nap a day (biphasic sleep) typically occurs between 12 and 18 months. The transition to adult-like monophasic sleep (no naps) occurs between three and five years for most children.

Given the presence of multiple naps within a day in infancy, my colleagues and I were interested in whether different naps aid memory in similar ways.

On the one hand, naps have been consistently shown to support memory consolidation, even in early infancy. In this case, naps at any time of day may have significant memory benefits.

On the other hand, sleep physiology has not been compared across distributed naps. The morning nap, which infants “grow out of” first, may not be enriched with the distinct brain waves that support memory. In other words, the morning nap may not have significant benefits for memory.

Missing a morning nap can interfere with babies’ learning

In our study, we assessed memory in nine-month-olds. We used a deferred imitation task, which is commonly used in developmental psychology to assess memory. This task is similar to how parents engage their infants with a new toy.

An experimenter shows the infant an unfamiliar toy and demonstrates a certain set of actions. Then the infant is given another toy, the target toy, and has the opportunity to imitate those actions.

If the infant imitates the actions, this is evidence of their memory for initial demonstration. We also used control procedures to make sure the actions we were looking for were not simply the natural intuition of the infant when engaging with the toy.

Even though they napped in the afternoon, when the infants stayed awake during the morning nap, they forgot more after the afternoon nap than they did when they had had a morning nap.

In our study, 15 infants were presented with four target toys and we measured their immediate recall of the demonstrated actions to find out if they imitated the target actions with the toy. Next, the infants napped during their morning naptime.

After their naps, they were given the toys again to see if they demonstrated memory of the experimenter’s earlier actions by imitating them. To compare the infants’ actions with and without naps, we also carried out the study the week before or the week after the nap study with infants being kept awake during their morning naps.

Distributed sleep allowed infants’ memory to be protected

Infants’ memory was protected when they took a morning nap: They tended to remember just as many items after their morning nap as they did before the nap. However, when infants stayed awake during their morning nap, they forgot some of the items.

The findings on a morning vs afternoon nap

Next, we considered whether staying awake during the morning nap affected infants’ memory consolidation during the afternoon nap. The infants were presented with a new set of toys and then took their regular afternoon nap.

Even though they napped in the afternoon, when the infants stayed awake during the morning nap, they forgot more after the afternoon nap than they did when they had had a morning nap. That is, taking the afternoon nap did not compensate for a missed morning nap.

Photo: ferhat66. Pixabay.

Further research and healthy distributed sleep guidelines for caregivers and practitioners

Our study points to the importance of naps for learning in infants. Memories are protected by naps at this age when learning is vast – from the faces of caregivers to the intricacies of language.

Moreover, later sleep does not compensate for a missed nap. Instead, the effects of a missed nap can be compounded by damaging the function of later sleep.

In our ongoing work, we are manipulating the presence of the afternoon nap to directly compare memory loss when babies are kept awake during the afternoon and during the morning nap.

We are also studying these infants longitudinally to understand how the function of naps changes when the morning nap becomes less essential. By recording brain activity during distributed sleep, we also aim to better understand the relation between memory and brain development.

Promoting sleep health in infancy and childhood is crucial for cognitive development. This is particularly important for families with low socioeconomic status who may lack knowledge about babies’ needs for sleep and resources to provide opportunities for sleep in the middle of the day.

We need to continue our work to understand the function and timing of distributed naps so we can provide guidelines to caregivers and practitioners.

The post The power of distributed sleep: The benefit of multiple naps in infancy appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers on nap time

• Infants need to sleep a lot because sleep is necessary for learning and the first years are filled with new experiences and information.
• Napping soon after learning may help infants remember new information better than if there is a delay between learning and sleep.
• Parents can support healthy sleep and learning by recognizing signs of fatigue and providing consistent opportunities for their infants to sleep.

Why do infants nap so much?

On average, infants spend 54% to 70% of their first year asleep. Researchers think babies need to sleep a lot because they encounter so much new information every day over the first couple of years and sleep helps them process and remember the events of the day.

For example, napping helps infants remember the features of a face; solve new, challenging problems; and accurately imitate behaviors they have learned, such as a sequence of actions.

Napping sooner rather than later after learning something new helped babies strengthen their memory and understanding for the new information.

Napping may support learning because information is actively processed in the brain during sleep. Alternatively, napping might support learning by protecting the new information from other experiences that could interfere before learning happens.

To better understand the role of napping in infant learning, we sought to determine whether the timing of a nap matters for how well infants learn and remember new information.

Studying how the timing of a nap affects infant learning

We conducted a study with our colleagues, Melissa Horger at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Anat Scher at the University of Haifa.

We studied 29 babies (ages 10-½ to 18-½ months) who had recently started walking and had given up crawling within the past 10 days. Meeting with families in their homes, we worked around infants’ typical napping schedules.

In an initial session, we taught these new walkers to crawl through a play tunnel to get to their caregivers on the other side. This was a difficult task that the babies had to learn how to do.

New walkers have to pay a lot of attention to keeping their balance when they are upright on two feet while simultaneously trying to move their bodies. Crawling through a tunnel required infants to switch from walking to crawling to fit their bodies inside.

Photo: John Finkelstein. Pexels.

The combination of keeping balance while coming up with a strategy for switching postures is kind of like multi-tasking for babies. All these requirements make this particular motor problem at this particular time in development a real challenge for infants.

This gave us the perfect opportunity to watch learning as it was happening because most infants can learn to solve the tunnel problem and because whole-body tasks make learning observable in a preverbal population.

We placed babies at the tunnel entrance and, if they had trouble figuring out what to do, gave them a series of hints. We counted how many tries and how long it took them to enter the tunnel.

Parents should provide regular opportunities for their babies to nap and recognize signs when their children are tired, such as rubbing eyes or yawning, because timely sleep is important for learning.

After this lesson in solving the tunnel problem, we removed the tunnel and left families to go about their usual activities for the next six hours.

Some of the infants took a nap at their regular time immediately after the first session with the tunnel (the Nap First group) and some took a nap at their regular time about four hours later (the Delay First group).

Thus, all babies were taught the tunnel problem and then had a six-hour period that included their nap. Finally, we presented the tunnel problem again.

The key difference between the two groups was the timing of the nap during the six-hour window: The Nap First babies napped sooner and the Delay First babies napped later.

Napping soon after learning is best

The Nap First babies were better at solving the tunnel task the second time than were the Delay First babies. For example, the babies who napped right after learning needed fewer hints and entered the tunnel more quickly when they were tested.

In other words, napping sooner rather than later after learning something new helped the babies strengthen their memory and understanding for the new information, and integrate the new knowledge more efficiently.

Photo: Ksenia Chernaya. Pexels.

How can parents support their infants’ healthy sleep habits?

Parents and researchers have long known about the importance of naps for infants’ learning and emotional regulation. Our study showed that the timing of naps is important, too.

The findings suggest that parents should provide regular opportunities for their babies to nap and recognize signs when their children are tired, such as rubbing eyes or yawning, because timely sleep is important for learning.

Our study offers implications for early intervention work. Pediatric physical, occupational, and speech therapists typically try to teach children specific skills.

In these contexts, parents may want to schedule sessions with these providers so their infants and young children can nap very soon after the appointment. Having babies nap after these kinds of learning experiences may facilitate consolidating the new information faster or more easily than if babies do not nap soon afterward.

The post Infant nap time: The timing of naps affects learning appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Before their first birthday, most infants sleep 12 hours a day and can sleep through the night.
• Infants who had good-quality and sufficient night sleep at eight months had better language development and greater cognitive skills at 14 months.
• Infants with good sleep quality had higher morning cortisol levels than those with lower-quality sleep, which may reflect more mature brain organization.
• Because sleep promotes learning and brain development, caregivers should learn sleep routines and strategies that help babies learn how to sleep through the night.

The sleep-wake circadian cycle and learning

In the early months, newborns sleep about 75% of a 24-hour day. By nine months, they sleep about 50% of a 24-hour cycle.

A circadian rhythm (or inner clock-like signals) develops during the first year to establish an adult-like pattern of being awake during the day and asleep at night. However, after their first birthday, about 20% to 30% of toddlers continue to have night wakings or poor night sleep.

Photo: NICHD. Creative Commons.

Sound infant sleep is important for healthy development. Research suggests that the quantity and quality of infants’ sleep are linked to learning and brain development.

For example, babies who sleep for shorter periods have poorer memories, and infants who have difficulty sleeping at night have trouble remembering new words.

Sleep and stress response cycles

While developing a sleep-wake cycle, infants’ circadian rhythm also develops to respond to stress. When stress is perceived, a cycle starts that releases cortisol, a stress hormone that provides a boost of stored energy to help the body get through the stressor. The extra boost helps the individual deal with the stressor through the fight or flight response.

Stressors are not always extreme or intense in nature.

For example, infants often show distress when crying and fidgeting during a diaper change, when overstimulated, or when hungry or sleepy. Every interaction and change in an infant’s day can be a stressor and can lead to a cortisol response that helps prepare the body to respond to stress.

Optimal sleep (i.e., sleeping sufficiently and soundly through the night) at eight months was associated with higher learning and language skills at 14 months.

Cortisol becomes unhealthy when it is repeatedly released and remains elevated. Such elevated levels have been linked to poor learning and functioning, suggesting that too much cortisol may harm brain development.

In adults, cortisol levels are typically high in the morning, decrease steadily over the day, and are low at night as sleep approaches. Infants are thought to mimic the adult day-night cortisol circadian rhythm; however, few studies have explored the relation between infants’ cortisol and sleep cycles.

Do infant sleep and cortisol relate to later language and learning skills?

We conducted a study to better understand if infants’ quality of sleep relates to their later language development and overall learning abilities. The infants were White and from middle-class families, and they attended a high-quality childcare program in a southeastern state in the United States.

When babies reached eight months and again at 14 months, parents answered questions related to their infants’ sleep routine, sleep environment, and the quality and quantity of their babies’ sleep.

At both time points, the child care provider completed assessments of the infant’s communication and language skills (e.g., nods head to indicate yes, uses sounds/words to get attention) and learning and cognitive skills (e.g., imitates, looks, or points to an object when asked where it is).

To begin to explore the role of cortisol levels in the connection between sleep and learning in the early years, we also collected morning saliva from the babies at both time points.

Infants with better night sleep had better language and cognitive abilities as toddlers

In our study, we asked whether babies who had regular sleep routines and good nighttime sleep developed better language and learning/cognitive skills than babies with irregular sleep routines and poor nighttime sleep.

We found that optimal sleep (i.e., sleeping sufficiently and soundly through the night) at eight months was associated with higher learning and language skills at 14 months. These findings suggest that achieving good quality and quantity of sleep before the first birthday may relate to young infant’s later language development and overall learning.

Photo: hessam nabavi. Unsplash.

Higher morning cortisol stress hormone levels related to better toddler sleep

We also looked at whether morning cortisol stress hormone levels of 14-month-olds were related to sleep at the same age. We found that toddlers who had optimal night sleep also had the highest morning cortisol stress hormone levels.

In adults, cortisol levels tend to be higher shortly after waking. Thus, the higher cortisol levels in toddlers may indicate more mature brain development in toddlers who had better nighttime sleep.

Sleep enhances early brain development

Our findings showed that optimal sleep in infancy was associated with better language and learning skills in toddlerhood. These results are consistent with the idea that sleep enhances early brain development.

One explanation for why sleep helps an infant’s brains develop is that sleep triggers the release of brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters, that build and strengthen the brain’s pathways for forming memories of information an infant learned that day.

Good sleep also prepares infants to learn the next day. Young infant’s learning opportunities typically occur through daytime interactions. When infant’s have slept well, they may wake up more relaxed and ready to engage.

In contrast, infants who have not slept well may awaken sluggish, irritable, and less ready to socialize and learn. Because sleep is important for solidifying past learning and preparing children to learn even more, caregivers should help infants and toddlers achieve restful, continuous sleep at night.

How can parents support their children’s brain development?

Caregivers can help infants achieve restful sleep by establishing routines at home that start at about the same time each day and signal to the baby that nighttime sleep is approaching.

For example, after the last nursing or bottle feeding of the day, parents might use calming strategies to promote greater infant relaxation, such as giving a warm bath, singing a lullaby, reading a quiet story, and providing a massage.

Caregivers should help infants and toddlers achieve restful, continuous sleep at night.

Parents should try to decrease environmental stimulation to help their infant shift from being awake and active to being relaxed and ready for a long sleep. Dark, quiet, screen-free, calm places are considered good sleeping environments for young infants.

If babies wake up during the night, parents can use strategies to help infants self-regulate and fall back asleep. Parents should understand each infant’s unique sleep needs and should not assume that all babies will respond similarly to an evening routine.

For example, infants with health conditions, neurodevelopmental issues, and trauma often have disrupted sleep. Caregivers of these infants may need additional help to learn how to develop effective sleep routines for their infants.

In summary, parents’ sensitivity to young infant’s individual needs while developing their sleep routines should help babies achieve good, restful sleep at night so that when babies are awake, they are ready to learn and develop new skills.

Good, restful sleep may lead to more mature brain development in the early years, which may be measured by higher morning cortisol levels.

The post Infant sleep and brain development appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Jack Peltz at Hobart & William Smith Colleges (New York) studied 249 families, interviewing parents of 2-year-olds five times over eight months.

When parents reported a better relationship in general and better cooperation around parenting, they also reported that their children sleep better. Similarly, if they reported less satisfaction with their relationship, they reported that their children were sleeping less well.

The link also worked the other way round: when parents reported sleeping problems, they later reported poorer relationships and coparenting.

The links appear to be stronger for mothers than they are for fathers, but the researchers think this might be simply because the mothers in the sample were more involved with children at bedtime than the fathers were.

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Unique study, filming in bedroom, finds no evidence that co-sleeping with infants causes problems, but suggests difficulties in a couple’s relationship.

Western families where parents continue to sleep with their babies after six months are more likely to experience relationship difficulties, poor co-parenting and maternal depression, according to unique observations inside the bedroom.

We found no evidence that ‘co-sleeping’ past six months is a problem in itself. However, our findings suggest that, at least in Western culture, sharing a room or bed long-term with a baby can be a sign of family dysfunction. That is, problematic co-parenting and poor spousal relationships may encourage mothers to share a bed or a room with their babies long-term.

“Those who persisted with co-sleeping beyond six months tended to have higher levels of family problems: marital adjustment and co-parenting. The level of family chaos was higher, and the quality of care putting their baby to bed was lower. Overall, parents were less sensitive.” 

These findings spring from an extraordinary study in which 140 US families allowed cameras to film their bedrooms for a single night at five points during their babies’ first year – during the first, third, sixth, ninth, and twelfth month of the child’s life. The filming was unique. Previous studies have focused a single camera, without sound, on the baby. Our four cameras, with sound, tracked interactions between the parents and the baby as well as between mom and dad.

In some cases, mom and dad operated well together. We could see the baby being put to bed. When mom and dad were well organized, babies would go to sleep and often sleep all night, especially as the infant matured. In other cases, parents didn’t work well together. Sometimes there was disorganisation and there were signs of maternal depression. Some babies faced multiple stressors and often did not sleep well.

Majority co-sleep but switch baby to separate room by six months

We found that 75 per cent of couples engaged in ‘co-sleeping’ – sharing a bed or a room with their babies – during the first few months of life. By six months, however, most had switched their baby to a separate room. The remainder tended to co-sleep for the rest of the year-long study.

Those who persisted with co-sleeping beyond six months tended to have more family problems. Marital adjustment – how well the parents got along – was worse. The quality of co-parenting – how effectively the parents made decisions about the baby together – was poorer. The level of family chaos – how well parents stayed focused on baby-related tasks – was higher, and the quality of care when putting their baby to bed was lower. Long-term co-sleeping parents tended to be less responsive to their babies and to make more hostile comments to their infants. Overall, they were less sensitive to their babies.

Such families, then, typically weren’t functioning as well as families that either placed their baby on its own from the beginning or moved their baby to sleeping alone within six months. We also observed that the differences in family functioning between the persistent and non-persistent co-sleepers showed up as early as when the child reached one month of age—long before it became clear which of the co-sleeping parents would, in fact, carry on past six months. Thus we lean toward the conclusion that problems in family functioning often explain the co-sleeping rather than the other way around.

Family dysfunction link to co-sleeping supported by previous studies

Previous findings add support to our view that persistent co-sleeping could be an outcome or product of family dysfunction. In a 2015 paper, our team found that when mothers reported poor co-parenting and poor spousal relationships at one month, they were much more likely to be co-sleeping with their infants at six months. Additionally, within this particular group of persistent co-sleepers, the mothers were more likely to show symptoms of depression by the time the baby was six months old.

“If parents wish to co-sleep with their infants, it is important to retain a sound balance and to pay plenty of attention to the quality of their partner relationship. Every parent would be wise to care as much for their relationship with their spouse as they do for their relationship with their baby.”

Our conclusion is also consistent with our work from 2012, when we looked into the long-established link between maternal depressive symptoms and babies waking more in the night. Our cameras found an explanation: mothers with elevated depressive symptoms tended to wake their babies up, or go to them when the babies were sound asleep or when they were awake but not distressed. So they were keeping their babies awake. We didn’t see this waking behavior in moms with good co-parenting and spousal relationships who co-slept with their babies at one month.

What’s the picture that emerges from all of these studies? First, poor co-parenting and poor spousal relationships seem to lead to persistent co-sleeping and to raised depressive symptoms in the mothers. Second, mothers with depressive symptoms keep their babies awake more. It may be that, in some cases, problems in the couple relationship lead to heightened stress and, hence, to moms spending more time with their babies at night.

No evidence that co-sleeping is a problem in itself

These findings don’t identify persistent co-sleeping as problematic in itself. Often parents who co-sleep operate healthily and function well as couples and as parents. But our studies indicate that the family system’s health can play a big part in determining how parents structure infants’ sleep in the long term. Sleeping arrangements are not just a function of culture.

Our findings add to accumulating evidence that healthy family functioning lies at the heart of good parenting – good couple relationships and strong co-parenting must be nurtured. Thus we need to help couples maintain the quality of their relationships right from their decision to start a family.

Our findings shouldn’t be interpreted as finding fault with or attacking co-sleeping. I have three children, and I co-slept with all of them. We should advise parents that, if they wish to co-sleep with their infants, they should retain a sound balance and pay plenty of attention to the quality of their partner relationship. Every parent would be wise to care as much for their relationship with their spouse as they do for their relationship with their baby.

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