Parents and children sleeping together: Cosleeping prevalence and concerns.

Abstract

Review of the cosleeping literature yields a very limited body of prevalence research, only a small portion of which involves psychiatric populations. An archival records review of child and adolescent urban outpatients suggests that prevalence has been underestimated in the literature and that cosleeping is associated with child and parent anxiety and issues of separation and sleep management, rather than with inappropriate sexual contact.

Longitudinal Study of Preschool Sleep Disturbance

“…Moreover, maladaptive parental behaviors, such as the mother's presence at SO or giving food/drink when the child awakens, were more likely to occur subsequent to earlier sleep fragmentation or SO problems at ages 5 and 17 months, thus supporting the suggestion that these behaviors develop in reaction to prior sleep problems. 32 Parental strategies that were effective for early sleep difficulties (eg, giving food or drink) may later become inappropriate to the child's age and needs. Mothers might adopt the inappropriate response of giving food or drink to 29-to 41-month-old children awakening (which is associated with BD and shorter TST at age 50 months) because they commonly attribute infant cries to hunger 33 and come to believe that infants cry only when hungry.…”

Sleep habits in native brazilian bororo children

“…This characteristic of Bororo children's sleep is markedly different from the data of other groups such as western urban and Asiatic populations [16][17][18][19][20][21] . In fact, in western urban societies cosleeping is a culturally avoided habit [22][23][24][25][26][27] .…”

Assessment of brief interventions for nighttime fears in preschool children

“…Sleep problems are an integral part of the clinical picture in children with NF as they present difficulty going to sleep and falling asleep, frequent night wakings, and difficulty resuming sleep [5,13,38]. Parental presence near the child's bed during the process of falling asleep or in response to NF is a very prevalent fear management method that produces some relief in many cases [18,34]. However, it can also serve as a reward for the child that perpetuates or create a new stubborn problem [3,24,27,38,47,49].…”