How Parents Can Get Infants to Sleep | Key to Infant Sleep | Sleeping Babies | LiveScience.
I just ran across this article over at LiveScience.com (which profiles the work of Douglas Teti, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State) and it struck me as being a bit odd in that déjà vu, “I have heard this all before,” kind of way. But where have I heard this before? I know, almost all of what is talked about in this article can be found in a Frontline episode that originally aired on 05.02.95. Yes, all of this was done (in one form or another) 15 years ago. The Frontline piece was entitled When the Bough Breaks—Identifying Behavioral Problems Early and was originally put together with support from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC)—the Canadian version of our PBS (Frontline is a part of PBS). This episode featured attachment theory and research. This Frontline piece featured interviews with attachment theory researchers Alan Sroufe, Robert Karen, and Jack Block. (Please note: the interview with Dr. Karen does not appear in the Canadian version of Bough Breaks.) Dr. Sroufe is probably best known for his longitudinal studies in the areas of attachment theory and human development, which are discussed in his book The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood. Robert Karen is probably best known for his popular book on the history of John Bowlby’s work in the area of attachment research—Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love. Even though Bough Breaks featured interviews with such attachment luminaries as Sroufe, Block, and Karen, the piece really focused in on the Toronto-based (see the tie-in with the CBC) husband and wife attachment research team of Liz and Roy Muir.
Because our Foundation attempts to use attachment as a theory of social change, we try to provide non-profit agencies and other interested parties, with as many educational materials on attachment theory as we possibly can. In our opinion, the Bough Breaks video is one of (if not) the best videos on John Bowlby’s attachment theory available (even though it is 15 years old now). Our Foundation contacted Frontline and was told that they no longer make available copies of their version of Bough Breaks. We were able to find the Canadian version available through the Filmakers Library web site. Here’s a description of the Canadian version of Bough Breaks over at Filmakers Library (with my additions in brackets):
Current theory holds that if a child does not properly attach itself to a caregiver in the first three years, the implications for later life are profound. This can show up in the form of overly aggressive behavior, serious learning problems, and delinquency.
The film crew followed three mothers and their problem children, ages ten months to three years. All represent middle class, low risk, intact families. The film traces them through three months of therapy at the C.M. Hincks Treatment Centre in Toronto [which is where the Muir’s did much of their work].
Two of the children have never slept through the entire night, and one child has a serious eating disorder. She holds food in her mouth for up to three hours, refusing to swallow. The families of these children are pushed to the edge of despair in trying to manage them.
As in The Trouble With Evan [which was the precursor video to Bough Breaks, both produced by Neil Docherty], cameras were placed in the homes [my emphasis] of the families and tapes of therapy sessions were used to observe the behavior of the children and their interaction with their parents. It becomes clear that children, even before they can speak, give out signals of disturbance. If there is not proper intervention, the entire family can be thrown into turmoil.
Here’s how Frontline describes the U.S. version of Bough Breaks:
FRONTLINE explores the bond between parents and children and the profound implications for children’s behavior later in life if that attachment is hampered. These characteristics may include overly aggressive behavior, serious learning problems, and delinquency. The program uses surveillance cameras in the homes [my emphasis] of three middle-class families who are struggling with troubled children between the ages of sixteen months and three years and observes the behavior and interactions of the children and their parents [my emphasis]. “Even before they can speak, children give out signals,” says producer Neil Docherty. “What are those signals? And what happens when they are misread or missed entirely?”
All this to say that regardless of the version (Canadian vs. U.S.), Bough Breaks features a focus on the following:
- toddlers not able to sleep through the night
- toddlers expressing the first signs of a eating disorder
- toddlers displaying behaviors such as tantrums, clinging, and aggression
- cameras installed in households
- toddler and parent interactions (especially at night time)
- the need for sensitive parenting
- the need for quality parenting over the quantity of parenting
Does any of this sound familiar? It should because, again, most of it was mentioned in the LiveScience article “How Parents Can Get Infants to Sleep.” What troubles me is that the LiveSciene article states that the study profiled (by Dr. Teti) was “the first to use multiple video cameras in the infants’ and parents’ bedrooms to capture parent-infant interactions at night.” Simply put, this statement is incorrect as evidenced by the fact that the same techniques were used in the making of the Bough Breaks video. I am at a loss to explain why the research profiled in the LiveScience article makes no mention of this earlier work. It is entirely possible that Dr. Teti is not familiar with this earlier work (which, as it turns out, is the case—see Dr. Teti’s response to a draft of this post). I will admit, it is rather difficult to find the Bough Breaks video, although we did and it is available through Filmakers Library.
So, this déjà vu experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Writing this post and drawing attention to the groundbreaking work of the many attachment researchers profiled in Bough Breaks (as well as the ingenuity of producer Neil Docherty) has allowed my palate to return to normal. Before I end, allow me to give you a few bullet points from Bough Breaks (mainly the U.S. version). Quotes are not necessarily exact because I’m pulling them from my notes:
- Problems with children can often be traced or connected back to parents and parenting styles. Attachment theory is a “connectionist theory” in that it encourages building connections between present-day behavior and early parenting (or primary caregiver) relationships.
- The Bough Breaks video profiled “households held hostage by sleepless infants” (quoting the text of the video).
- Bowlby (and more recent follow-up studies) estimates that 40% of North American children display insecure attachment patterns (and I have heard that this figure is rising).
- Robert Karen—“Parents underestimate the power of early relationships.”
- Robert Karen—“[People experiencing insecure attachment] are walking in the footsteps of a damaged relationship.”
- Roy Muir—“We repeat the behavioral patterns that were stored during our relationships with our parents during the first year to two years of life.”
- Roy Muir—“Aggression is the frustration of insecure attachment.”
- Alan Sroufe—“It is inconceivable to me that [violent and aggressive people] had a safe, secure, and supportive early childhood.”
- “In her sleeplessness, she [one of the toddlers profiled in Bough Breaks] was grasping for security” (quoting the text of the video).
- Robert Karen—“Bad neighborhoods combined with insecure attachment patterns makes for a volatile mix.”
Here’s my paraphrase of a “bottom line” statement by Roy Muir:
Parenting is natural … we naturally parent the way we were taught to parent by our parents. What’s not natural is to parent any other way.
In future post(s) I will take a look at what I find to be a disturbing postmodern trend: “Having your scientific findings and eating them as folklore too.” Modern science is based on the idea of theory, and a theory is judged on its ability to explain and predict. Attachment has been labeled a robust theory in that it both explains and predicts attachment behavior. Attachment theory posits that obtaining security (which Bowlby and his followers went to great lengths to operationalize, that is to say, make measurable) is a central motivation for not only humans but also many higher order animals (such as primates). As the Bough Breaks video points out, if attempts to achieve security are chronically thwarted, aggressive or violent behaviors may result (such as not sleeping at night; biting other children; suicide ideation, attempts, and successes; substance abuse; indiscriminate sexual behavior; etc.). So, promoting techniques to quiet an infant without placing those techniques within a theoretical framework (such as Bowlby’s attachment theory) is tantamount to wanting the fruits of science without its entailments of explanation and prediction. A postmodern approach to quieting an infant helps a parent in the moment (no doubt) but also keeps that parent away from the following messy entailments:
- Explanation: sleeplessness (given no other physiological issue) is an infant’s way of trying to grasp for security, which suggests that, in all likelihood, there is something amiss with the attunement of the child-parent relationship.
- Prediction: if attempts to obtain security are chronically thwarted, insecure attachment patterns may develop and, when combined with certain environmental elements (i.e., guns, poverty, drugs, unemployment, homelessness, hunger, etc.), can result in such behaviors as school violence, criminality, delinquency (which was Bowlby’s focus area), substance abuse, indiscriminate sexual behavior, and the list goes on.
I’ll end by saying that I get nervous when postmodern sensibilities (such as they are) seek to embrace the fruits of science while at the same time squelching entailments such as explanation and prediction. As Dr. Sroufe states in the Bough Breaks video (and I paraphrase), “Attachment patterns measured at eighteen months are a high predictor of math achievement at age 16.” Clearly there is more at stake when it comes to getting an infant to sleep than a restful night for his or her parents. There are huge social implications as well. It would appear that “what’s key to infant sleep” is also key to “societal sleep,” that is to say, society as a whole being able to sleep couched in the comfort of security.
Dr. Teti’s (08.18.10) email response to a draft of this post (with my editorial changes in brackets):
Thank you for calling the Frontline piece to my attention. I was unaware of it, and in my travels researching infant sleep and parenting and talking to colleagues investigating parenting and sleep, including people who do attachment research, you are the very first to call this piece to my attention. As [the above descriptions suggest], the Frontline video followed 3 children, ranging from infancy to the toddler/preschool years, and did some intensive observations of parenting at night and related that parenting in a descriptive way to child behavior problems. As such, it sounds like it was a studio-produced, clinical investigation, using studio-quality equipment (very different than the equipment we used) to highlight some interesting linkages between parenting, child sleep, attachment, and child functioning in three families (please correct me if I am wrong) [and that’s my impression as well]. The fact that this was a studio production makes if very different than what we did. In addition, I’m not clear how much the Frontline piece compares with what we have done in terms of observations, because I have not seen the video [our Foundation has since sent a copy to Dr. Teti’s research team—feedback from them to follow].
My statement about our study being the 1st to place multiple video cameras in the bedrooms of infants and parents was in reference to some of the earlier, larger scale work done, published in scientific journals, involving sample sizes similar to ours, on infant sleep and parenting. This earlier work, done some years back, used a single camera and a VHS tape recorder, suspended above the infant’s crib, to video infant behavior and parental interventions during the night. Our study is similar to this earlier work in being large-scale, but it made use of the improved digital technology that exists today, enabling the use of multiple camera and microphone inputs, to capture any parent-infant interactions in other rooms parents took their infants to. The statement about being the first to use multiple cameras in parents’ bedrooms was made in reference to earlier large-scale work published in empirical journals using time-lapse video with VHS recorders on parenting and infant sleep.
Again, thank you for contacting me, and I hope this response allays your concerns. I wish you success with your Foundation.
Doug Teti
