New research suggests that parents should allow their babies to cry themselves back to sleep instead of going in to comfort them when they wake up crying at night.
It's natural that parents rush to their baby's side when he or she wakes up in the middle of the night crying. However, a new study conducted by Temple psychology professor Marsha Weinraub suggests parents should let the baby cry himself or herself back to sleep.
"By six months of age, most babies sleep through the night, awakening their mothers only about once per week. However, not all children follow this pattern of development," said Weinraub, according to Science Daily.
During the course of the study, Weinraub and his colleagues studied the sleeping and waking up in the middle of the night patterns of babies aged between six and 36 months. They found that, depending on the habits, babies could be categorized into two categories: sleepers and transitional sleepers.
"If you measure them while they are sleeping, all babies -- like all adults -- move through a sleep cycle every 1 1/2 to 2 hours where they wake up and then return to sleep," said Weinraub. "Some of them do cry and call out when they awaken, and that is called 'not sleeping through the night.'"
For the study, Weinraub asked parents of approximately 1,200 babies to analyze and report the sleeping habits of their babies at six, 15, 24 and 36 months. It was found that 66 percent of the babies (categorized as the sleepers) didn't wake up at all or maybe twice a week in the middle of the night by the time they were 6 months old. However, 33 percent of the babies woke up every night when they were aged between 6 to 14 months which dropped to two nights per week when they were 15 months old and then one night per week by the time they were two years old.
It was also found that a majority of the babies that woke up at night were boys. According to the study, this particular set of babies scored higher grades in "assessment of difficult temperament which identified traits such as irritability and distractibility."
"Because the mothers in our study described infants with many awakenings per week as creating problems for themselves and other family members, parents might be encouraged to establish more nuanced and carefully targeted routines to help babies with self-soothing and to seek occasional respite," said Weinraub. "The best advice is to put infants to bed at a regular time every night, allow them to fall asleep on their own and resist the urge to respond right away to awakenings."
