According to a new study, Ignoring a child's cries may result in better sleep for the infants and parents.

The study which suggests a behavioral technique known as "graduated extinction" involves letting a baby cry until they fall asleep which leads to longer sleep duration for the child and their parents.

The research was conducted as a randomized, controlled trial, which involved 43 infants aged 6-16 months and their parents (All infants had been experiencing night-time sleep problems from around the age of 6 months).

The parents of 14 of the infants were required to use the graduated extinction method or Ferber method which involves ignoring a child's cries, checking on them only at specific times with increasing intervals. for 12 months.

The idea is to teach the child to accept that nobody will come to their aid when they cry, which will reduce their crying and improve their sleep.

The parents of 14 of the infants used a "gentler" technique called "bedtime fading" which involves gradually delaying a child's bedtime each night for 12 months.
The idea is that this will make a child drowsier and more likely to fall asleep.

The parents of the remaining 14 infants acted as controls and did not use any of the sleep behaviour interventions.

However, the researchers found infants of parents who used the graduated extinction technique fell asleep an average of 13 minutes earlier each night than those in the control group, and they woke up less frequently during the night.

Also the levels of cortisol from saliva samples of infants, proves that there were no significant differences in stress levels between the groups and there were also no significant differences between the groups for parental stress and mood.

The Study was recently published in the journal Pediatrics.

"It's natural for parents to worry about having their babies cry at bedtime," says Michael Gradisar Ph.D., an associate professor in the School of Psychology at Flinders University, Australia who is also a co-author of the study.

"While it's well documented that sleep deprivation can cause family distress, including maternal depression, we're hoping these results will add another element to how parents view their responses and how they manage their own and their babies' sleep behaviour."

The authors also noted that many parents remain concerned about using the graduated extinction technique, but their study showed the method is not harmful.

Gradisar and colleagues say their findings suggest that graduated extinction and bedtime fading may be beneficial for infants and their parents, though further studies are required to confirm their results.

"We hope parents of children 6-16 months can become more aware of bedtime fading which helps babies fall asleep at the start of the night.
It may not resolve awakenings during the night so if a child is waking up several times a night, then there is now some more evidence that graduated extinction is a technique that may not be harmful to their child."

Culled from[url]ihealthng..co.ke/2016/05/ignoring-childs-cries-may-result-in.html?m=1[/url]

As a mother,its difficult for me to ignore my child's cry. Haba? When am not dead. Infact,d last time I had a sound sleep was a week before I gave birth to my baby. Right now as am typing,am not asleep because she cudnt sleep due to nasal congestion. I had rather pet her to sleep dan watching her cry. ki n gbo ekun omo re ko ma ta ji were.

omoyemirally:
As a mother,its difficult for me to ignore my child's cry. Haba? When am not dead. Infact,d last time I had a sound sleep was a week before I gave birth to my baby. Right now as am typing,am not asleep because she cudnt sleep due to nasal congestion. I had rather pet her to sleep dan watching her cry. ki n gbo ekun omo re ko ma ta ji were.

It will be hard for parents to practice and one will likely face a backlash when people find out that you practice such.

Thanks for reading