Yesterday we published the first part of this interview with the biologist María Berrozpe, researcher and co-author of the work “The scientific debate on the reality of children's dreams”. We are going to continue talking to her today and we will address issues such as the reliability of the studies carried out on this topic or the reality of the characteristics of children's sleep, looking at the causes for which behavioral methods are recommended to sleep alone and, finally, listening to the advice she offers to parents.
Are sleep studies always credible or influenced by economic interests?
Unfortunately, not all research on childhood sleep is as independent as it should be.
The world of children's sleep has become a succulent cake where cosmetic products, accessories for cribs and foods that "improve sleep" or "make children sleep better" along with all the literature aimed at teaching parents miraculous methods with which they will get their son to sleep all night at a stretch (that is, without disturbing him) are giving important economic benefits and even funding research aimed at validating again and again the notion of healthy sleep that interests more economically .
I, even other times, perceive that these types of studies are greatly influenced by ideology or beliefs, for cultural or personal reasons, and that makes mistakes in their approach more than those spurious interests of which we speak, what do you think?
Anyway I want to believe that all authors who publish in this field are honestly convinced of their principles, whatever they may be. What happens is that for historical reasons, something that Professor James McKenna explains very well in a review published in 2007 (McKenna et at 2007), the notion of healthy sleep in the pediatrics of Western sleep was hopelessly adulterated at the time At the beginning of the twentieth century, research on children's sleep was born, the object of study was the child who slept alone and was mostly bottle fed. This already laid the wrong foundations that many professionals try to dismantle from the same pediatrics and from other disciplines, such as ethnology, ethology, anthropology or neurology. But the old ideas have a lot of inertia and many authors do not seem able to see beyond what their predecessors established, and leave the old paradigm.
Are behavioral methods that teach sleep necessary?
In societies that respect the baby's need for contact with his mother at night, there is virtually no reports of childhood insomnia or sleep problems.
So if we were all willing to give our babies what they need, no, these techniques would not be necessary. Now, we live in the society we live in and dreaming alone is the only acceptable option for many families. I suppose that, in this case, as we are trying to establish a behavior far from the primary instinct of our children, it will be necessary to "teach" them to sleep like this. But there are ways and ways.
What do you mean specifically?
We believe that the techniques that systematically ignore the crying of the baby or child are simply not acceptable. These are mainly all based on crying it out among which are the famous methods of Ferber and Estivill.
Has science shown that these methods work and that these methods are beneficial?
Certainly, yes, they have scientifically proven that they teach children to sleep an x number of hours without disturbing or claiming their parents (Sadeh, 2005), but many professionals are calling attention to the possibility of having short-term detrimental effects and long term, given the stress the child is subjected to (Blunden et al, 2011, Waynforth, 2007). In fact, works showing these effects are already appearing (Middlemiss et al, 2012, Tollenaar et al 2012). And in the future many more will appear because these investigations are relatively recent compared to the bulk of research on childhood sleep, which, as we have already said, is based on a wrong basis when taking as a main study object the baby sleeping alone .
How does the work of pediatric sleep professionals work now?
Fortunately, an increasingly large group of professionals have changed the traditional objective, which was to achieve sleep alone and self-comfort at any cost, to achieve a good fit between the child, his intrinsic biological abilities and his needs and demands of their environment, that is, the demands of their parents (Jenni & O'Connors, 2005). Even within the group of the most fervent defenders of solo sleep, crying it out-based techniques are rapidly losing advocates, and the authors strive to find much more respectful alternatives that "convince" children to sleep alone but without making them suffer, such as the method proposed by Dr. Blundel (Blunden, 2011) or Huggy-Puppy de Sadeh (Sadeh et al, 2008). Even the method called camping out, also from Sadeh, can be considered as a very controlled colecho that is gradually withdrawing, very different from leaving a child crying only in a room for as long as it is.
How have your children slept?
With the first we tried the dream alone. He had his carrycot, then his crib in his room and finally his bed in his room. He has been the only one of the three who has suffered night terrors and woke up several times at night for years. Luckily it never occurred to me to let him cry, but for me it has been exhausting. With the second we continue with the carrycot and the crib, but the latter is already in our room. At all times the two have been free to come to our bed and that is what has always happened most of the nights. With the third one, we definitely changed the chip: the cradle became a bed sidecar (the carrycot became a container of various objects). I must admit that the one that has prevented me from sleeping has been the third. I think he hasn't woken up crying at night, except an occasional earache. Of course he has woken up a lot, like all babies, but having him close and breastfeeding without moving I almost didn't wake up. After having spent the previous three years doing night trips to my oldest son's room, that for me was a wonderful sleep. Currently, with little more than 3 and a half years, my little son sleeps at a stretch (without waking up, I mean). I think he has been doing it since he was 3 years old. What does not mean that some night, occasionally, I still look for the tit and it is possible that it does more than I register. As last year we moved home, and seeing the wonderful dream of the little boy who has always collected and the continuous excursions of the elderly to our bed, we decided to build a fabulous family bed in which we currently sleep. And the children sleep beautifully. The oldest has never had terrors, the medium is a professional sleeper and the little one is that he is not noticed or heard. When a friend of the elder comes to sleep (he is 7 years old) he goes with him without problems to the bunk room and when he goes to sleep at his friend's house he goes very happy and sleeps wonderfully. From the experience of other collecting families, I know that after 10 years or so they definitely leave the family bed looking for privacy in their own rooms, so I'm not afraid to think about that they will go to university and continue sleeping with us, because I know it won't happen.
What message would you like to convey to parents who read you? I am sorry to tell you that, given the large amount of information that floods the media, literature for parents and the world of the internet, it is not an easy job. Precisely with our project we want to facilitate this task, putting at your disposal the original works of the main authors of the scientific literature of the different trends. Read this review and then, with all the information in hand, decide.
That if everything goes well, they are happy and they all sleep beautifully, great, they don't need to know anything else. But if they have problems, they are exhausted, they do not sleep well or they question the way they do or have done things, that they are informed very well, that they read, that they do not remain on the surface of the most popular information that comes out of the great mass media, and that they go beyond, that they immerse themselves in the publications of the most diverse authors with an open mind to the possibility of ending up thinking exactly the opposite of what they thought at the beginning.
In relation to children's sleep, like everything that concerns the world of parenting, there are no magic solutions.
Each family has to find their own way, and if they look for it based on independent and rigorous information, with an open mind and willing to find solutions, perhaps unconventional, but always well founded on the love they feel for their children, these solutions They will arrive and they will be good for everyone.
We thank María Berrozpe this interview she has given to Babies and more and we encourage you to read their page, where you can also find references to all the scientific studies they have analyzed.
