Behavioural treatments to encourage solo sleeping in pre-school children: an alternative to controlled crying

Area of Science:

• Pediatrics
• Sleep Medicine
• Child Psychology

Background:

• Behavioral sleep treatments often involve ignoring infant crying, which can be distressing for parents.
• Behavioral Insomnia of Childhood (BIC) is a common condition affecting young children.
• Existing methods may lead to low parental compliance due to the requirement of prolonged crying.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a modified behavioral sleep training method for children with BIC.
• To improve child sleep outcomes while reducing crying duration.
• To enhance parental compliance with sleep training protocols.

Main Methods:

• A five-week modified sleep training program was utilized.
• Parents were taught to gradually withdraw assistance, not ignore crying.
• Thirty-three children with BIC (mean age 27.01 months) participated in a non-controlled study.

Main Results:

• Significant improvements were observed in total nighttime sleep, sleep onset latency (SOL), and wake after sleep onset (WASO) (p < 0.002).
• Large treatment effect sizes (d = 0.94-1.85) were reported for sleep measures.
• Reductions in negative sleep associations, co-sleeping, and family stress were noted.

Conclusions:

• The modified sleep training offers a potentially effective alternative for managing childhood behavioral insomnia.
• This approach may increase parental adherence by allowing comfort measures instead of ignoring crying.
• Further research in larger studies is warranted to validate these preliminary findings.