Most children between three and six years of age, according to my survey, still go to sleep between 7:00 and 9:00 P.M. and awaken between 6:30 and 8:00 A.M. AS previously discussed, I think these bedtimes are too late for many children. Going to bed too late may cause bedtime battles, night waking, or early morning wake-ups, or it may mess up the nap schedule. One mother described her son as turning into a “crank monster” at 4:00 P.M. every day because he was going to bed too late, waking up tired, and taking a morning nap, which prevented an afternoon nap and so caused cumulative sleepiness by late afternoon. Another mother described her child's new early bedtime as “a rescue maneuver to get back the old good pattern he fell out of.”
Years Three to Six:
Naps Disappear
On their third birthday, most children (91 percent) are still napping every day. At age four, about 50 percent of children nap five days each week, and by age five, about 25 percent of children are napping about four days each week. Naps are usually gone by age six unless it is the family custom to nap on weekends. In Japan, it is customary to have naps in nursery 338 school, and in one study of 441 children three to six years of age, the naps caused the children to go to sleep later at night. Between ages three and four, the length of the nap varies between one and three hours, and between ages five and six the length is one or two hours. Normally, naps gradually decrease in duration; some parents try to eliminate the nap in order to enable their children to participate in organized activities. This may or may not be a problem, depending on the child's sleep needs and the remainder of the sleep schedule. For example, some children might seem to need a nap but the nap makes it difficult for them to fall asleep even when tired in the evening. If the parents eliminate the nap and the child goes to bed extra early and/or sleeps extra late in the morning, then there might not be any problems. This flexibility is mainly apparent in children who have been good sleepers in the past; serious sleep problems and disturbed sleep usually do not develop in these children.
PRACTICAL
POINT
A missed nap is
sleep lost forever.
Major problems, however, occur when parents push their children too soon into too many preschool, nursery school, or other scheduled activities. The children are overprogrammed, and naps get scheduled out before the child is ready.
Some parents provide partial compensation for their children's increased mental and physical stimulation by shifting bedtime to an earlier hour. Working parents may not accept this solution, because it reduces their playtime with their children. When you sign your child up for courses, classes, or activities, another solution to prevent sleep deficits is to simply enforce a policy of “declared holidays”: Once or twice a week the child stays home and naps, or he engages in less-structured, low-intensity, quieter activities.
The Sleep-Temperament Connection
I studied a group of sixty children when they were about four months old and again when they were three years old. At both ages, children with easy to manage temperaments slept longer than children with difficult to manage temperaments. Easier children were more regular, approaching, adaptable, mild, and positive in mood than the more difficult children. Which came first, the temperament traits or the sleep?
I don't think sleep habits, temperament, and fussing or crying are independent; rather, I believe they are all interrelated. However, we name and measure items such as sleep duration, temperament traits, or fussiness in the same way we might describe different features of a rose: its color, its smell, or its texture. But the rose is still a rose and a baby is still a baby; even though we give names to different features, none of them could exist without the whole.
It seems to me that after about four months of age, parenting practices such as loving attention during wakeful periods and encouraging good-quality sleep during sleep times can modulate or influence those features we call temperament. For example, easy infants who stayed easy slept a total of 12.4 hours (day and night sleep combined), but those easy infants who became more difficult slept less, 11.8 hours. So to help keep easy infants easy when they arrive at toddlerhood, protect their sleep.
What about those difficult infants? Some of them remained difficult and slept only 11.4 hours, but others became easy and slept 12.0 hours. I think part of the reason why these difficult infants mellowed into easy three-year-olds is because they were handled in a more structured and regular fashion, learning more social rules and becoming better rested.
Adaptability, which is the ease with which children adjust to new circumstances, was the only trait that showed individual stability over the three-year study. But this does not mean that a fussy baby will always have a fussy personality. Temperament traits are not like fingerprints, which are completely biologically based, unchanging over time, and unique identifiers. Temperament traits are more like hair. Our hair has a biological basis, but it changes over time; texture, length, curliness, and color can change naturally or at our will. How we care for our hair affects its health and appearance. And how we care for our children, including how we care for their sleep, influences temperament.
You shouldn't be surprised if your colicky three-month-old has a difficult temperament at four months, but this doesn't predict anything for the future, not even for five months. A fussy nature may persist when colic and parental mismanagement cause enduring postcolic sleep deprivation, and it may improve when the child develops healthier sleep habits. You cannot change the fundamental personality of your child, but you can modulate it.
Evidence that social learning, temperament, and sleep habits go together comes from my nap study. Among the children I studied were three between the ages of two and three who stopped napping during a period of marital discord or problems with caretakers. And when they stopped napping, they underwent what looked like a personality transplant! Fatigue masked their sweet temperaments. But after resolution of the conflicts, all three resumed napping and continued to nap for years. The resumption of napping restored their original or “natural” temperament.
Reestablishing naps will be discussed later. But it is noteworthy that stressful events that tend to disorganize home routines, such as the death of a parent, divorce, a move to a new home, the birth of twin siblings, or the death of a sibling did not cause any napping problems in 90 percent of the children during the study. It appears that when parents and caretakers maintain nap routines, children continue to nap, despite disruptive and stressful events.
After the publications of my original discovery on the association between sleep patterns and temperament—in infants in 1981 and in toddlers in 1984—many other studies in preschool children confirmed my findings. In adults, sleep loss has been shown to affect mood more than cognitive or motor performance; we all get a bit testy or cranky when we are tired, but we can still learn and perform reasonably well. For children it may be a different story, because the developing brain may be more sensitive to sleep loss than the mature brain. Evidence to support this suggestion comes from animal studies, which have shown that less light was needed to affect the sleeping and behavior of young animals. In other words, the developing brain may suffer more, and in more ways, than the adult brain from the harmful effects of insufficient sleep.
Q: Is it ever too late to see benefits from better sleep quality?
A: No. It is never too late to help healthy children sleep better. In addition, some neurologically impaired children can be helped to have fewer seizures by becoming better rested. Other children have neurological diseases or medicine requirements, which directly disrupt sleep. And finally, recent research suggests that children who have been so severely traumatized by abuse or neglect beginning in infancy might not respond to ordinary sleep training like healthy children.
The Sleep-Behavior Connection
Many research studies have shown more daytime behavioral problems in preschoolers who are poor sleepers. In particular, “externalizing” problems such as aggression, defiance, non-compliance, oppositional behavior, acting out, and hyper-activity were associated with less sleep. When parents listed the types of daytime behavior problems their children were expressing, it became apparent that the less sleep they had, the longer the list! (There was no association between sleep and “internalizing” problems such as anxiety or depression.)
So sleep duration is clearly a factor associated with behavior problems. Still, we do not have absolute scientific proof on whether (1) less sleep directly causes daytime behavior problems, (2) parenting or biological forces cause both the daytime behavior and nighttime sleep problems, or (3) daytime problems cause the nighttime problems. However, recent research by Dr. John Bates on 202 four-to five-year-olds shows that sleep does have a direct effect on daytime behavior in children, in support of the first theory. My impression is that parents who are somewhat regular, consistent, and structured—in terms of both meeting the child's need to sleep and helping the child learn social rules—enable the child to have fewer behavior problems. In contrast, circumstances such as a parent who works late and keeps the child up too late in order spend time with her produce an overtired child; then behavioral problems will be more frequent.
Another study of preschool children noted that the poor sleepers who had more behavioral problems did not get up more frequently than good sleepers, but that the poor sleepers were unable to soothe themselves back to sleep unassisted. They always disturbed their parents’ sleep. I think the ability to return to sleep unassisted to avoid fragmented sleep (and to avoid upsetting parents!) is learned behavior. So, in addition to longer sleep, consolidated sleep helps avoid behavior problems.
Regular bedtimes also seem to be important, maybe even when the total amount of sleep is not quite enough. There were fewer school adjustment problems in one study where a regular bedtime was maintained by the parents. Although it is possible that better parenting practices might have caused both a more regular bedtime and a better adjustment to school, the researchers studied the families and concluded that there was a more direct link between sleep patterns and school adjustment. Again, we have the same conclusion: Better sleep quality produces fewer daytime problems. (More about regularity of sleep times later.)
New research on five-and six-year-old children in Japan and Germany has shown a connection between short sleeping hours and obesity.In the Japanese study, the later the bedtime, the greater the risk for obesity. In both studies, the shorter the duration of sleep, the more likely the children were obese. The researchers controlled for many of the variables, such as parental obesity, physical inactivity, long hours watching TV, and so forth. Maybe these overtired children felt stressed and dealt with it by eating. We know that American society is becoming more overweight; maybe our modern lifestyle is causing us to become more overtired.
Preventing and Solving Sleep Problems
Three-year-olds may no longer have tantrum behaviors, but they may call parents back many times and clearly express their feelings of love for their parents or fears of the dark.
Here are some simple ways to help your child settle down for day or night sleep. Consider them to be a sleeping routine for preschool children. Choose from this list those items that work best for your child and do them at all sleep times.
Slow down activity
Close physical contact
Gentle massage or mild stretching
Cuddle up with die child in a chair
Nestle or snuggle in her bed
Quiet voices
Imagine a fun event
Tell a story, talk about your family
Read a book
Sing or hum a song
Chat about die day
Say good night to everyone and everything in the room
Play a favorite tape, maybe grandparents singing or
saying good night, sounds of nature
Comfortable room
Photos of family and pets
Favorite stuffed animals or dolls
Night-light or flashlight
Dream catcher or guardian angel for protection
Four-year-olds might be helped to sleep better if you try the following:
Make a schedule and post it in his room: Time for bath, time for sleep routine, lights off. (Regularity helps but the times might include a range because not all days are the same.)
Try to engage or enlist cooperation by doing something together such as singing, reading out loud, or doing artwork.
During the day, you might only request a quiet time of one hour or so. Please don't think that it is all right to have a late bedtime, or late wake-up time, and a regular nap. In a recent study of 1,105 three-year-old Japanese children, it was observed that half fell asleep at 10:00 P.M. or later. For all children, the later they went to sleep, the later they woke up in the morning, and the longer they napped. However, the later bedtime was associated with less total sleep compared to those with an earlier bedtime. The later wake-up time and longer nap did not compensate for the later bedtime. Let's look at the problems that may occur with night-and daytime sleep habits and some of the strategies we can use to deal with them.
Night Sleep
Here's one mother's account of how hard it was to ignore her three-year-old at night.
“MOM, I NEED A HUG
AND KISS GOOD NIGHT”
My daughter Chelsea is almost three years old. Putting her to bed has always been an ordeal. At eighteen months of age she started to climb out of her crib anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred times a night. The problem seemed to be solved with the advent of a “big bed.” She now sleeps through the night. However, having her stay in bed and fall asleep is still an ordeal.
I have yelled and screamed. I have used gates and locks on her door to physically keep her in her room. I have used treats as an incentive for positive reinforcement of desired behavior. Unfortunately, the only consistent behavior has been my inconsistency.
If Chelsea knows that I will put a gate on her bedroom door if she leaves her room, even once, then she will gradually conform and stay in her room. But there is a catch! She eventually will start to challenge my inconsistent behavior. One night she will appear in the living room and say, “Mom, I need a hug and kiss good night.” As a parent, do you deny your child such a loving request and lock her in her room? So you give her a hug and kiss and send her off to bed again. Then the next night she wants water, and before long she's out of bed three or four times a night for hugs and kisses, water, Band-Aids, scary noises—you name it! Within a week, saying good night and falling asleep takes an hour or more. Then we have to start over.
Webster's dictionary defines the word consistent as “free from self-contradiction; in harmony with.” I long for the night when I'm in harmony with Chelsea.
As this mother said, “Unfortunately, the only consistent behavior has been my inconsistency.” In other words, when a behavioral approach fails with older children, it almost always is not a failure of the method, but rather a failure of the resolve of the parents to implement it.
In an English study of children about three years of age, psychiatrists examined children who displayed difficulty in going to bed, night waking, or both. Parents were counseled to keep a sleep diary for a week and establish goals for the child that included sleeping in his own bed, remaining in his bed throughout the night, and not disturbing his parents during the night. The treatment consisted of identifying the factors that reinforced the child's sleep problem and then gradually withdrawing them or temporarily substituting less potent rewards. It was a “fade” strategy, not a “cold-turkey” approach.
Here's an example of how subjects gradually reduced reinforcement: (1) father reads story to child in bed for fifteen minutes; (2) father reads newspaper in child's bedroom until child falls asleep; (3) child is placed back in bed with minimal interaction; and (4) father gradually withdraws from bedroom before child is asleep.
Another example: (1) parents alternate, but respond to child; (2) parent gives no drinks but provides holding and comforting until crying stops; (3) parent only sits by the bedside until child is asleep; and (4) parent provides less physical contact at bedtime.
PRACTICAL POINT
At every stage of reduction of parental attention, expect the problem to get worse before improvement begins. That's because the child will put forth extra effort to cling to the old style.
In the English study, 84 percent of the children improved. Not surprisingly, the two factors that most likely predicted success were both parental: the absence of marital discord and the attendance of both parents at the consultation sessions. Also, when one problem—such as resistance in going to sleep—was reduced or resolved, other problems—such as night waking—rapidly disappeared. And although half of the mothers in this study had current psychiatric problems requiring treatment, this did not make failure more likely.
I think this study points out the importance of working with professionals who can provide guidance that is directed toward changing the child's behavior without dwelling on current psychological/emotional problems within the mother or father. The exception, of course, is when these problems are directly related to marital discord or the parents’ ability to maintain a behavioral management program.
Another study from England included children who took at least an hour to go to bed, who woke at least three times a night or for more than twenty minutes at a time, or who went into their parents’ bed. Treatment started with the parents recording the present sleep pattern in a sleep diary. A therapist worked with the parents to develop a program of treatment based on gradually reducing or removing parental attention, adding positive reinforcement for the desired behavior, making bedtime earlier, and developing a bedtime ritual. Target behaviors were identified, and an individual treatment program was developed for each child. Also, mothers were evaluated for psychiatric problems. Mothers who showed psychiatric problems were more likely to terminate treatment, which again points out how stressful treatment can be. But for those families who completed four or five treatment sessions, 90 percent showed improvement. The authors concluded:
The evidence that children's nighttime behavior could thus change so radically, often within a surprisingly short time, suggests that parental responses were extremely important in maintaining waking behavior…. A rapid achievement of improved sleep pattern with reduced parental attention would be unlikely if anxiety in the child or lackof parental attention were causing the sleep difficulty. … Parents needed help in analyzing goal behavior into graded steps so they could achieve successes. Once some success was obtained, the morale and confidence of the parents rose and they were reinforced in their determination to persist by the more peaceful nights.
MAJOR POINT
The rapid improvement of sleep patterns produced by reduced parental attention tells us that neither lack of parental attention nor anxiety in the child was causing the sleep difficulty.
I have seen this over and over again; when you see even partial improvement, you gain confidence and you no longer feel guilty or rejecting when you are firm with your child.
Often it appears that the child is listening to the treatment plan in the office, because they often sleep better that very night, as if they knew something was going to be different. I think they are responding to the calm resolve and firm but gentle manner in their parents, which tells them that things are going to be different.
Another sleep strategy appropriate for three-year-old or older children is called “Day Correction of Bedtime Problems.” The idea here is that because everyone is tired and less able to cope with the stress of bedtime battles or night-waking problems at the end of the day, daytime behavior should be tackled first. The following instructions explain this strategy in detail. Under item number 3, “Relaxed,” the author says, “Perhaps the easiest way to teach self-quieting, during the day, is by allowing your child to self-quiet during naturally occurring times of frustration.” In my conversation with Dr. Edward Christophersen, a prominent child psychologist, he clarified this statement by explaining that you do not always rush to help a child struggling with a puzzle or accomplishing some task. When there is something that is slightly bothering him, it is sometimes better to leave him alone to learn to deal with it. Dr. Christophersen's observation is that some mothers need to be taught to disengage or ignore some of the child's low-level distress. He does not mean you should ignore your child when he comes home from school crying or has had a very frightening experience. In one study, when children learned how to cope with frustration during the day, they were observed to settle themselves better at bedtime and later at night when they awoke.
Day Correction of Bedtime Problems*
There are three important components to getting a child to go to sleep at night. The child must be:
1. Tired
2. Quiet
3. Relaxed
When these three components are in place, children who have adequate “self-quieting skills” will be able to go to sleep rather easily.
1. Tired. The easiest way to make sure that your child will be tired when he or she goes to bed is by getting him or her up at the same time every day and by getting him or her an adequate amount of exercise during the day—vigorous exercise that requires a good deal of energy. For an infant include several long periods of time when he or she is on the floor and can see what you are doing, but the infant must hold his or her head up in order to really see much. For almost any child, twenty minutes of good exercise each day, after a nap, is usually adequate.
2. Quiet. You can elect to either quiet down the entire house or quiet down your child's room. Quieting down your child's room by closing the door and keeping it closed is probably the easiest. … You might need to turn on the furnace or air-conditioning fan as a masking noise for the first few nights.
3. Relaxed. Children can relax only if they have learned self-quieting skills. Self-quieting skills refer to a child's ability to calm himself or herself, with no help from an adult, when the child is unhappy, angry, or frustrated. Whereas older children (at least age six years) can be taught relaxation procedures, infants and toddlers need to practice self-quieting skills in order to know what works for them. Perhaps the easiest way to teach self-quieting during the day is by allowing your child to self-quiet during naturally occurring times of frustration.
Self-quieting behaviors. The baby who goes to sleep with help from one of his or her parents by nursing, rocking, or holding learns only adult transition skills and needs an adult present in order to fall asleep. The baby or toddler who goes to sleep alone cuddling a stuffed animal, holding his or her favorite blanket, or sucking his or her thumb learns valuable self-quieting skills that can be used for many years to come.
How they feel. Children who go to bed easily and sleep through the night uninterrupted get a good night's sleep. They will feel better during the day, just as the adults in their household will feel better during the day. It may take from several nights to one week to teach a child the skills he or she needs for going to sleep alone, but this is one behavior that the child will be able to use for the rest of his or her life.
These three components described here have the added advantage that they can be taught during the day, which removes many of the fears parents have about handling behavior problems at bedtime. Even parents who choose cosleeping can allow their infant or toddler the opportunity to fall asleep on their own, with the parent joining the child at the parents’ regular time for retiring. In this way, the infant or toddler gets the perceived advantages of cosleeping and the known advantages of learning self-quieting skills.
Q: How important are regular bedtimes’?
A: In general, the bedtime should reflect your child's needs. With decreasing naps and increasing physical activity, your child's night-sleep needs may increase. Therefore, the bedtime often needs to be earlier not later simply because he is older. To maintain orderly home routines such as meals and baths, you might want to keep the bedtime within a narrow range.
Dr. John Bates's study on 204 four-to five-year-olds examined in great detail the home environment, behavior at preschool, and sleeping patterns. The researchers noted that the more variable bedtime, as well as the lateness of bedtime, predicted poor adjustment in preschool, even after considering the roles of family stress and family management/discipline practices. This study provides evidence that sleep problems directly cause behavioral problems in children at preschool. Other research suggests that when older children are overtired, they learn to no longer bother their parents, but instead, they bother their teachers.
Regularizing the sleep/wake schedule has also been shown to reduce daytime sleepiness and promote long-lasting improvements in alertness for well-rested young adults. It appears that regularity itself improves the ability of sleep to reverse daytime drowsiness. But some children are so excited at the end of the day, they have trouble unwinding whether they are overtired or not. Hot lavender bubble baths (described in the next chapter) may help make the transition to sleep easier.
Some previously well-rested children who slip into a night-waking mode need only gentle reminders to return to sleep. My wife used to teach the “dolphin game” to one of our sons. She would read a story about how the dolphin swims deep in the water but sometimes has to come up for air before returning to a deep swim. Then she told our son to pretend that he was a dolphin at night and that it was perfectly all right to come up from sleep, but that he had to go back by himself. It worked.
Some previously very overtired children are so unmanageable at night that the family resources are stretched to the limit. In such cases the idea of more extreme measures may come up.
Q: Do I ever lock my child in her room?
A: Let's say that you've already tried other sleep strategies, patient reasoning, threats, and criticisms. Perhaps you've even tried spanking, which of course never works by itself, but all methods have failed. Also, let's assume that you are not working with a therapist to gradually reduce reinforcing behaviors. What's left to be done? Maybe the answer is a stiff door hook that, when locked, holds the door in a slightly open position but prevents opening or completely closing. The door is held locked in a slightly open position to protect the child's fingers from a crush injury. Completely closing and locking the door may be an overwhelming degree of separation for either you or the child.
By doing this you establish the unambiguous message that leaving the room after a certain time is unacceptable. The child learns that you mean business. The usual result is that after a night or two the child negotiates to stay in bed, and does, even if you do not lock the door. Also, you avoid the repeated prolonged stresses of your trying to physically separate from a child who is clinging to you, or of trying to pull the door closed while your child is in the room trying to pull the door open.
Take your child with you to the store when you purchase the lock, and make your child watch you install the lock on the door. Often this observation alone will cause a change in your child's behavior. In fact, for many families who once had a well-rested child, they never actually had to use the lock, because the child knew on the first night that this was the beginning of a new routine.
Simply locking the door solves nothing if your child is going to bed too late, getting up too late, not getting the nap he needs, taking a nap too late in the afternoon, having a very irregular bedtime, or talking to you through the closed door. You will still have an overtired child. No quick fix, whether a locked door, or, worse, drugs to make your child sleep, will make an overtired child less tired.
SLEEP RULE
#5
Do not leave your
room until you hear
the music (or the
birds, or the alarm).
Sleep rules, as described in the previous chapter, are often helpful. Rewards are frequently used to encourage the child to cooperate. They must be items the child really wants. One mother rewarded cooperation by placing a piece of candy under a special doll after her child had gone to sleep; part of the motivation was the excitement of discovery in the morning when the child looked for her treat. Paper stars on a chart may be used, but by themselves might not be sufficiently motivating. One strategy that often works is withholding a favorite wholesome food and giving it only as reward for cooperation. Other rewards might be small toys, surprise trips, or wholesome snack foods. By using a timer, you can give measured amounts of extra time for games, stories, TV, or free play as rewards. As the new behavior becomes a habit, the expectation of a specific reward is usually forgotten and the child's heightened self-esteem seems to substitute for the pleasure of the reward.
Now, let us consider the fifth sleep rule for the older children.
This rule is for older children who like to get up too early, leave their room, and bother their brother, sister, or parents. Set a clock radio, a CD player on a timer, or an alarm clock—placed under a pillow to muffle the loud noise—to the time it is okay for your child to leave her room. Some children who have never slept well and have just turned three might completely disregard all five sleep rules and trash their room or simply stay up late playing in their room with the lights on. These children might have to be placed in a crib with a crib tent for a while, or maybe the lightbulbs have to be removed to keep the room dark.
Q: Why can't I just keep my child up later at night to see if he will sleep in later in the morning?
A: If your child has been well rested up to now, then slowly try a later bedtime. If you move it too late, he might just become more overtired and have difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep in the morning. If your child has always been a problem sleeper and overtired, a later bedtime will only make matters worse.
Q: My child is scared at night and I don't want to leave her alone.
A: Try to spend extra time soothing her to sleep, buy a dream catcher or guardian angel to protect her, or go around the room catching all the monsters and put them in a bag that you take out of the room. Maybe give her a bell that she can ring once at night when she is scared, and you then respond promptly and use a timer for a measured amount of middle-of-the-night soothing. This could be a sixth sleep rule: If you are scared, ring the bell and I will come, but I will come only once. Tell her not to abuse ringing the bell. Ringing the bell many times would violate the sleep rule.
PRACTICAL POINT
Always reward even partial cooperation: small rewards for small efforts, bigger rewards for more cooperation. Rewards are best given in the morning after awakening or immediately following a nap.
Day Sleep
You may conclude that life is impossible if your child does not take a nap, but it is also impossible to get him to nap. You've worked at sleep schedules, night wakings, and resistance to sleep, and things are better, but he also really needs a nap. Not necessarily a long one, but no nap at all is no good.
Some parents have successfully reestablished naps as a routine even when the naps have been absent or sporadic for several months. The method involves taking a nap with your child (at least initially): Take her into your own bed, dress yourself for sleep, and nap together. The idea is to make this a very comforting, soothing event. Try to be fairly regular according to clock time. Use a digital clock as a cue, and be consistent with the routine of cookies and a glass of warm milk or reading from a favorite book. Try to fall asleep yourself.
Tell your child what is expected of him. If he sleeps with you, then A occurs; if he rests quietly next to you but doesn't fall asleep, then B occurs. You decide what kind of reward A and B will be. If he doesn't cooperate at all and jumps on the bed or runs around the room, then you might restrict or withdraw some pleasurable activity or privilege. If you are able to get him to nap with you, then eventually you'll want to try to shift him into his own room for a nap. This should be done in a graded or staged fashion. You might decide that the next step is for the child to be in his bed and you're in the room resting as long as needed. Rewards are now given only for this new behavior. This process of reinforcing successive approximations to the desired target behavior is called “shaping.”
Preschool children who slept well when they were younger might develop problems because too many activities interfere with napping or, as discussed in Chapter 10, because allergies interfere with sleep at night. Reorganizing daytime activities or managing allergies may provide a rapid solution. On the other hand, preschool children who have not previously slept well may have ingrained habits or expectations that are not easily changed. Parents should seriously consider working with a professional if they think their child is so tired that he might not do well in school.
One recent study of 499 children from ages four to fifteen showed that sleep problems at age four years predicted behavioral and emotional problems, such as depression and anxiety, in adolescence. So, although your older overtired child may not bother you as much as he did when he was younger, that does not mean that the problem has gone away.
No Apparent Solution
Parents with older children have more scheduled activities to attend and they are more likely to have more than one child requiring attention. What happens if the parent is a shift worker, or works in a bakery or restaurant, or travels a lot for her job, or has irregular hours built into the job like some physicians? It is hard to be with your children when they participate in an important scheduled school or sports event. I have met some mothers and fathers who are absolutely dedicated to their children and try very hard to strike a balance between the time requirements of child care and their work outside the home. Usually there is a sharing of responsibilities regarding putting the children to sleep at night. However, what do you do if both parents have work schedules that make it difficult to be home reasonably early at night for bedtimes? To further complicate matters, one parent alone cannot easily manage different bedtimes for two or more children. To make it even more of a problem, what if the parents are blinded by their love for their children and cannot see that the late afternoon tiredness, headaches, or developing academic problems are connected to unrelenting mild sleep deprivation in their child? For some parents, it appears impossible to change his or her lifestyle or work schedule in order for their children to have a reasonably early bedtime. When the children were much younger, as infants and preschoolers, morning times were available to enjoy being together as a family, but now mornings are a frantic blur trying to get ready for out-of-the-house activities. So the night is the only quiet and relaxed time the family has together. These factors converge into a too-late bedtime. The solution is apparent, but not easy.
Action Plan for Exhausted Parents
· Naps begin to disappear after the third birthday. Some children are so busy during the day they need a slightly earlier bedtime. Be careful to not overschedule activities.
· Day correction of bedtime behavior (page 349) For example: Your son is on the floor in the family room playing with blocks. He is a little frustrated with stacking and becomes agitated or upset. You are pretty certain that he can accomplish this by himself. You ignore his distress. You pick the easiest situations to ignore and ignore them first. The older your child is the harder this will be. Do not ignore your child if he is scared by a dog or returns home from school crying.
· Review sleep rule #5 (see page 353) to reward your child for staying in his room until a certain time in the morning.
· Review shaping (see page 355).
· Sleep will improve your child's mood, behavior, and performance, don't sell it short. If the bedtime is always too late, do the best you can to make it regular.
· It is far better to lock the door at night than it is to get angry at and possibly harm your child.
* From Beyond Discipline: Parenting that Lasts a Lifetime, 2nd ed., by E. R. Christophersen (Shawnee Mission, Kans.: Overland Press, 1998), pp. 127-128. Copyright 1998 by Edward R. Christophersen. Reprinted with permission.