Early Nighttime Parental Interventions and Infant Sleep Regulation Across the First Year
Open Access
- Author:
- Voltaire, Sabrina Trucha
- Graduate Program:
- Human Development and Family Studies
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- December 15, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Douglas Teti, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Nilam Ram, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Infant Sleep Regulation
Nighttime Parenting Competence
Early Parenting Practices - Abstract:
- Sleep quality in infancy and early childhood can have serious implications for individual and family health and well-being (Lam, Hiscock & Wake, 2003). Parenting practices in the early months may be highly influential on infant sleep patterns and trajectories. This study used four-occasion observational and survey data to investigate how sleeping arrangement and two types of nighttime interventions at one and three months (non-distress-initiated and distress-initiated) are associated with infants’ sleep development across the first 9 months. Distress-initiated interventions were identified as parents’ verbal and tactile responses to infants’ distress signals whereas non-distress initiated interventions were identified as parents’ behaviors in response to non-distressed vocalizations or while infants were asleep. Analysis of data from 107 families revealed that infant night wakings decreased over time as expected. The link between early non-distress initiated interventions and rate of change in infant night wakings was significantly moderated by sleep arrangement such that solitary sleeping infants who experienced higher levels of non-distress-initiated interventions showed a less steep decline across time in infant night wakings compared to solitary infants who experienced low levels of non-distress-initiated interventions. Results also showed that higher levels of distress-initiated interventions at 1 and 3 months were associated with a steeper decrease in infant night wakings over time for both solitary and cosleeping infants. Importantly, these findings were not replicated when parental interventions as predictors of infant sleep were examined at later points in the first year. These results inform conceptualizations of parenting competence in infant sleep contexts during the first few months of life in terms of how best to promote infant sleep regulation across the first year.