How Sleep Associations Cause Night Wakings
According to a study published by Oxford University Press (2019), parents’ sleep still has not recovered to pre-pregnancy levels six years after having their first child. When I was pregnant with my son, someone sent me an article about the study and, as someone who loves to sleep, it terrified me!
But it’s the truth. I’ve seen how parents’ sleep can be disrupted in a variety of ways, well past the newborn stage. A common sleep issue that often extends far past the first months of (expected) broken newborn sleep is night wakings. Many children are still waking up up multiple times in the night and parents are having to lay with, feed, or rock their child back to sleep well into year 2, 3, and beyond.
And parents that still aren’t getting sleep: you are exhausted. And frustrated. And also, sometimes feeling guilty. You want to do what’s best for your child and feel that if that means being there for them in the night, forgoeing your own sleep, that’s what you should do. But you dread the wakings and are struggling with the chronic lack of sleep and how it affects your mood during the day. You aren’t the fun, positive parent you want to be, and it isn’t your fault. Sleep deprivation absolutely impairs physiological, cognitive, and emotional functioning (and that’s even just one night of missed sleep, never mind chronic deprivation).
Sleep is also important for your child’s development (and they need a whole lot more of it than you do)! And while your child will eventually sleep through the night, it might take months, and it might take years.
A common cause of night wakings are sleep associations. Sleep associations are cues that tell your little one that it’s time to fall asleep, or help them fall asleep. All children learn to connect certain associations with falling asleep. They might need their favorite blankie, white noise, or rocking to fall asleep. They might have a bedtime routine that signals the need to sleep. Adults have sleep associations too! For you it might be the position you fall asleep in, or a pillow.
Sleep associations can be positive or negative:
Positive sleep associations are those that allow your child to put themselves back to sleep independently when they wake in the night.
Negative sleep associations are those that require your presence, or the presence of something that is no longer available, for your child to fall back asleep at night.
Children wake slightly in the night as they transition between sleep cycles. When they do, they check to make sure everything around them is the way it should be, and they often rely on the thing that they associated with falling asleep to be present to help them fall back asleep. If they fell asleep being comforted by something that is no longer there (like you rubbing their back, laying next to them, television, etc.), this can cause them to wake up feeling like something is wrong, and instead of falling back to sleep in the night actually wake up more fully and begin crying.
My own son was dependent on movement as a sleep prop at a young age. He wasn't too picky about the type of movement (hours of stroller pushing, car rides, and deep bouncing squats fill my memories of those months), but if he wasn't moving, he wasn't sleeping. This included when he transitioned sleep cycles. When I finally decided it was time to get rid of those sleep associations I couldn't believe how quickly he formed new positive ones, and lamented those hours of what had become resentful driving and pushing. I was finally able to put him happily to sleep and get "me time" while he slept.
Sleep associations are the cause of sleepless nights for many children, but they aren’t the only cause. If you want to find out why your child isn’t sleeping, and what you can do to change it, take my free 3-minute quiz: The Positive & Practical Sleep Assessment. I created this quiz to help parents find the likely cause of their child’s sleep issues and give them a simple starting point for addressing them.