Allowing your toddler to share your bed does not lead to behavioral or learning problems later in life, according to new research that puts to bed the notion that allowing your child to sleep in the parents’ bed may stifle their development. However, in spite of these new findings, it is still important to be wary of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) when considering sleeping location and position with infants.
Dr. Nina Sand-Loud, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School and a developmental-behavioral pediatrician with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center says that parents should not interpret the findings as encouragement to begin bed-sharing while children are still infants.
She adds:
“It’s still important to emphasize the increased risk for SIDS before 1 year of age in terms of bed-sharing. And I would be concerned that people misconstrue from this work that it might be OK to bed-share a little bit earlier with infants just because it might be OK to do so later with toddlers. That is not the case. I think each family has to work out what’s best for them, in terms of what works best for their child and their child’s sleep on a day-to-day basis.”
The study focused on 944 low income families who had at least one child under the age of 1 at the start of the study. Participants included roughly equal amounts of boys and girls. Among the children’s mothers, about 30% were black, 25 %were Hispanic and almost 40% were white.
Each family was visited as the children turned 1, 2 and 3, at which point the mothers provided information on their child’s health, parenting routines and sleeping arrangements. At age 5, all of the children underwent cognitive and behavioral testing, with a focus on math and literacy skill evaluations along with an assessment of the hyperactivity levels and social skills.
It was discovered that found no link between toddlers who bed-shared and the onset of either cognitive or behavioral problems by the age of 5. The research also saw that black and Hispanic families were more likely to bed-share with their toddlers than were white families.
Lauren Hale, an associate professor of preventive medicine in the Graduate Program of Public Health at the State University of New York, Stony Brook comments:
“The American Academy of Pediatrics currently advises against bed-sharing during the first year of life, due to increased risk of SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome]. However, very little research has investigated the potential developmental consequences of bed-sharing during toddlerhood. We found that, after adjusting for mother and child characteristics, there were no observed cognitive or behavioral differences between children who bed-share and those who don’t. Parents should make decisions about sleeping arrangements based on their specific family circumstances, with the goal of facilitating the best possible sleep for their children.”
M. Garrison, a research scientist with the Seattle Children’s Research Institute concludes:
“Some children fall asleep in their parents’ bed on their own, and then their parents get into bed later. Others fall asleep with their parents in bed at the time. And that makes a difference. Toddlers who fall asleep on their own tend to sleep more restively. And good quality sleep really does have an impact on behavioral and cognitive issues down the line. So bed-sharing is not necessarily something to be advised against. It can actually be a positive thing. But it’s just a matter of figuring out how you are going to go about it.”
Source: The Journal of the Academy of Pediatrics
Written by Sy Kraft