Night waking in 1‐year‐old children in England

Abstract

A national sample of 1500 mothers of 1-year-old children received a postal questionnaire concerned with the sleeping patterns of their children. The response rate was 69%. Seventeen per cent of mothers reported that their 1-year-old presented a moderate or severe sleep problem and 26% said their child woke at night on at least five nights a week. While these two measures correlated, 10% of those who reported their infant woke on at least five nights a week did not consider this to be a problem. Neither sex of infant, social class, method of infant feeding or numbers of house moves were associated with sleep problems. The pattern of results strongly suggest an association between night waking and other sleeping difficulties and stress for mothers. This was indicated by the association we found with complaints about housing, overcrowding, more negative attitudes toward motherhood, lower assessments of maternal well-being, lack of practical support from partners, the use of more negative adjectives to describe their baby and more frequent feelings of being dominated by their baby. While these associations may be explained by the stresses of living with a night-waking baby, it is also likely that a mother who is feeling somewhat depressed and negative toward her baby is more likely to see night waking as significant and as a problem. There were class differences in how parents coped with a shortage of space. Middle-class parents were more likely to put a baby in with a sibling while working class parents more often had the baby in their own room. Middle-class parents were more likely to leave a night-waking baby to cry.

Preventing sleeping problems in infants who are at risk of developing them

“…First, evidence from previous studies was used to identify infant or parent potential "risk factors" which could reduce the likelihood that infants would sleep through the night at 12 weeks of age. Each case in the control group was then scored on each of the following potential risk factors at 1 week of age: parental social class (defined by paternal occupation 1 ); maternal age, 17 maternal ethnic origin, 18 and maternal highest educational level 1 ; childbirth delivery type 19 ; infant feeding method 4 18 20 ; infant sex 1 21 ; infant birth order 1 21 ; and amount of infant crying, feeding, and sleeping behaviour. 4 22 23 So far as possible, each case was categorised dichotomously into "at risk" and "not at risk" categories on each factor, using the original authors' criteria, but taking into account the need for an adequate sample size.…”

Disturbed sleep: effects of sociocultural factors and illness

“…5 7 Twenty five per cent of parents of 5 year olds reported a sleep problem of some type, but only 1.4% of the total sample were regarded as having a severe problem 1. The main problems reported by parents were related to difficulties in getting off to sleep, waking during the night, night terrors or nightmares, and waking early in the morning.…”

Treating sleep disturbance in infants: What generalizes?

“…Epidemiological studies suggest between 10 and 25% of infants aged 6-24 months are chronic night wakers, and 15-20% take excessive time to settle to sleep (Armstrong, Quinn, & Dadds, 1994;Ferguson, Shannon & Horwood, 1981;Scott & Richards, 1990). ISD is a major stress for parents (Ferguson et al, 1981;Mindell, Moline, Zendell, Brown, & Fry, 1994) and if chronic, or associated with adverse family circumstances, may be harmful to family wellbeing (Stoleru, Nottelman, Belmont, & Ronsaville, 1997) and child development (Dahl, 1996).…”

“…ISD is a major stress for parents (Ferguson et al, 1981;Mindell, Moline, Zendell, Brown, & Fry, 1994) and if chronic, or associated with adverse family circumstances, may be harmful to family wellbeing (Stoleru, Nottelman, Belmont, & Ronsaville, 1997) and child development (Dahl, 1996). Parents use a variety of strategies to deal with ISD, including allowing the child to co-sleep with parents or others, periodically leaving the child to cry, and using prescription and nonprescription medication (Armstrong et al, 1994;Johnson, 1991;Scott & Richards, 1990), but these strategies are rarely effective long term.…”